I find it strange that one idea going around this topic is that longtime Mario fans wanted a new game in the lineage of Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy, but not this, never this. I grew up playing all the original Mario games, and every one was better than the last, with the possible exception of Mario 2. Mario Bros was great, Mario 3 was massively improved, and Mario World was even better still. Then we got Mario 64, and it played nothing like a Mario game. It was completely awkward when positioned as the next step in Mario games.
And then, much like the original series, the games got better with each entry, with the possible exception of Sunshine. Mario 64 felt strangely not Mario and lacked guidance but had some (some!) interesting level designs, Galaxy felt more along the right path but was still shackled to some of 64's backward design (such as life bars instead of mushrooms), and Galaxy 2 was more of the same but with a lot of fresh ideas that made it easy for me to overlook that it still didn't feel right. And then 3D Land came out and it was the purest 3D representation of Mario yet, with fantastic gameplay and a very smooth feel, and the series finally felt like Mario.
So yeah, when I say 3D World looks fantastic, I'm basically saying that finally we're getting 3D Marios that play like Mario. We're getting games that feel integrated into the original gameplay of the series, without being bound by it. We're getting the tight platforming of the 2D games in a 3D space, with the massive well of ideas that 3D platforming allows.
And I do absolutely believe that people would be reacting entirely differently to this game with a camera positioned behind Mario, so we can see all the terrain elevations and detail closer up, with all the obstacles in the distance, the looming platforms and spinning peg-grass and mice bounding up and down and crystal pipes stretching upwards. I do think the negative reaction is somewhat superficial, with people assuming that since it looks the same it has to be the same, that the levels can't be large, that there are no new ideas, that it's a quaint, basic game.
But there's one thing also that I agree with, and that's the idea that Nintendo needs to do a better job differentiating between their handheld and console games. They already have this problem of consumers saying "I have the Wii, why do I need this tablet," and they're gearing up to have the problem of "I already have Mario, and Mario Kart, and Donkey Kong on my 3DS, so why do I need the WiiU?" Nintendo's really going to have to focus on splitting their design in ways that matters, deciding which games are suited to which system. They have such an immense roster of games that people would love to see, and I hope they do them all justice by thinking of how they can treat them in the best way possible.
But treating Mario in the best way? It's only possible within the new framework of 3D Land. That doesn't mean they can't have an open world game, it doesn't mean they can't have Galaxy-sized ideas, that they can't have a hub world or a world map. When I say 3D Land is absolutely the best, I mean that it has the best gameplay systems. The core control, the jumping physics, the pure platforming, are finally pure Mario, and they work better than they ever have before.
This is an interesting post, but I'd argue that SM64 is a natural evolution of the SMW, and to a lesser extent, SMB3.
SMB1 is a very simple, linear game, with tight play controls, relatively little vertical space, lots of hopping and bopping across a horizon plane of challenges. SMB2 is the game I'm the least familar with, but it's pretty similar, yes?
SMB3 is when the gaem started to expand and grow beyond these simple boundaries. Now there's a world map of sorts, transiting between stages, linking them all together with a visual theme, dotted with little side attractions like wandering Hammer Bros or Mushroom houses. You can fly in SMB3 as well, that's probably the biggest addition to the series, and the game is built with more vertical space than SMB1, more secrets and areas to explore above the general horizontal space Mario transverse. Still, there is a limit to how much you can fly, a P-meter you have to build up, and generally the game is still built on the same concept as SMB1; tight play controls, compact and challenging level design. It's my favorite of the 2D Marios.
Things change in SMW. Now you got an even BIGGER world map, with yellow buttons and red buttons and blue buttons that change up the design of the levels. The game has many, many, MANY secret/alternate exits to find, and an entire secret world that's only accessible through these secrets(and the Star World is only beatable by finding the secret exits in THAT world as well!), encourages lots of exploration. Now levels are much larger, more vertical space than ever, with a smaller focus on the tight, concise platforming challenges of the NES trilogy. Now you're given a feather that's even more powerful than the Tanooki suit ever was, allowing you to fly over the entire damn level if you're half decent with it, with lots of secrets exits tucked away in the upper reaches of the game. Mario's play control is looser than the SMB games, more variance in air control to match a game with bigger, larger areas to traverse. The focus from the NES games has started to erode in favor of easier, bigger stages, with the main challenge and appeal of the game being finding those secret exits and exploring the 2d world.
SM64 builds on that. Now you can move in 360 dimensions! It's not just a world map between levels, it's an entire damn hub world, with all it's various nooks and crannies and secrets of it's own. Levels are a long way away from the moment-to-moment focus on platforming the NES games were; now we got huge areas to explore, wing caps to fly around, various goal points you can find in any order you like. There are the occasional platforming focused areas, but it's pretty clear the direction Nintendo is moving the Mario series, becoming more and more like a linear version of Zelda, exploring large environments, with an overworld/hub area to boot. SMS is...more of a sidestep than anything, just continuing the SM64 formula, now with an even bigger hub area to screw around in.
They finally decided to pull it back to the focus on compact, tighter level design and play control with SMG, but they still had those SM64 hanger-ons like the hub world. It takes forever and a day to get to the next damn stage. SMG2, my personal favorite and a top 5 game of the generation, finally gets that balance from SMB3, a minimal amount of exploration, large focus on great ideas and moment-to-moment varied platforming(and other assorted motion-controlled gimmicks that are mostly well done).
3D Land seems like it's the next step in getting back to 2D mario, but it makes some design choices that I'm really not a big fan of. The game is slower than the Galaxies on a moment-to-moment basis, running at 30fps, with a 8-way control design created specifically to cater to d-pad players(as is 3D World...I pity the people having to use the Wiimote to traverse these 3D worlds). Levels are all hard right angles and blocks, little dioramas of Mario games that can't help but come across as small and slight. The Tanooki suit is the most overpowered power-up since SMW's feather, completely trivlizing much of the game, including the final level. Worst, the first half of the game is just...boring. I played through many of the levels in a daze, going through the motions of it's slow, bite-sized areas, rarely really engaging with the gameplay. It felt like a chore to play, which is an absolute failure as a Mario game, IMO. The second half fares much better, with more challenging and engaging gameplay on a regular basis, and the levels come to life(although the Tanooki suit still laughs in the face of most of it). It's a good game, but not a great game for me. First half is a 6/10, second half is an 8/10, overall that's a 7/10.
Could SM3DWorld be that Galaxy 2-esque game, with lots of ideas and challenging, tight level design and fast paced gameplay? Perhaps. But I'm cautious, because it looks very much like a sequel to a game I thought was just "pretty good", with it's biggest addition being a multiplayer mode I have no intention of playing. And the levels demo'd still have that lackadaisal pacing of 3DLand, slower gameplay, rarely challenging, just kinda-sorta engaging for the single player. That's what it looks like to me, I can only judge the material I've seen, based on the games I know(which is 3D Land).
Maybe it's better, but if it continues in the manner of 3DLand, not very likely.
