I got SMB3d for my 3ds and it’s pretty good. Imaginative level design with good graphics and good controls. The 3d effect is good and there is alot of content (the game is far from over once you beat Bowser).
My complaint though is that the virtually limitless number of lives you can accumulate detracts from the stress and/or pressure of making tough jumps and what not. In smb3d for example I currently have over 115 lives in the bank and I’m not the greatest Mario player out there. Some levels would gain me 4 or more lives in one pass.
I feel the same way about the Tanookii suit which lets you float after every jump. It takes away all of the skill needed to land tough jumps as you can literally float past obstacles that are supposed to be tough to jump thru.
I think the 3d level design is great and the Mario galaxy levels were pretty awesome but the over abundance of free lives detracts from the series now.
I guess that’s the middle ground that every game has to try and navigate. They need to make games challenging, but not too challenging, because it turns off a lot of folks who don’t have the coordination/drove to do so. Of course, going the other way is pretty much useless, too, because if you beat the game without even trying, that’s no fun either.
It seemed to me (having played the early Mario games and then Galaxy) that the difficulty is no longer in beating the game before running out of lives but in beating the levels in all of the ways possible.
Some of the optional mode Galaxy levels are beyond my ability, and likely will remain so no matter how many lives I am given. But I can beat all of the levels eventually, and complete the main story line easily.
So I guess I’m not even sure what “lives” are used for any more in the SMB series - seems like they should just get rid of them altogether and let you keep trying the levels as many times as you like.
Lives became redundant in Super Mario World, at the same time that it became possible to save your progress. This is not a coincidence. If you can save your progress and pick up where you left off, then you already effectively have unlimited lives, so you might as well just make it official.
Ha ha ha… I guess you haven’t reached the final, final level. Prepare to squander dozens, nay, hundreds of Marios trying to beat the “extra special” level you unlock once you have 100%'ed the game.
I am no Mario slouch but I simply can’t beat it. I burned through 300 guys trying, though.
I think this structure is a good idea, actually. It allows you to feel accomplishment, while extending the life of the game for those who want the challenge.
I still haven’t finished purple coin Luigi, and I don’t think I ever can!
Lives have been a worthless metric for at least 10, if not 15 years. I don’t know why games don’t get rid of them.
The original MegaMan game for the NES kept score, as a throwback from the good ol’ coin-op arcade games. It became clear very quickly that it was anachronistic and stupid. Megaman 2 got rid of them. I think lives are going that way, too.
One of the coolest things about Mario games in general is that there is a minimum level of difficulty by using all the tools available, like lives and power ups, but one can always make the game harder by imposing certain additional rules and its easy to find examples of these all over Youtube. For instance, if you think virtually unlimited lives is too easy, try to beat levels using the minimum number of lives you can. If you think a power up is too powerful, don’t use it. As I understand, all of the levels are always designed such that you don’t require any power ups to complete it, barring a few situations where a particular power up is placed such that it’s necessarily possible to obtain it right before you need it.
More on the issue of lives, I don’t think they’re completely worthless, but I do think they’re usually implemented poorly. If you get infinite continues, lives can be a way of saying you only get so many chances to continue a level from a check point before having to start over. In that way, they still have some value and provide some penalty for dying.
I think the last series of platformers not on Nintendo I played that used lives was the Crash series (maybe the Spyro series). At least, I don’t think I’ve played a platformer that’s come out in the last decade–with the exception of Psychonauts–that still used lives. For whatever reason, Nintendo games are still sticking with lives.
I never got why Sonic Generations used lives. There are checkpoints throughout the stage, losing a life means respawning at the checkpoint, losing lives means a game over and starting at the beginning. Unfortunately, the stages are so easy that even the dexterity challenged can beat them while only losing a few lives, so most of your lives come from using “start over” when trying to S-rank or speed run stages. Of course, this makes you start at the beginning of the stage, so running out of lines just changes the “start over” to “quit, wait for it to load, then go back into the stage.” Which is simply annoying.
When the only penalty is NOT a full game over, but rather just kicking you out to the world map, being out of lives has no meaning, at all.
