Review Round Up: Everyone Loves The New 'Mario' Game For The Wii U
"Super Mario 3D World" is the second entry in the series on Nintendo's Wii U - the first being "New Super Mario Bros. U," a more traditional side-scroller.
This title has more in common with "Super Mario 64" and "Super Mario Galaxy," some of the best titles in the last two decades of gaming. That's reflected in critical reviews: it currently holds a score of 93 percent on Metacritic, a site that aggregates ratings from top critics around the web.
Edge Online's review of the game praised its technical proficiency, comparing the game's frame rate favorably to the early offerings on the more powerful PS4 and Xbox One:
"This is Mario like you've never seen him before, and unlike so many of his next-gen rivals, he nips along at an effortless 60fps. If the true measure of new hardware's worth is how stark the difference is between it and what came before, then this is the most next-gen game that 2013 has yet produced."
IGN's Jose Otero says that Nintendo nailed the co-op gameplay:
"It fulfills the promise of a multiplayer Mario much better than anything that the Japanese game maker has done before. Super Mario 3D World is marvelous, and its constant variety and fantastic light-hearted co-op play proves that Nintendo still knows exactly how to tweak their Mario formula in fun ways."
Destructoid's Chris Carter claims the title approaches platforming perfection:
"It was then that I realized that Super Mario 3D World had achieved a level of platforming design that's close to perfection, and there was almost never a moment where I didn't have a smile on my face. This is the unequivocally the best Mario game since Galaxy 2, and it shows up anything the "New" series has ever done, and then some."
Joystiq's Richard Mitchell summarizes the rest of the reviews in three sentences:
"Put simply, Super Mario 3D World is stunning. Its world is beautiful, its design is impeccable, and its fun is infectious. I'm running out of superlatives here, so let me finish where I started: Go play it."
Below is a trailer for "Super Mario 3D World" that shows off some of the new gameplay elements: