finally played new super mario bros wii

Thanks to GameFly we've gotten to play tons of games we never felt like spending money on, and the latest of these has been New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I have played pretty much every Mario game in history and this one is definitely true to form. It sticks with the classic side-scrolling format of the older games rather than the 3D environments introduced in Super Mario 64 and continued in Super Mario Galaxy. The major new aspect introduced in this game is multiplayer co-op, which was a great direction to go in. For one, this lets you play with up to three other friends all at once, rather than taking turns with only Mario and Luigi; not only is this better for social fun but also means that if one player gets knocked out they can come back with additional lives as long as the others are still kicking. This is great if, like me, you generally suck at being careful and not accidentally jumping next to rather than on top of goombas. The flip side is that you can screw each other over by stealing items, crowding on platforms or accidentally (or otherwise) knocking shells at each other. This part of the game is less fun and caused a bit of pissiness at our house every time a fire-flower got heisted or one of us missed a crucial jump because of where the other one was. Still, it wouldn't be a good Mario game if it wasn't ridiculously hard, and true to form, you need to beat the castle in each world to save. These aspects make me glad we have this title from GameFly, but it's still pretty fun. It's cool to see the game with polished 3-D-ish graphics and the controls are tight as ever. If you have nostalgic memories of old-school Mario, this is a great follow-up title to try.