Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review (Nintendo Switch) | A Wonderful Labor Of Love

I have to admit, when Super Mario Bros. Wonder was revealed as the obligatory One-More-Thing at a Nintendo Direct back in July I was initially less than excited. "Really?" I thought to myself? "A 2D Mario game is your big showstopper this time?"

Granted, it'd been a while since the release of New Super Mario Bros. U (over 10 years, in fact). But with how painfully formulaic the NSMB series had become I had little reason to believe that this new game would attempt to break the mold in any way.

Then the flowers started talking. And that's when I realized that this game was going to be something special after all.

Four months later I can confirm that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a refreshingly novel return to form for everyone's favorite Italian plumber and his friends, and a must-play for most Platformer enthusiasts. With some caveats, of course — but we'll get to that.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

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  $57.40

Here you can buy Super Mario Bros. Wonder

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Super Mario Bros. Wonder | The Bottom Line

• The platforming is as solid and snappy as ever
• The visuals are better than ever, with a gorgeous new art style, more lively animations and plenty of character in every frame
  
• The level design is refreshingly inspired and full of surprises
• The Wonder Flower gimmick adds a fun element of unpredictability to each level
• More choice in which levels you can tackle in what order is very appreciated
  
• The Badge system is interesting, but many badges are very situational
• The Power-ups aren't as varied or impactful as I'd like them to be
• The boss fights are a major disappointment
• No full online multiplayer is a letdown
• ...But the existing online component is fascinating
  

Business As Usual For Mario & Co.

The story premise is about as simple as you'd expect from a 2D Mario game: Mario & his friends are attending a Meet & Greet in the Flower Kingdom (which apparently shares a border with the Mushroom Kingdom), hosted by its ruler, the addorable caterpillar Prince Florian.

But then, oh no, Bowser shows up and ruins things again! In a less traditional way than usual, admittedly, by stealing one of the local reality-warping Wonder Flowers, fusing himself with the kingdom's castle and flying off to do even more nefarious things with it. Naturally Mario and gang have to help!

And they'll do this by jumping and running through an assortment of 2D levels, spread out across more than 7 themed Worlds. If you've played any of the New Super Mario Bros. games you should immediately feel right at home with the core gameplay here: Jump with B, run and grab things with Y, do a spin jump or hover briefly in the air by shaking your controller (You can also just press one of the right shoulder buttons for that one, thank goodness) and reach the flagpole at the end.

The controls can be somewhat customized, but either way the platforming feels just as snappy and responsive as it did in the NSMB games, with a nice sense of momentum to boot. I very rarely felt that a missed jump or death by environmental hazard was the game's fault rather than just me being hasty or careless.

But that's all familiar territory! What does this game do differently?

Flowery Language

Well, it doesn't waste any time introducing its two most prominent new gameplay features: Talking Flowers and Wonder Flowers. The Talking Flowers are spread across almost every level in the game and provide quips, comments and sound bites to accompany you on your adventure. They're fully voice acted too, and I can't deny that hearing voice acting in a 2D Mario game is odd, to say the least.

You can turn the voices off, but I personally found the flowers just too charming to ever want to shut them up. Plus, you can change their language at any time, even from within a level, so if you were wondering what "I wonder what Goombas taste like" sounds like in Dutch, this game has you covered.

Speaking of voice acting, you may have heard of Mario and Luigi having a new voice actor as of this game! Some people were worried that Mario's new "Yahoo"s and "Yippee"s would sound off and distracting, but Kevin Afghani does a fantastic job of picking up where Charles Martinet left off; I very quickly stopped noticing the difference.

Let's Get Weird With It

Meanwhile, the other local variety of flora has a more significant gameplay impact: In nearly every single level (certain special stages excluded) there is a Wonder Flower hidden somewhere. And if a player finds and touches that Wonder Flower, the whole level... changes. How exactly it changes is different for each level, but I quickly learned to expect the unexpected.

One level suddenly turned into a top-down exploration game, another turned me into a spiked ball and sent me bowling, another still had me dodging suddenly gigantic enemies. And the game keeps coming up with entirely new Wonder effects even right up until the finale! The sheer amount of work that was put into all of these unique effects boggles the mind.

Almost every level containing a Wonder Flower can also be cleared without touching it, but you'd be missing out on the reward for surviving their shenanigans: A bonus Wonder Seed, the main collectible needed to progress in the game. You can finish the game without collecting most of them, but where's the fun in that?

Wonderful By Default

Super Mario Bros. Wonder doesn't just limit its creativity to the Wonder effects though. Even without them, every single level in the game is shockingly unique, with some enemy variants and gameplay gimmicks only having a one-time appearance.

I really cannot overstate that this game is just bursting at the seams with fresh ideas that never get the chance to overstay their welcome before some other cool new things take their place. Which makes it even more surprising how much of the game you can outright skip!

Wonder's world map is very open in general, letting you tackle a sizeable portion of its stages in any order. And as long as you reach each World's final level and have enough Wonder Seeds to unlock it, you don't need to bother with most of its levels if you don't want to. You can even access any of the game's last 3 Worlds in whichever order you like!

On top of all that, the game is simply gorgeous to look at. While NSMB failed to impress with its rather simple and stiff 3D models, Wonder instead brings a lovely, stylized 2D-ish look to the table, with a garnish of incredibly expressive character animations!

Wonder's Mario & Co enter pipes with gusto, get smear frames on their legs at top speed and react to the world around them in fun and unexpected ways.

And don't even get me started on the countless enemy variants and their animation quirks; the moment I saw a Goomba look up in fear for a frame or two before meeting its end at the bottom of Mario's oversized shoes, I was enamoured. It's very easy to tell that this was a labor of love for the animation team.

Greetings From Rogueport

An especially interesting addition in Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the new Badge system: Players unlock a selection of badges throughout their journey through the Flower Kingdom, and they can bring one of them into almost any level to gain some kind of benefit.

There are three types of badges: Action badges which replace your spin jump with another more helpful ability, Boost badges which give a more passive benefit and Expert badges which actually make the game harder in many ways. Paper Mario says hello!

The Action badges are the most transformative and therefore the most fun. I quickly found myself favoring the Parachute Cap badge for that extra bit of aerial control, but I could see almost all of them appealing to different types of players!

Most badges are very situational though. The Dolphin Kick badge gives you more underwater mobility and is therefore worthless in any level without underwater sections, and the Grappling Vine is excellent in some cases, but usually outclassed by other abilities.

Wait, That's It?

Now, all this isn't to say the game is flawless! Forexample, the game's standard Power-up items left me somewhat disappointed. The star of the show is the new Elephant power-up, giving you a trunk to hit enemies with and splash water around.

Its closest contender is the Drill, letting you burrow below ground and into ceilings, which is used to great effect in some levels, but pretty much useless everywhere else.

The classic Fire Flower rarely appears in the game, and for good reason: killing enemies is actually more often than not a bad idea, as they may be needed to get one of the three purple 10-Coin collectibles in every level. The Bubble power-up doesn't fare much better for the same reason, though it can get you out of some sticky situation sometimes (and will be a speedrunner favorite, I'm sure). The Wonder Flowers often feel like power-ups in their own way, but I still wish the traditional power-ups were more varied and impactful.

Another pet peeve of mine with Wonder are its boss fights.For one, there aren't all that many of them. In fact, several of the game's Worlds don't even have a boss fight and instead end on an oddly anticlimactic regular level before booting you back to the hub area, leaving you to wonder if you missed something along the way.

The few boss fights that are there are underwhelming. The Koopa Kids are gone, replaced by Bowser Jr. who fails to impress with some lukewarm Wonder transformations before being booted off the stage by a few head-jumps. In a game so inundated with creativity the bosses feel like a major missed opportunity.

Jolly Cooperation

Like the home console NSMB games, Super Mario Bros. Wonder supports local multiplayer , letting you play with (and sabotage) up to three of your friends. Unlike in the NSMB games, Players 3 and 4 are no longer limited to playing a Toad, and instead all players get a wide selection of characters to choose from, including Peach and Daisy.

Players less experienced with platformers, i.e. kids, can also choose one of the Yoshis or Nabbit, who can't take damage from enemies or environmental hazards. If you were hoping to play Wonder with friends online, however, you might be disappointed by the game's Online offerings.

You can create an online lobby and enter levels together, but won't be able to actually interact with each other. Online players act more like player shadows from Dark Souls in your game, experiencing their own version of the level alongside you. Which is better than having no online functionality at all, but still, it's baffling that Nintendo still hasn't figured out how to implement proper online multiplayer.

However, the online multiplayer is actually an open lobby by default, and that is where it gets interesting. Online players can revive themselves by touching another player or a standee, a sort of portable Checkpoint each player can place at almost any point in the level.

Which can lead to players cooperating and sort of baton-passing their way even through tougher levels. It's actually not too dissimilar to the multiplayer in Death Stranding, which is a sentence I absolutely never expected to say about a Mario game.

The online multiplayer especially complements one of Wonder's new level types: Search Party, which has you looking for five hidden coins in a limited play area. Every playable character has a corresponding hidden block type that is only visible to them, and these blocks are usually used liberally in these challenges. Meaning that in solo play these levels quickly turn into frustrating hidden block hunts, but in online multiplayer players can find hidden blocks for each other and make the treasure hunt a much smoother collaborative effort.

Verdict

Ultimately, although Super Mario Bros Wonder did feel lacking in a few key areas, and although the online multiplayer leaves something to be desired, those flaws weren't enough to keep me from being enthralled with the game right until the end, when I'd done everything there is to do in it. If you enjoy platformers at all, or if you're looking for a new accessible local multiplayer game to play with friends and/or family, this is a very easy recommendation from me.

Rating: 89/100

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

• 

  $57.40

Here you can buy Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Without any extra charge, you can support EarlyGame through the link! This won't cost you anything extra, and we still get a small commission. It's a win-win situation for both parties! Keep in mind that the article price may change.