As I mentioned before, I replayed Mario 64 for the first time in years, and the gameplay just compounds how, as you wrote, “being in 3d ‘slides'”. It doesn’t have to slide that much, but the creative bugs the developers had made them put all these little “touches”, which more often make the game more frustrating than it should be.
When Mario moves at any appreciable pace, he doesn’t just turn as you need. He has to “circle” around, at greater degrees the faster you move. So if you want to just turn right or turn around, either you need to move the analog stick as slightly as possible, or you have to move in a partial circle. And there are many parts in this game where you don’t have enough space to do that.
Mario can’t stop on a dime either. It was okay in the 2D games with Luigi, but that was to offset his greater jumping power. Here, it just makes precision jumping even harder.
Mario’s tendency to get “bounced” back if he hits something non fatal at high speed, whether running or jumping. This seems to be just one of those “immersive” touches that reviewers and developers swoon over, but it just halts the flow of the game at best, and at worse can lose a life if this happens when speed is essential.
Compare these to the jumping in the Ratchet & Clank games (at least on the PS2, I haven’t played the PS3 games yet). If nothing else, they lack these “touches” from the 3D Mario games, and the platforming feels a lot better for it (if still not as good as 2D Mario platforming). That and the developers have said Insomniac has a policy that jumps are to be placed in ways that are easy to judge
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I find Robot Unicorn Attackfar more entertaining than these grandiose 3d Mario games. Even though I’m playing it on the computer, it just feels solid. It is not a game you ‘think’. It is a twitch game.That is what arcade games are: twitch games. Wii Sports was popular precisely because it was a twitch game as was Wii Fit. Super Mario Brothers was a twitch game. Legend of Zelda was a twitch game. I’ve never even heard of Zelda being associated with ‘puzzles’ until the Aonuma ruination period of Zelda. And Metroid was also a ‘twich game’. It certainly had nothing to do with ‘maternal instincts’.I like twitch games because they are differentiated from computer games. The reason why I think First Person Shooters prospered so well on consoles is because they are twitch games unlike strategy games or simulation games. People don’t go to the game console to think.
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I find Robot Unicorn Attackfar more entertaining than these grandiose 3d Mario games. Even though I’m playing it on the computer, it just feels solid. It is not a game you ‘think’. It is a twitch game.That is what arcade games are: twitch games. Wii Sports was popular precisely because it was a twitch game as was Wii Fit. Super Mario Brothers was a twitch game. Legend of Zelda was a twitch game. I’ve never even heard of Zelda being associated with ‘puzzles’ until the Aonuma ruination period of Zelda. And Metroid was also a ‘twich game’. It certainly had nothing to do with ‘maternal instincts’.I like twitch games because they are differentiated from computer games. The reason why I think First Person Shooters prospered so well on consoles is because they are twitch games unlike strategy games or simulation games. People don’t go to the game console to think.
With 3d Mario game, any 3d Mario game, you have to think about which way Mario is facing before every jump and all. You cannot go into a trippy twitch experience (as Robot Unicorn Attacks demonstrates) with the slidy 3d Mario. In 2d Mario, you can just take off and it is such a thrilling experience. Somehow you hit the flagpole and you cannot believe it. You’re panting and out of breath. You feel the adrenaline leaving your body as you are done with your death defying jumps. 3d Mario cannot and will never replicate this.
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