Date played: May 23rd
Platform: Wii U
As me and my family took a break from the beautiful hot weather, we went to hide in the basement to cool off. We ended up playing a few levels of Super Mario 3D World in 2 player mode. We're in the "Bowser" world, which I think is the final world, at least, officially.
Plessie's Dune Downhill is a short, fun level where we rode the cute dinosaur down a dune slide, grabbing green stars along the way. The level was quite easy, so it was a nice way to get back into the game since it's been a while since we played.
Cookie Cogworks was a more traditional, more challenging level. As the title of the level implies, we rode on top of cogworks made of cookies, all of which looked fucking delicions by the way. There were many challenging platforming sections here, There were also a few spots where the boomerang suit was very useful, fighting piranha plants and other enemies that clogged up the cogs. I was playing as Peach, so that helped too since I could hover for a moment when the jumps were difficult.
The Bowser Express is a very difficult auto-scrolling level as we assaulted a giant Bowser themed train. While the layout of the level wasn't too difficult, the scrolling was pretty damn fast, so that made it a more difficult level than most.
Footlight Lane has a pretty creative setup, where pathways light up as we walked on them. When combined with flying enemies, it made for some pretty cool challenges. The homing Bullet Bills were really fun to avoid.
Deepwater Dungeon was another creative level, where blocks of water move in every direction on a 2D plane, acting as makeshift platforms of sorts. It created some interesting scenarios, but it doesn't seem like it was really made for 2 players. Sometimes we would block the other person and force them to die because there wasn't enough room inside the water block.
A Beam In The Dark is a ghost house where we were armed with a powerful lamp power-up, which made it possible to kill ghosts by flashing light at them for long enough. Most of the level is spent on moving platforms that are ambushed by dozens of ghosts, so keeping that light for as long as possible was the key to success.
We then had a little interlude for a green star challenge level, this one had 10 stars to grab. It was funny because my girlfriend was clearly not up to the task for these challenges, so she usually hung back while I did all the heavy lifting. My daughter found this gloriously hilarious, pointing out the fact that her mother wasn't moving at all in some sections!
Grumblump Inferno was my favorite level of the afternoon, featuring a floor made of lava! There were a few giant blocks that rotated on themselves, kind of "walking" through the lava. We had to stay on top of them as they rotated to traverse the fiery doom that awaited us below. Since the blocks are square, it made it tricky to get a good rhythm and we died many times here. After some practice though, it became much more manageable.
Finally, we played two boss levels, remixed from earlier battles. Motley Bossblob is a little jester who balloons up to gigantic sizes with the help of metallic, liquid blobs. We had to hit him when he disassembled from his blobs while killing the little minions in the process. The other boss, Hissocrat, is a giant pink snake that spawns multiple smaller snake heads. We had to climb on the smaller snake heads to hit the boss.
We're now at the final battle against Bowser, how has turned himself in a cat and has used a cherry to duplicate himself. We tried the level a few times, but died and ran out of time to play, but it's a fun level so far.
Platform: Wii U
As me and my family took a break from the beautiful hot weather, we went to hide in the basement to cool off. We ended up playing a few levels of Super Mario 3D World in 2 player mode. We're in the "Bowser" world, which I think is the final world, at least, officially.
Plessie's Dune Downhill is a short, fun level where we rode the cute dinosaur down a dune slide, grabbing green stars along the way. The level was quite easy, so it was a nice way to get back into the game since it's been a while since we played.
Cookie Cogworks was a more traditional, more challenging level. As the title of the level implies, we rode on top of cogworks made of cookies, all of which looked fucking delicions by the way. There were many challenging platforming sections here, There were also a few spots where the boomerang suit was very useful, fighting piranha plants and other enemies that clogged up the cogs. I was playing as Peach, so that helped too since I could hover for a moment when the jumps were difficult.
The Bowser Express is a very difficult auto-scrolling level as we assaulted a giant Bowser themed train. While the layout of the level wasn't too difficult, the scrolling was pretty damn fast, so that made it a more difficult level than most.
Footlight Lane has a pretty creative setup, where pathways light up as we walked on them. When combined with flying enemies, it made for some pretty cool challenges. The homing Bullet Bills were really fun to avoid.
Deepwater Dungeon was another creative level, where blocks of water move in every direction on a 2D plane, acting as makeshift platforms of sorts. It created some interesting scenarios, but it doesn't seem like it was really made for 2 players. Sometimes we would block the other person and force them to die because there wasn't enough room inside the water block.
A Beam In The Dark is a ghost house where we were armed with a powerful lamp power-up, which made it possible to kill ghosts by flashing light at them for long enough. Most of the level is spent on moving platforms that are ambushed by dozens of ghosts, so keeping that light for as long as possible was the key to success.
We then had a little interlude for a green star challenge level, this one had 10 stars to grab. It was funny because my girlfriend was clearly not up to the task for these challenges, so she usually hung back while I did all the heavy lifting. My daughter found this gloriously hilarious, pointing out the fact that her mother wasn't moving at all in some sections!
Grumblump Inferno was my favorite level of the afternoon, featuring a floor made of lava! There were a few giant blocks that rotated on themselves, kind of "walking" through the lava. We had to stay on top of them as they rotated to traverse the fiery doom that awaited us below. Since the blocks are square, it made it tricky to get a good rhythm and we died many times here. After some practice though, it became much more manageable.
Finally, we played two boss levels, remixed from earlier battles. Motley Bossblob is a little jester who balloons up to gigantic sizes with the help of metallic, liquid blobs. We had to hit him when he disassembled from his blobs while killing the little minions in the process. The other boss, Hissocrat, is a giant pink snake that spawns multiple smaller snake heads. We had to climb on the smaller snake heads to hit the boss.
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| Giant cat Boswer! |
