I have always advocated for these shorter games that reuse a ton of assets from the last big release in their series. As long as they are priced accordingly then it’s cool. Games take a lot of time and money to make so I’m ok with these cheaper little games every once in a while. It also gives them an excuse to experiment, these games don’t have to perform as well due to them not costing much to make and getting weird with it is a great way to differentiate them from their big brother. Nintendo has done this in the past with New Super Luigi U and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, both being highlights of their respective series. So, go ahead Nintendo, release a shorter game. Wait, what do you mean you’re going to attach it to a rerelease of Super Mario 3D World so you can justify selling it at full price? Wait, what do you mean you’re not going to sell it separately so people who have already experienced Super Mario 3D World will have to buy a game they already own to experience the latest 3D Mario game? Wait, what do you mean you hate anybody who brought a Wii U so fuck ‘em let them buy the same game again? Wow, what a scummy move Nintendo. Although nobody would be stupid enough to fall for Nintendo’s shitty business tactics, right? Anyway, I now own a second copy of Super Mario 3D World. Who am I kidding though? I would have brought Super Mario 3D World again anyway, practically every game I own on the Wii U I also own a second copy of on the Switch because I’m that lazy that I’d rather pay hundreds of pounds then plug in my Wii U. I own nine games on the Switch that I already own on other consoles, I’m the problem, I’m the reason that companies don’t need to try.
Anyway, this will only be a review of Bowser’s Fury, not Super Mario 3D World, they are two completely different games, Bowser’s Fury just clings onto this port because this way Nintendo will make more money. I do plan on reviewing Super Mario 3D World at some point but it’ll probably be a part of a larger Mario marathon. I do like Super Mario 3D World, it’s got some of the best level design in any Mario game, it’s just a shame it has some of the blandest presentation of any Mario game as well and I could count all of its original ideas on one hand. Anyway, let’s talk about the reason that most people picked this game up, Bowser’s Fury, the majority of the review will be spoiler free but there will be a spoiler section at the end of the review, I will put a warning beforehand though.
The best way to describe Bowser’s Fury is imagine Super Mario 3D World and Super Mario Odyssey had a baby, then you divided that baby by 100, added some Dragon Ball for some fucking reason, give this abomination to Super Mario Sunshine to look after for a while (which is a bad thing to do, Super Mario Sunshine can’t look after itself of course it can’t look after a child), send it to a school ran by The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and then add a tiny bit of jank.
I’m glad Bowser’s Fury is not that long because I doubt the ideas it presents us could hold anybody’s interest for much longer than the six hours it’ll take to 100% this game. Whilst a couple of original ideas do exist within Bowser’s Fury, they are mostly just background noise until they appear every ten minutes or so, and when they do show up, they can be downright annoying. The game has two ideas that it didn’t steal from the Mario handbook (actually on further thought one of them is definitely stolen from the Mario handbook but is slightly less obvious than the rest of the games blatant copying so I’ll still talk about it, it’s Bowser Jr.).
First let’s talk about the most noteworthy thing from Bowser’s Fury, Fury Bowser (which is such a lame name for such a cool design). Every once in a while, Fury Bowser appears and starts wreaking havoc, other than one amazing point in the game which I will talk about in the spoiler section this is usually nothing but an annoyance. I’m doing a platforming challenge and oh look it’s Fury Bowser, looks like I’m just going to have to deal with a rain of fireballs until he pisses off. He appears every once in a while, and you can make him disappear by collecting one of the Cat Shines (this games equivalent of the Stars) but since you might be nowhere near a Cat Shine you might have to just wait it out or go about your business with fire raining from the sky. Once you collect enough Cat Shines you finally get the means of fighting back, the Giga Bell, problem is, getting enough Cat Shines to access the Giga Bell doesn’t call Fury Bowser so you’ll just go the Giga Bell location and wait around until he spawns, fun.
The other gimmick is Bowser Jr.. You know how in almost every 3D Mario game you’ve had a random partner? You know Lakitu, F.L.U.D.D., Luma, and Cappy, yeah Bowser Jr. is this games version of that but whilst the other characters served a purpose to some extent (even Lakitu helped ease people into the concept of a 3D game), I spent most of my playthrough forgetting that Bowser Jr. was even there, and that’s impressive for a character who is flying next to you all the time. You can occasionally point at things to make Bowser Jr. interact with them and give you power-ups and the like, it’s pointless and is just there so Nintendo can say it’s 2-player, nobody wants to play as the glorified cursor Nintendo.
Since the two new ideas are so inconsequential, what you’re left with is vanilla 3D Mario which is good but without anything unique (Super Mario Sunshine (I guess), Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Super Mario Odyssey), interesting locations to explore (Super Mario 64, Super Mario Odyssey) or amazing level-design (Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Super Mario 3D World, Super Mario Odyssey) you’re just left with a pretty good platformer and I’ve played so many pretty good platformers in my life that I don’t want to play another one for too long. Luckily the game is at least short so you can go in, get your six hours pretty good platformer hit and leave, most likely to go play Super Mario 3D World which is much better and comes bundled with this.
Ok, so it’s just a pretty good platformer, you’ve got that point across, how is it laid out though? Well, I’m glad you asked imaginary reader. Bowser’s Fury is actually laid out in a pretty clever way that I wish was done better. The game takes place on numerous islands, each island focuses on a new platforming mechanic, essentially each island is its own level but at any point you can just jump off the island and swim to another level if it’s not doing much for you. I think if these islands were slightly bigger, we’d be onto something really special, some islands have as little as two obstacles on them, they’re not quite the exploration of interesting game mechanics that Mario has become famous for, they’re more so a taster of game mechanics. Go to an island, get past it’s two or so obstacles and get a Cat Shine (the worst name for any Mario collectable by the way). A lot of Mario games introduce a new mechanic or two in almost every one of their levels and then uses them in fun and unique ways, Bowser’s Fury seems to take that idea to the extreme, so worried that a mechanic might bore you that it forgets to get to the second step where it should use the mechanic in an interesting way. What you get is the game pointing at a mechanic and saying “wow look what I made, neat isn’t it. Wait you don’t like it, aha I was only joking, here’s something else I made”, Bowser’s Fury I never said I didn’t like your mechanic, please just let me look at it, also none of these are even your mechanics. After the two Super Mario Galaxy games made like 200 different interesting gameplay mechanics every Mario game since has been reusing them, yeah, I liked the flip panels too Mario, the first time you showed them to me, they’re getting kind of boring after the tenth time. Bowser’s Fury gives us samples of numerous pre-existing Mario mechanics which have been done better in every other game they’re in. So yeah, the way it’s laid out is cool, it’s a shame that these mechanics are unoriginal and the islands are mostly too small to even explore these old mechanics. I know I’ve been really negative towards this game but it is a good time, yeah you might be getting little of substance but it is fun going from island to island experiencing some fun albeit unoriginal and brief obstacles.
Ok, so how many islands are there? Well not as much as you’d think, ok so there’s 100 Cat Shines in the game, and by the way I’m describing the islands you’d think they wouldn’t be able to fit too many on them, well they shouldn’t be able to but they manage. Most islands have three to five Cat Shines on them and most islands have the substance on them to justify one, maybe two of them. Wow, did you like that 30 second obstacle course? What about you run through it and collect blue coins, hey we’ve hidden some weird cat emblems around go fetch, want to bring a key to a cage, what about you wait for Bowser to get angry and trick him into destroying certain blocks. Sometimes it can be fun to do these obstacles in a new way but most of the time it’s tedious. Oh yeah, the cat emblems (I have no idea what they’re called and don’t know what to type in to find out), every island has a few of these scattered around the place, find five on an island and you get a Cat Shine, some of them can be fun to find but most of the time they clearly didn’t have five good hiding places on each island so there’s a couple just out in the open which feel really lazy, they probably should have cut it down to three per island.
Onto some more negatives because I haven’t mentioned enough of those, as mentioned earlier Bowser appears every once in a while to wreak havoc, this would be annoying enough on its own but what makes it even more annoying is that some Cat Shines can be found in blocks that can only be destroyed by Bowser. This isn’t that annoying early on but once you have most of the Cat Shines other than the ones that you can only get with Bowser’s help you have to spend a lot of time just waiting for Bowser to appear. Ok, so you can wait for Bowser to appear and then get a ton of Bowser exclusive Cat Shines before he disappears right? Nope, whenever you get a Cat Shine Bowser disappears so the late game will be you constantly waiting for Bowser to arrive, it’s such a stupid mechanic, oh wait, if you have the Bowser Amiibo you can call him on command, fuck you Nintendo, purposefully making something tedious so people buy one of your Amiibo’s which knowing you is probably understocked. At least allow me to call Bowser when I want after I’ve seen the credits, half of my playtime is just waiting for Bowser to show up.
The Bowser mechanic was clearly not thought through, there are times you want him and end up waiting for him and times where you’re doing a platforming challenge and don’t want him and he just shows up and is annoying. There are times where getting chased by him is exhilarating but the times where he appears in those rare occasions where you’re not in a position where he’s annoying, and aren’t just using him as a tool to destroy the Bowser blocks are rare, and even then, he doesn’t stick around long enough for the chase to be that thrilling.
Plessie is a genius addition to the game, you have your game set on a large group of islands so of course reintroducing Plessie was a great idea. Plessie makes searching for secrets on the lake a lot of fun and mastering her controls was great. I wish we got a few more difficult challenges with her as mastering the timing to get Plessie to move as fast as possible didn’t help out on any of her challenges which you could do going at her normal speed.
I’d honestly say wait for a price drop but knowing Nintendo that’s not going to happen in our lifetimes so I guess just skip it unless you’ve never played Super Mario 3D World. This is a nice little bonus; it shouldn’t be the reason you buy the package. If you have zero interest in Super Mario 3D World than this is not worth buying Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury for.
If it’s ever sold separately
then get it if it’s sold for less than £5 because that’s what this slightly above average 3D platformer is worth on its own. I know I’ve been complaining a lot but there is a lot of fun to be had here, it’s just a level of fun you can get in most platformers. I expect more from Mario, a series that has made some of the best 3D platformers ever, 6 / 10, I have a couple of spoiler things to talk about so leave if you want nothing spoiled. Cool? Cool.
Spoilers
Near the end of the game there is a point where Fury Bowser just doesn’t disappear, this is the best moment of the game. It becomes an exciting race through Lake Lapcat as you try to gather enough Cat Shines to stop him. When he appears from time to time, he’s annoying, when he’s a constant obstacle as you race from island to island he’s great, it’s a shame this is the only time during the playthrough that I felt anything beyond mild entertainment. I would honestly love it if I could replay the game with him always on the attack, yeah he’s annoying when he turns up randomly but if I start an obstacle knowing he’ll be attacking me throughout it stops being annoying and starts being a fun challenge.
Whenever you get the Giga Bell you can transform into Super Saiyan Mario or whatever and fight Bowser. This is actually really cool and it’s clear Nintendo thought so as well because you’ll have to do it seven times if you want to 100% the game. Yeah, they give him a couple of new attacks to keep things slightly fresh and it’s not one of those bosses which involves a lot of waiting around so it never gets boring but they easily could have cut down the number of times you have to fight him.
I wanted the game to explore Mario, Bowser Jr’s., and Bowser’s relationship a tad. I didn’t expect any actual good writing, this is Nintendo after all and I don’t play Mario platformers for deep stories, but this dynamic could have led to a couple of cute moments. Maybe Bowser reluctantly thanking Mario for returning him to normal, or even a moment where Mario is going to lose but Bowser Jr. gets in the way and Bowser realises what he’s doing, these are Saturday morning cartoon level tropes but since Mario’s writing is below even that it would have been cool to see cute moments like this, but nah Shigeru Miyamoto was probably in the office so they couldn’t add a story. I don’t think Nintendo realises that since the bar is so low on their writing, they could make us feel things with the most basic of stories, Rosalina’s backstory made me feel sad in Super Mario Galaxy, in any other game where the bar wasn’t so low that would be the most generic shit ever, come on Nintendo.
Beating the game does give you some fun additional content, just like Super Mario Odyssey a large amount of the content is locked behind beating the game, Plessie becomes even more useful in the post-game due to some additional challenges where you have to use her to race around the lake.
Some of the additional mission types were kind of boring, the returning the cats to their mother one was boring and rarely even a challenge.
So yeah, the game is fine, I’m going to quickly mention what happens when you get 100% so second spoiler warning, I guess.
100% Spoilers
Don’t expect this to be a regular segment, I’ve 100% completed around 20 games in my life but seeing that this only takes around six hours to 100% I thought why not?
What do you get for 100% completing this game? Fury Bowser gets a slightly different design. You get a painting from Bowser Jr.. Yeah, that’s it as far as I can tell. I’d still say you might as well 100% the game because it’s not a difficult task and hunting around for every secret is pretty fun.
Anyway, that was Bowser’s Fury, I did enjoy myself but it felt like they let the wide-eyed intern make a Mario game with minimal supervision, it doesn’t feel up to the quality I expect from 3D Mario and the way it was packaged once again shows that Nintendo is just as greedy and predatory as the other big game companies.
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