THE GOOD:Gameplay translates well from 2D to 3D with some awesome jumping physics, controls (for the most part) work very well taking advantage of the analog stick, graphics look good, soundtrack is addicting and catchy and, while simple, the storyline works well.
THE BAD:
Camera angles and controls at times are very, very aggravating. Game also gets rather tedious at times.
SUMMARY:
Released in 1996 by Nintendo, Super Mario 64 was the headlining act for the Nintendo 64. A new console demands a tech-demo, but screw a demo, let's just make a whole game to truly test the capabilities of a new 64-bit console! To their amazement, Super Mario 64 was (and still is to this day) a roaring success, and Mario is, once again, a real driving force and a standard setter for games to come. Not since Super Mario Brothers for the NES, has the Italian plumber felt soo important to gaming. I mean... yeah, he had some help from newcomer Crash Bandicoot, but Mario really influenced the 3D platforming genre we all know and love (or loved for those who hate more recent platformers, like the newer Crash, Spyro and Sonic games not counting Sonic Unleashed) and it's all because of this game!
Immediately starting, you get a story given out to you, but here's the bare basis of it. Peach invites Mario to her castle to eat some cake with her (like he needs to eat more), but when Mario enters, Peach is nowhere to be seen. He figures that Bowser kidnapped her, so he goes to collect all the Power Stars to restore power to the castle, as well as progress so he can rescue Peach. It's a simple story, but it works well enough, plus it's simple enough to not get in the way, yet appear as if some thought was put into it. The DMD (damsel-in-distress) scenario is well overdone at this point, but..I don't know, if the story was just left at Power Stars, then there wouldn't be much thought put into it. Both go well together; motivate Mario into powering up the castle with the Power Stars to rescue the princess, you get it; good stuff.
Upon being allowed to move, you'll be able to get a feel for the controls, getting used to jumping, running, and all the different jump techniques you can do, like a quick 180 degree jump, a triple jump and a ground pound. Sounds like simple stuff, but to beat the game, you really need to make use of all of these different techniques and controls, and at them later levels, it will get tough...especially if you're unable to get used to the controls... Which shouldn't really take a long time, as they're simple enough for a casual gamer (or at best, an idiot) to pick up and play without any trouble.
After getting a feel for the controls, you'll probably wonder what you're actually meant to do. Well, get into the castle, and find a door which requires whatever amount of stars you have at that moment. Say if you have about 3 or more stars, you can enter the doors that have a 3 on them. As we have 0 at the moment, we'll enter the blank door. Later on, you'll be entering 2 different doors - ones that require 8, 30, 50 and 70 stars (respectively as you find them throughout the castle) so you can then get to the boss, and ones that require a key you get from defeating the two big bosses of the game. The double doors that require a key allow you to access either the basement or the 2nd floor, depending on which one you take, but in order to actually have the privilege of fighting a big boss, you need to get the Power Stars, and where do you get them from? Well, upon entering a room, you'll run into paintings which you can jump into to enter the levels and get the stars!
If you thought the castle looked good, then be astounded as you enter a lush world of 64-bit textures and landscapes, with the grass looking more like green-colored dirt and gravel looking more like browner-colored dirt. Ahh...this takes the average 14-year old kid back.. But to be more serious, this did push the system's graphical hardware just a bit, with large, open worlds (unlike Star Fox for the Super Nintendo, which [while polygonal] was linear and medium-sized, but took full advantage of mode-7 graphics that the Super Nintendo has - yeah, *bleep* off blast processing!). Hell, I think the effect of the painting when Mario jumps through it looked pretty cool, going all wavy and such..
So anyway, the objectives of each level are separated into 6 different stars (7 if you're opting for 100 regular coins), and each of these require that you do a certain task. Whether it's defeating a boss, a big enemy, challenging a character to a foot race, collecting 8 red coins, or simply looking for it, and much much more, the levels will do their best to entertain you. Ohh, each of the levels repeat some of their missions, but like it matters, the level-specific missions dominate the recurring ones. Once you've completed your task, a star will show up, and you collect it and be on your merry way. If they're blue and holographic however, it's a star you already have and you should keep looking for that yellow, solid star. Besides, there's some sort of satisfaction to be gained by navigating through the levels in the game...
How so? Well, the levels are very open for exploration...or so they seem. See, depending on what mission you do, some parts of levels are closed off. Why, in the first mission of the first level, you have no access to the cannon used to shoot yourself further much quicker because all of the walking bombs are at war. Among this, you have mission-specific objects, like one of the first level's missions where you have to race this bipedal tortoise from the start to the mountain, but to race him, you have to select THAT mission; any other mission on that level, and he won't show up. At least he won't be an annoyance when you select a different mission. Saying this though, there are times when you can get other stars while in a different mission. Yet again using the first level as an example, upon entering, you don't have to do THAT mission straight away, as there is another mission or 2 available. See what exploring does? Man, I love how open this game can get! I mean, it's not open-ended or anything, it's a goddamn platformer for christ's sake, but the environments ARE open for exploration, and considering that this is considered top-notch back in '96... I'm giving this a thumbs up.
Exploration becomes encouraged later on, as you also need to collect 100+ regular coins. They come in 3 different colors; yellow, red and blue. Yellow adds 1, red adds 2 and blue adds 5 to your total amount of coins collected throughout the level, and if you get 100 coins throughout the level, collect the star, and you get a choice of whether or not to go on. If you're in the middle of a mission, keep going. If not, leave and head for the next level.
There are times where you must take it to the seas! Yes, in a cruel twist of fate, Mario has to swim! He can submerge himself underwater, and you can either move him fast, slow or still. However, Mario requires air, so if those 8 bars reduces to something like 2 or 3, you better come up for some air to regain those 8 bars. Swimming controls are as well done as the land controls - pretty responsive and tight, as well as being easy to pick up. Just keep those 8 bars high before submerging; Mario may not be able to come back up if he runs out of air..
However, there will be times where you can't do anything to get certain stars, at least on your own anyway. Swimming alone won't get you all the stars in the water areas, and some places are too high to reach on your own. Exploration will be required not only in the levels, but the castle itself, looking for all the other areas to get stars from, and the 3 power caps. Yes, Mario still gets to power up, but they're in the form of different sorts of caps as opposed to mushrooms and flowers. Finding them requires looking around the castle, and experimenting with different positions and such.
Upon entering them, you get a taste of their excellence. You can get a cap that allows you to fly (provided you've done a triple jump or been shot out of a cannon), a cap that turns you into Metal Mario (more well known in Super Smash Brothers) and allows you to walk underwater, and the invisibility cap which turns you invisible, allowing you to walk through certain walls. In those levels, the aim is to find a switch to ground pound, so you can then use the caps any time you find a box of that color. Another good idea is to utilize the caps to get the 8 red coins in that specific area for another few stars. See, told you exploration really gets important.
Of course you would have the obligatory obstacles that stand in your way; the enemies themselves! You know, the guys I keep mentioning!? Well, let me say that they all look pretty good in 3D. They translated very well from Super Mario World and Super Mario Brothers 2 (the latter being the case for some enemies) to this title here. They've been shaded well enough to give the feeling of 3D (remember that texture wasn't exactly a thought for character models, just shading and moving polygons...) and...oh come on, they look good, plain and simple.
How the enemies act is...eh. Typical lackeys who charge at you. Just jump on them and they'll be done. That being said, the enemies are literally nothing more than obstacles, much like a collapsing bridge or streams of lava steaming upwards (or a lava pit in general), though some enemies will be a pain, and they are the ones who make their debut in this game - the bullies; these black dots that ram into you and push you, either away from them or into something dangerous - a pit or lava mostly. Next off - these black dots that spits fire in your direction. Avoid the fire and ignore the dots, as they are invincible. There are more who make their debut here, but I don't want this to run too long.
Anyway, when fighting with the enemies, you'll most likely get hit. You have 8 hit points, and if the enemies take them out by attacking or touching you, you'll die. Lose all your lives, and you'll be treated to a game over screen, where Mario's head comes out, looking like he's... haha, I have to be honest, he looks more like he's hungover than his is beat to death. Of course, you can get more lives by collecting some green mushrooms, and you can get health back by getting some coins, so keep an eye on both.
But all in all, your biggest enemy tends to be the camera. I swear, if this was to be fixed up a lot, this game would be perfect, but unfortunately, there always needs to be a catch with games that run soo successfully. The game's kryptonite happens to be the goddamn camera! It's not as bad as in some games *coughsonic06cough* but it's still annoying as hell. How? Well, there are times where the camera doesn't want to move at all! Goddammit I just want to friggen see where I can move to on this platform before lava burns me--OH SCREW IT I'M DEAD! It's a problem that plagues the game at crucial moments, because it will get you killed at the worst of times. Need to make a jump over a pit? Better make it a leap of faith, that cameraman doesn't really want to show you a better position for jumping!
The main driving force for combat would be to fight off the bosses! A decent amount of levels have their own boss to fight, and the fights are formulaic for the most part. They also go under the whole bipolar difficulty disorder thing; they seem hard, but once you know what to do, they're a little too easy. I can and will understand this for the first few bosses, but when the later bosses are defeated the same way, then it doesn't really feel right. But then again, the bosses serve as obstacles and simple little guardians of the stars, plus it works well for the most part as its a platformer and not a beat em up, plus coding for 3D games are a lot harder than with 2D games, so I'll take what I can get for here.
Big boss himself Bowser turns up a few times, and let me tell you that not only does he look fearsome in 3D, but he's also (once you know what to do) somewhat of an easy big boss. Defeating Bowser seems to be nothing more than Mario summoning up some super strength, grabbing Bowser by the tail, spinning around to get some momentum, and then throwing him into a corner spike, which blows up and Bowser gets defeated. Of course, as you get further in the game, Bowser will try to mix up his assault of attacks, making himself a lot harder as it goes on. In other words, Bowser will kill you until you find some way to get to his tail, grab it and throw him at a spike, blowing him up in the process. As easy as it ends up being, I actually have a lot of fun destroying Bowser. Maybe it's just a feeling I've had since playing the 8-bit games.
But at the end of the day, what's a game...without its soundtrack? Super Mario 64 spared no expense in making its soundtrack as awesome as possible. I always find myself humming along to the tunes of this game. I even hum when I'm not playing the game (in fact, I'm humming some of the tunes as I write this). However, as I've played this game in my childhood (8 years old when I first played this), it's not surprising that the soundtrack remains in my head to this day. I also felt that the song played during the Bowser stages and the songs that played while fighting Bowser really helped set the mood; the stages, as if you're at the wrong place at the wrong time; and the fights, tense as it gets. Eh...if I'm to nitpick a bit, the tunes are a little too upbeat, but still give the mood they're supposed to, so it's not all bad.
So all in all, Super Mario 64 gives the N64 a good impression to the markets as it succeeded in showing what the system is capable of, giving others a sort of template to make their own N64/PS1 games and even try to outdo the game. Of course, there are some who end up outdoing this game, but this is still the original third-dimensional platformer and should be worth anybody's time, should they consider themselves gamers. With some top-notch production values and awesome gameplay, you should probably go give this game a shot right now!
Gameplay - 9/10 - A fun little preview of what's to come... But seriously, this will be very hard to top, as the game is actually fun to play. Only complaint? Not really hard, and when it tries to be hard, it's more tedious than it is hard.
Graphics - 5/5 - Top notch stuff, at least as far as early polygons are concerned. Little-to-no framerate problems, appealing to the eyes; pretty much takes advantage of what the N64 could do. Too bad Ocarina of Time one-ups this later on =P
Sound - 5/5 - Hum-a-longs, memorable, and some tracks really make some levels seem more impressive.
Control - 3.5/5 - Aside from some bad camera controls, the controls are quite good. Responsive and really made the N64's controller look good. 1.5 points had to be subtracted because the camera controls actually got annoying.
Overall - 4.3/5.0 - As annoying as the camera gets, the game is worth a purchase and playthrough.
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