Mario is back and he is back better than ever, and he is able to shapeshift even more than we have experienced before. And it is ready to take out for a trip, on more than one sense.
Of course we are going back to usual business – Bowser looking for world domination. However, this time Peach is not the damsel in distress. She is playable – and for the first time ever, outside of Mario Party and Kart, Daisy is playable too. You have a wide variety of choices of playable characters which include toads, yoshis and nabbit.
Changing kingdoms
We are not in Mushroom Kingdom this time, as Mario and friends is visiting Flower Kingdom. Bowser have realised that there is power to be had within the Flower Kingdom in the form of special flower seeds. Now the race is on between Bowser and his minions against Mario and his friends: who will get the seeds?
A new character to the Mario universe, is King Florian – king of Flower Kingdom! He peeks out from your characters’ shoulders in an idle animation, and he is with you all the way through the game. He can wear a badge, which will provide you with new abilities that can help aid you in otherwise hard or even impossible tasks.
Wonder flowers can be found within levels – and when grabbing one, it completely changes the level. Everything from raising slime, to stampeding Bulrush herds over to changing perspective from sidescrolling platformer to a top down labyrinth is amongst the things that Mario and friends is experiencing under the flowers’ influence.
Stunningly WONDERful
The game looks simply stunning. It is more vibrant than ever, and I feel the change of Kingdom is the cause of it – not to mention the making of the Mario Movie that released not long before Wonder was launched. Animations are at their best, and have so much humor to it. Enemies looks scared or surprised when you are about to jump them, going into pipes have great details and in general there is more animations in the details than any Mario game – and I think we can thank the movie for giving Nintendo the inspiration.
All in all, Nintendo have outdone themselves with Wonder – however it could have used a world or two more. The look and place have changed slightly, lots of new enemies or wild life if you will. You can choose between characters to play as, there’s now abilities that changes how you play and animations have gotten so much better.
