New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be the first Nintendo game to use “kind code” – computer-assisted aid if you can’t beat a section – for one very good reason: It’s reportedly the most hardcore Mario game in years.
MTV Multiplayer’s Russ Frushtick got some hands-on time with this fall’s New Super Mario Bros. Wii at a press event in New York City, and the verdict? It’s hard. Like, really hard – Contra hard, even.
You remember those ghost house levels from “Super Mario World” where you had to stay on the moving platform and it slowly chugged past ghosts and other obstacles? Ok, imagine that, but turn the platform into a slavering bone dragon and speed it up by about 3 times. Oh, and throw on three other homicidal friends who would rather jump on your head than let you make a perfectly timed jump. I went in expecting instant success, I left with zero lives and a lower sense of self worth.
This game’s difficulty comes thanks to the inclusion of the “Super Guide” feature, which lets the computer (playing as Luigi) handle the trickier parts for gamers who can’t make that one goddamn jump before resuming control – though apparently, the option won’t unlock until you’ve tried and died a few times already.
Thanks to the “Super Guide,” the developers no longer had to account for the lowest common denominator of player skill, but I’m not sure that that’s actually true. If the game is truly this hard, aren’t the less-skilled among us going to be playing the entire game on autopilot? I’d much rather something like Bayonetta‘s Automatic Mode, where the game handled the jumps and movement and left us to the combat.
Though, it is a Mario game. I guess the jumps are the combat.
