Entertainment

‘Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury’ claws its way onto the Nintendo Switch

 

When a game is rereleased, it needs to provide something new to make it worth the price tag.

This is exactly what is present in the port of “Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury” for the Nintendo Switch.

Originally released in November 2013, the game came out on the Switch Feb. 12 to continue to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the “Super Mario Bros.” series.

The charm and character of the originally released game is still present in full force.

The story begins with Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad encountering a mysterious clear pipe. A fairy soon comes out of that pipe and tells the gang how Bowser has come to her kingdom, capturing her to turn her home, the Sprixie Kingdom, into his own. The four then jump into the pipe to continue the trend of defeating Bowser and rescuing all the fairies.

This is a nice change from the typical “Bowser captures Peach, you save Peach” formula, with her being playable, adding a unique character style to choose from.

“New Super Mario Bros. Wii” and “Super Mario Bros. U” were both your basic run-of-the-mill side-scrolling Mario games, but “3D World” changes this trend for the better.

“3D World” carries over the hybrid style of half-3D, half 2D platforming from “Super Mario 3D Land” on the 3DS.

With a wide array of unique levels and power-ups, the game never seems to get dull or boring.

The game’s exclusive power-up, the cat suit, provides for so many ways to climb up and reach hidden areas or solve puzzles in different ways.

An incredible big band soundtrack accompanies the game, including genre stylings of jazz, rock and orchestra.

In the “Bowser’s Fury” expansion, Mario dons the Giga Cat outfit with the Giga Bell power-up to grow in size and confront the gigantic Bowser (images courtesy of Nintendo).

One aspect of the Switch version of the “3D World” that was not present in the Wii U release is the inclusion of online multiplayer co-op.

This isn’t just an online mode to play a few levels with friends as some might expect.

Players can go through each level in the game while playing it with friends online. This feature is extremely underrated, for the possibilities of playing four-player online throughout an entire Mario game is a feature that was once just dreamed about in even recent years.

The possibilities with this feature are practically endless, leading to the lack of having someone to play with in-person becoming obsolete.

Though teamwork is encouraged in order to complete the level, the game counts the score for each individual player in the level, with whoever gets the most points at the end acquiring a first-place gold crown.

This can create a healthy rivalry between players, racing to capture a green star or the end-of-level flagpole to get the highest score among all players.

The largest inclusion in this version of the game is the expanded “Bowser’s Fury” post-game story.

Bowser is well past having anger issues in this story, with him now towering over the land with a fiery shadow appearance.

Mario teams up with an unlikely ally, Bowser Jr., to traverse the new area of Lake Lapcat, and calm Bowser down.

It seems the game designers had an interest in cats when the cat suit power-up was first present in the original game. Lake Lapcat takes the cat theme to an obsession.

Everything seems to be cat-themed in this area, including cat-shaped structures, collectible cat shines and even cat goombas.

The uniqueness of this expansion isn’t just present in the area. The perspective of the game is played in a style similar to “Super Mario Odyssey,” with a 3D sandbox-like world to explore.

Though this story could be longer, it is definitely a needed addition to give something new to returning players and expand on the charm of the main game.

With games like “Mario Kart 8” and “Pikmin 3” being ported to the Switch as a deluxe version of the original game, fans wanted “Super Mario 3D World” to get that same treatment.

Nintendo delivered on giving fans the game they’d grown to love years previous while expanding and adding new features to provide a truly new gameplay experience.