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. It's not quite a review, but more along the lines of an "in-progress collection-of-thoughts".
I'd most compare it to Mario 64, I think. It plays like an old-school 2D Mario game, but like Mario 64, the goal isn't inherently to just get to the "end" of a stage (which you do, but read on). In each stage, you need to find the kidnapped/hidden Toads and break them free (there's three in each stage). You can go ahead and free all three of them, if you manage to find them all, before reaching the end goal.
The coins you collect (yep, good old fashioned coins) allow you to purchase upgrades, abilities, and mini-games in the store. The floating ability is the cheapest (and most handy), the butt-drop (for lack of a better phrase
) is all right, and the charge-attack never seems to get used.
These are in addition to... uhh... using Peach's "emotions". You have this energy bar. You press one of the emotions on the touch screen to go into that mode. The bar starts running down (blue coin-things charge it back up). In sad mode, you cry (make plants grow, etc.) and run hella fast. In angry mode, you're on fire (burn things down, light candles). And so on. There's four emotions (in addition to just "normal"). Like typical Nintendo, it sounds really retarded, but works extremely well.
Also like typical Nintendo games lately, she's got the obligatory gimmick-item. In Mario Sunshine, it was the hose. In Luigi's Mansion, it was whatever the Hell that was. In this case, it's a talking umbrella. It's what you hit things with. Luckily, it pretty much acts like a weapon and stays out of your way. It's not obnoxious, and feels kinda normal. Phew.
The worlds (so far that I've played) are 5 stages and then a boss fight. The boss fights are pretty neat; there's a stylus-specific round you have to beat first, and then it goes back to a typical boss-battle that plays normally.
I've had the game for a little over 24 hours, and I'm probably something like 40% of my way through the game (and I have also played my normal Animal Crossing: WW for the day
). That's getting all of the Toads in all of the worlds I've beaten so far (I can't remember if it's 3 or 4 worlds that I've beaten). I've only got one mini-game... the one where you're supposed to blow on the mic to make Toad jump over things. Turns out you don't have to blow (obviously)... you can just yell into it. Yell anything. Anything that will cause other people to wonder what the bloody Hell it is you're doing yelling into a handheld console.
Worthy purchase? I'd say so, if this is the kind of game you enjoy. It plays like 8/16-bit Mario, but has more of that exploration/unlocking element, rather than just "hop-over-enemies-to-the-end". Definitely fun, low on the difficulty, and absurdly cute.
Bring on New Super Mario Bros.~!
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