LogFAQs > #950551190

Forgive me for putting this out of order, and rambling like a goof, but this one's important.

12. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U, 2013)

Today is Friday, February 12, 2021, which means that Super Mario 3D World (+ Bowser's Fury) is currently available for Nintendo Switch. If you don't already own the Wii U version, and you like Mario games or platformers even a tiny amount, you owe it to yourself to play this game. It's an absolute gem of a game, buried by the failure of the Wii U and the then-disappointment of not being an open sandbox-style game like Mario 64 or Sunshine. I'm willing to go out on a limb and throw out the hottest of takes - I think it has the best level design of any platformer Nintendo has ever made. Better than Mario 1, 3, World, Galaxy, DKC games, whatever other stuff I can't remember. And while I think some people's platforming tastes are always going to trend to the aforementioned open-ended sandboxes of 64 and Odyssey, for my money 3D World has them both beat.
Mario 3D World starts you off with a pretty standard opening, but from the jump the structure is just a little bit different. Bowser's captured a princess again - but it's a group of fairies from the previously-unknown Sprixie Kingdom, instead of Peach. Your first level is a fairly straightforward grass level - but it's built around the game's new big power-up, the Super Bell, which turns you into a cat that can climb up walls, dive in the air, and claw at enemies. And returning for the first time since Mario 2 is its full roster of variable-control playable characters; you can select Mario, Luigi, Peach, or Toad, each with comparable skills to that game, like Peach's mid-air float and Luigi's high jumps. The level design quickly departs from the norm, too; in World 1 you have the standard grass and underground levels, but also a trapeze-hopping circus level, a level riding atop a water-surfing dinosaur, the introduction of Captain Toad, and a boss fight against Bowser where you kick explosive soccer balls (!) into his oversized pimped-out car. (!!)
It's this absolute bombardment of unique ideas that defines Mario 3D World, for the entirety of the game. There's just so many different and immensely creative levels that jumping into a new stage and seeing what it has to discover is such a joy. It feels very much from the Super Mario Bros. 3 school of level design, where each stage is so distinct and memorable, that upon a revisit through the game, you'll constantly be saying "Oh man, it's that level!" with enthusiasm. And it carries this momentum the entire way through; when you think they can't possibly come up with something new, there's something around the corner possibly more brilliant than anything you've seen yet - a power-up that multiplies your character into multiple copies, a Mario Kart-themed high speed race level, a Kuriboh's Shoe-styled giant ice skate to ride around in; it still throws me for a loop how stuff I remember so distinctly is so far along the game's main worlds.
There's a ton of stuff to collect here - each stage has three green stars and a stamp, and you're credited for landing atop the flagpole at the end - but most of it isn't entirely necessary to progress (though you do need certain amounts of stars to open some stages and worlds). There's also multiple hidden postgame areas, including a final world with two brutally difficult challenge levels that rank among the hardest things in any Mario game since the NES. It's extra stuff to do for those who want it, but I think the individual level designs largely stand out on their merit.
I think there's a trend to sort of canonize games with more open-ended design and philosophy, like Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey, as the ideal method of structuring and imagining a game. And like I said up front, there's clearly a huge subset of Mario fans who vastly prefer this style of game to the disjointed levels of 3D World or Galaxy. But similarly to 2D and 3D, I think it's really important to recognize the strengths and the place for both of these approaches. With Mario 3D World's fixed-camera streamlined levels, the game can more precisely tailor the kind of experience for the player and the level design itself can be tighter and more varied. Because the game places limitations on the kind of things you can do in each level, it gives the freedom to take greater creative risks with what a level can do; conversely, with the ability for a player to go just about anywhere and do anything, the structure isn't going to be as tight and the experience not as controlled. It's this attention to nailing every detail in each level that sets 3D World apart from just about every other platformer - there's so little wasted space in each carefully crafted stage that you're always going to get a pretty complete experience of its constant newly-introduced concepts and challenges.
And all of this wonderful gameplay is backed by one of my absolute favorite video game soundtracks. The Mario games have always sounded great, and Koji Kondo has delivered so many memorable tunes across Mario and other series in his career, but even with all that, this masterpiece might be the greatest track he's ever composed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkizz-EzmPA
I'd argue Nintendo would at least put it up there, too, since it got dropped into nearly every Mario Maker 2 and 3D World preview or update video. There are just so many memorable tracks, and so many unique ones constantly being introduced across its multitude of levels, that just help to make the entire experience so distinct and special.
In 2017, I managed to run into both of my absolute favorite gaming experiences of the past decade, obviously by playing through games that had been released well before that year. Super Mario 3D World was one of those memories, and by far the biggest surprise. When I jumped into the co-op mode with a friend halfway into the game, I wasn't expecting something much more memorable or enjoyable than any of the New Super Mario Bros. games. But quickly I started to fall in love with the cleverness of the game's ideas and level design, and be impressed by all the different things on display. And when I ended up running through the entire game solo, I was just blown away by how much I loved every single part of it. Even grinding through hundreds of lives to complete the game's brutally difficult final level didn't test my patience or leave me feeling hopelessly frustrated - the game is just so damn good that I couldn't wait to keep giving it another go.
It's rare for me, at my current age, to get so immensely emotional or excited about any individual thing anymore - I'm just not wired to find something as the new greatest thing ever like I was when I was a teenager. But I'm sitting here getting choked up listening through a playlist of the 3D World soundtrack, and getting excited about rolling through the whole thing again later today, because it's just such a wonderful joy of a game and I adore it so much. When Nintendo gets a game just right, at least for me, I don't think there's any company in the industry that can come even close to matching what they can do with the medium - and Super Mario 3D World is the perfect representation of that particularly wonderful brand of magic.

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it's an underwater adventure ride