Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury - Preview

What could ostensibly be called, the last Wii U game to come to Switch, is almost here and Nintendo were kind enough to allow me some time with the game, to check it out. Of course, the release of the 3D World portion of the game was a draw for me, the bigger draw was checking out this meowstry that is Bowser’s Fury and yes, get ready for some cat puns.

Before I dipped my toes into that which is known as Bowser’s Fury, I wanted to see how well the original game played and with nary a care in the world, I pounced upon it. If you're not aware of what Super Mario 3D World is all about, think of it as more of a lovechild between Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Brothers 3, it contains many whimsical worlds and within each world are a litter of unique stages. Going in there were a few things that I knew would be different and I was looking forward to testing them out, but for the most part after playing the first few stages everything felt furmiliar. This is not a bad thing in fact I was honestly surprised at how much I remembered; I think that comes down to just how well the levels were designed in the first place. There really isn't a whole lot of difference that I can see in the earlier worlds, from what I can recall of the Wii U version and of course that might change later on, though they did make one big change and I was really curious to see how it plays out, of course I'm talking about the speed boost.

From the initial trailer, almost everyone could tell that Mario and crew were moving faster and given that it was one of the criticisms that the original release had, it makes sense that they would address it. I can state that yes, all the characters do move a lot faster than they did originally, however that's not to say that everything overall feels faster, just the overall movement speed. Mario doesn't ground pound any faster and Luigi doesn't jump higher, faster, they all just move faster and if you're not paying attention it will catch you out because it is considerable. That was actually one of the things that I really liked about it, the more I played, the more I started getting into the groove of running at this faster pace and adapting to how I needed to approach things, I say that knowing full well I died a lot before I got my head around this. I must stress that this is not a downside, it's just something you need to be aware of if you're going to try and get the best score possible on each stage.

Speaking of scores, the green stars back and of course the stamps and so far everything appears to be in the same spot from the stages that I've played and while I could just be remembering things incorrectly, it would make sense that they haven't changed things drastically. Of course the stamps now have a different function because there's no more miiverse to use them in, RIP miiverse, instead they can be used in the games photo system. I haven't really delved a lot into the photography options, but from a cursory inspection things look very similar to that of Super Mario Odyssey, and if that's the case, awesome. The one time I did try and use a stamp it did confuse me because I had to use the meow-tion control to move the cursor for where the stamp was going to go and that’s honestly it felt a little weird, but I'm sure that with some practise it will improve.

Once I had things down pat in the main game it was time to test out Bowser’s Fury and in trying to understand just what this new game mode was all about. Obviously, this is all new so I'm not gonna delve into any spoilers at all, I am only going to touch on the 1st area after the opening cutscene, but the best way to describe this game is if Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario 3D World had a baby, this is what you would get. In the opening area there were multiple islands, though I hate to use the island because they weren't that big, so let’s go with atoll as it is probably a more apt description. Each of them contained a number of cat shines to collect, which makes sense cats do like their shiny things and each required a little puzzle solve to discover them. While this does have elements of Odyssey in it, the inclusion of the powerups from 3D World make it feel very different, I'm honestly excited to get back there and finish it off, because it seems to combine the best of both and I'm extremely on board with that.

Understandably I haven't had a lot of time with the game at this point, but I've been enjoying it sp far, though the question remains whether or not I will be by the time I reach the end. I don't know how much content there is for Bowser's Fury, but from what I've played of that so far I'm enjoying it and the fact you get to turn into a giant cat is pretty cool. As for 3D World everything feels familiar but that speed boost is shaping up to be a massive change, however because of that I'm concerned for the end game, because I'm having memories of the later levels requiring some more finicky platforming and I don't know how that new speed will impact that. Hopefully by the time I get to it I've adapted to the speed and my concerns will be rendered mute, but we'll just have to wait and see. I'm enjoying the game so far and I honestly just want to keep playing it because 3D World was such a great game in the first place, so any opportunity to revisit any is welcome and Bowser’s Fury is shaping up to be a fun cat-astrophe