Wow. Slow night. So as to not leave you totally empty-handed, I'm going to leave you with this very apt review from one of our beloved GoNintendoers, Sailing_Day. You can be sure he loved it, but how does he justify that affection? Time for me to hit the road. Enjoy. --cort
==PROS==
-Gorgeous graphics, probably the best use of 3D in a video game ever.
-Gameplay's mix of new and old works very well.
-With 16 Worlds and tons of Star Coins to collect, there's large amounts of content to play through.
-Particularly great use of SpotPass and StreetPass.
-Tanooki Suit is just as fun as it was in Super Mario Bros. 3.
-Great difficulty curve. Starts out easy, but the difficulty does increase, and by the end you'll be grinding your teeth. It's not frustrating either, it's a genuinely challenging game in a pleasant way.
==MEHS==
-Music isn't bad, but not outstanding.
-The other items in the game are not nearly as useful as the Tanooki Suit.
==CONS==
-The game hands out 1-Ups like it's Christmas. Game Overs mean nothing because it's unlikely you'll ever get one.
*note: for the record, I beat all 16 worlds and collected /nearly/ all the Star Coins in the game prior to writing this review.
As someone who wasn't a huge fan of the New Super Mario Bros. games, I was a bit skeptical about Super Mario 3D Land. It looked great; but it promised to be a nostalgia-driven glorification of Mario's past like the NSMB games. That said, it surpassed any expectation I had, and it's turned out to be one of the best portable platformers I've ever played. Super Mario 3D Land is perhaps the 3DS's biggest killer app and an excellent Mario game.
==PRESENTATION==
Visually, 3D Land derives much of its visual style from both the Galaxy games and the New Super Mario Bros. games. It's never a bad thing to look like Super Mario Galaxy, and 3D Land pulls it off very well. This is a very pretty game, especially in 3D. There are even two settings for the 3D, which change the 3D effect to a "pop out" or a "looking in" kind of 3D. Both are great and I found myself switching between the two settings depending on the sort of level I was playing in.
The story is adorably simple. A storm blows away all of the Super Leaves on the Tail Tree in front of Peach's Castle. Bowser, now arming his minions with Super Leaves, kidnaps Princess Peach. The story is mainly delivered in the form of pictures Peach sends you at the end of each world. The only disappointing part of the presentation was the music. Mind you, it wasn't bad, but I had set my expectations rather high after Super Mario Galaxy 2. The music is pretty derivative of other Mario games; you'll hear songs from Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Galaxy, but the few original songs don't really blow my mind. It works, I suppose.
==GAMEPLAY==
As you may have heard, the gameplay is a combination of aspects from 2D and 3D Mario games. It takes place in the 3D plane, but the style of the levels much resembles the linear start-to-finish style of the 2D Mario games. That said, however, the style of levels vary somewhat. While most are very linear levels, there are a few bigger ones that do require some Mario 64-like exploration to figure out where you have to go. But that doesn't mean the linear levels are bland; there are tons of forks, hidden rooms, and platforming challenges that make the levels extremely compelling. Lengthwise they are rather short, but they are more numerous, which is perfect for a portable setting.
Controls are tight and work very well. They are set up like a 2D Mario Game: There is the run/shoot fireball/tailswipe button, the jumping button, and crouching using the shoulder buttons. Using the Circle Pad, though, it makes it a joy to transfer these controls into a 3D game. 3D is the focus of some of the hidden rooms, which trick players without 3D, and require depth perception to figure out the solution. These are great, but sadly there's not that many of these, understandably. The use of StreetPass and SpotPass is also great in this game. People who you walk by or play with online on other games will give you extra Toad Houses and Challenge Boxes, which are short, timed battles to get extra Star Coins.
Difficulty wise, the first 8 worlds were fun, but you can tell Nintendo was targeting the casual crowd with those levels and their rather easy nature. The true love letter to long-time fans is the 8 Special worlds, which ramp up the difficulty significantly. Items wise, the Tanooki Suit returns in full force. There are a couple of variations of the Super Leaf: There is the Stone Leaf, which also allows you to transform into a statue like in Super Mario Bros. 3 (Yeah!!!), and the Assist items for players who are having trouble, the Invincibility Leaf, which works exactly like it sounds. Other items are the ever present Fire Flower, and the new Boomerang Suit, which is cool because it allows you to fetch far-away items like Star Coins of Super Leaves. Also returning is the Propeller Box from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which is a really cool item with 3D, which helps a million in making difficult landings. The only real annoyance in the gameplay department is the particular wealth of 1-Ups in the game. I'm not really nitpicking either; by the time I finished I had gathered 250 1-Ups, so by the time the game got hard and I started dying a lot, I still never, ever got a single Game Over. Why even have them in the game if they're so plentiful?
==CONCLUSION==
Super Mario 3D Land is a great game. I'd call it one of the best portable platformers ever made. It is, by far, the best game on the 3DS right now, though. Aside of the minor 1-Up annoyance, this is a damn near-perfect game. It has just enough amounts of old to keep your nostalgia high, and just enough new to keep you enthralled.
Source: GN Game DB
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