Game Re­view: Su­per Mario 3D World and Bowser’s Fury

MISHAWAKA – The Nin­tendo Switch port of 2013’s Su­per Mario 3D World has fi­nally re­leased, along with a story pack ti­tled Bowser’s Fury. 

I will con­fess, I did not pay at­ten­tion to the game the first time it came out. In my de­fense, I would not have the con­sole to play it on for the next two years or so. Luck­ily for me, I man­aged to wrench my eyes away from the sad­ness – I mean school­work—that sur­rounds me con­stantly long enough to pay at­ten­tion to this ver­sion’s re­lease. 

Not much from the Wii U ver­sion has changed in the in­ter­ven­ing eight years: Mario is still try­ing to save cap­tured princesses, Bowser is still a bad dude and cats are still a core el­e­ment of the game­play for some rea­son. 

The game starts with Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and a Toad – a side char­ac­ter which Nin­tendo has con­sis­tently tried its hard­est to con­vince you mat­ters, ne­glect­ing to ac­knowl­edge that they only give them names based on what color they are – re­lax­ing and mind­ing their own busi­ness in a king­dom of pix­ies called Sprixie King­dom, ti­tled thusly be­cause, I as­sume, some en­ter­pris­ing chil­dren’s book au­thor trade­marked the word “pixie,” and Nin­ten­do’s fa­mously cut­throat lawyers just weren’t feel­ing it that day. 

Sud­denly, Bowser pops up out of nowhere and catches one of the to­tally-not-a-pixie Sprix­ies in a jar – it’s the Sprixie Princess, no less! The game begs the ques­tion, “Who could have fore­seen such an aw­ful turn of events?”  But then, you re­al­ize that this has been hap­pen­ing fairly reg­u­larly for over 35 years now, and that you could prob­a­bly re­cite the plot of a Mario game even if you did not know what elec­tric­ity is and you were dead. I re­al­ize I sound jaded and not at all ex­cited for this game, but that is be­cause I am at least the for­mer.  

Get­ting back to the story though, this kid­nap­ping kicks off a 3D plat­former full of charm, fun power ups both new and old, in­no­v­a­tive level de­sign, sur­pris­ingly tricky puz­zles and some of the best mu­sic I have ever heard in my life. 

I’m go­ing to do one more di­gres­sion here – last one, I promise. I am buy­ing this game not just be­cause I like Mario games, not just be­cause of the new con­tent and not just be­cause it is a fun game on my fa­vorite con­sole. I am buy­ing this game due, in an over­whelm­ingly large part, to the mu­sic. This, for those who aren’t in the know, is about when Nin­tendo de­cided that they would just make big jazzy band scores for a ma­jor­ity of their games, and I am here for it. I am lis­ten­ing to the sound­track as I write this piece, be­cause Nin­tendo mu­sic post-2013 lives in my head rent-free. Now, back to the game. 

One of the core me­chan­ics in this game is the Cat Bell power-up, which im­bues the holder with cat-like abil­i­ties, al­low­ing them to sprint al­most twice as quickly, dive in midair, climb walls, scratch en­e­mies and give the player se­vere cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance while watch­ing a group of adults prance around on all fours in cus­tom cat cos­tumes and call­ing it cute. With these fe­line fea­tures, the group set out to free the Sprixie Princess from Bowser’s clutches, along with the six other Sprixie Princesses that ap­par­ently ex­ist and were also cap­tured. 

What makes this port so spe­cial, aside from the fact that it is now on Nin­ten­do’s most ver­sa­tile con­sole, is that it comes with the all-new Bowser’s Fury story mode. This chunk of game is en­tirely orig­i­nal in its story, the premise of which is Bowser ab­solutely los­ing it and de­cid­ing to lay waste to a place called Cat Lap Lake.  

Bowser's anger ev­i­dently makes him taller than most build­ings, cov­ers him in a tar-like sub­stance and strength­ens all his at­tacks. This leaves me to as­sume that Bowser has re­ally only been mildly an­noyed at Mario these past three decades. Re­gard­less, he is cer­tainly an­gry now, and that is your prob­lem as you tra­verse the lake with Bowser Jr. in tow, try­ing to find a way to get his dad to eat a Snick­ers or some­thing. 

The point is, this is a not-in­signif­i­cant por­tion of con­tent that Nin­tendo just came up with for the port, which is A-OK in my book, and I will cer­tainly be ded­i­cat­ing plenty of time to both this side story and the main game in the com­ing weeks.