I got this game to play with my wife and her family. The characters are adorable, the levels are full of charm, the music is outstanding, and the platforming is really tight.
However, the multiplayer is an exercise in frustration.
- The camera constantly jumps ahead at minimal prompts, forsaking anyone who isn’t adept enough to get every jump as perfectly as the best player, even if that player is the kind who is inclined to wait. The camera just makes whoever it follows into an ass to the other players.
- Online connection options aren’t intuitive. It cannot even be disabled in the middle of a level. You have to quit, run somewhere on the map, disable it there, go back and restart the level. Contrary to the intent, it takes you completely out of the game.
- There is no shared progression with online friends. If a step is particularly complicated and you leave your friend behind, you don’t really have a means to “carry” them through the level or get the items for them. If they get stuck and you want to progress together, you just have to wait in the over world until they struggle it out for themselves. Otherwise hope they understand you as you try to explain what buttons they need to press, when and where. I think my wife and I spent an hour in online co-op with her parents just waiting for them to finish a challenge that her father refused to give up on. We ended up not doing anything else that night and a bit disappointed in ourselves.
I just don’t know why they needed to go with this whole ghost thing. Just let 4 of us play in the same world, the same levels, and collect the same resources. Why is that so hard?
As to your first point, these sides scrolling multiplayer Marios all seem to suffer the same fate, at least with 3-4 players. Two players is a little easier. The camera just isn’t built for players to be all over the screen and have it keep up. And, it wouldn’t work either to have each other simply completing a section one after another all the time. It’s certainly not how people envision playing together, yet find out quite quickly how they are forced to play together. I think these games still shine the most when played solo.
Of course it is, Nintendo doesn’t know how to properly integrate multi-player. Especially online. Sometimes they accidentally do an okay job, and there was a while where the handheld consoles did some cool stuff but some perverts on Pictochat scared them so bad you can’t even talk to your friends in Smash Bros.
some perverts on Pictochat scared them so bad
let’s not downplay what actually happened there. what Nintendo did in response was the correct decision. paedophiles are much more than “some perverts”
The correct response to pedos or whatever on your social service is moderating your social service. Every service has pedos and nazis until they’re sufficiently discouraged by being banned and reported to authorities often enough.
Nintendo’s response was “welp, we tried. Guess there’s no way at all to let people meet each other and socialize through our games, because any form of communication can also be used for exposing children to sexual predators”
You want nintendo to review every single message sent in every language worldwide? All for the sake of a silly messaging platform no one needed?
I realize that won’t happen, and that we don’t need to send each other drawings via our nintedo system, I think it’s a good thing to shut down avenues that give pedophiles direct access to children don’t you?
How do other platforms, such as Sony, steam, discord, Microsoft, etc handle such things? Maybe we need to shut down those things too, eh? Can’t be too safe for the children!
Every method of communication known to man short of identity verified adult-only channels is a potential direct route of communication from a child to a pedophile. No, I don’t think that Lemmy, Discord, Reddit, Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Twitter, Tumblr, XMPP, Signal, 4chan, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Messenger, SMS, Neopets, Geocities, Kik, Club Penguin, or IRC should be shut down because of that potential abuse case, and I don’t think that Nintendo should avoid a decent friending/communication infrastructure because of it. And I’ve been using some of those services since i was a child. And no, I don’t think that wholesale banning kids from communicating online so that companies get to distance themselves from abuse is the right answer either. But just not having a communication system because maybe someone will use it for child abuse or drug deals or media piracy or coordinating the assassination of the President?
I get the frustrations but I have to say that the game solves my biggest issue with almost any multiplayer out there - being able to play with toddlers, kids and spouses who are not competent at gaming. I’m just so happy to be able to play together as 4 yoshis carrying the kids on our backs and lost lives dont matter!
Yes! While I don’t really play online this camera choice and crown system seems purposefully designed to cause fights between siblings. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to play this game with my kids and not have it end I tears 5 minutes in because someone didn’t wait or got the flag. It is maddening and basically ruined the game for ⅔ of my family
I have the impression it’s hard, if not impossible to create a 2D platformer that is both enjoyable at 1 and 2 players. Super Mario Bros U Deluxe is a good example : Fun with friends, but solo is not on par with older 2D Mario.
Super Mario Bros U Deluxe is a good example : Fun with friends, but solo is not on par with older 2D Mario.
What do you mean by that? (And another question, since I haven’t played the Deluxe version on Swtich, only the “OG” U version; is there any difference, that maybe I don’t know about or they are identical in terms of Marioness?)
When the game’s level design is set up to comfortably accommodate four players (which NSMBU is), those accommodations don’t necessarily make the game better when played solo. NSMBU has a lot of “extra” space and a really wide camera zoom compared to traditional 2D marios like World or Bros 3, and very few jumps require any degree of precision or P-speed (because if they did, it’d be really hard for four players to do them at the same time due to collision and camera shift).
Wonder has really tight level design, which makes the 2-4p feel cramped and necessitates the removal of player collision. But those changes make it a much better single player experience.
those two “modern” rayman games managed to make something that was enjoyable from 1-4 players - I would say that mario wonder leans pretty heavy on those for inspiration too (trying to make every level unique and surprising). but nintendo always add a tonne of awkwardness into their games for seemingly no reason
I used to think it was because they didn’t look at competition so didn’t know “the right well understood way”, but then a lot of their games in the last decade have taken a lot of inspiration from others so that doesn’t fly so well anymore
Yeah. Rayman Legends is a delight, and really the high watermark for platforming in multiplayer.
I can’t speak strongly to single player, beacuse I’ve enjoyed it in single player, but it honestly pretty much 100% picks up a second, or third and fourth player every time I play it.
Have you tried that new Mickey Mouse platformer? I think it does multiplayer platforming really well.
You can turn online off from the pause screen, no need to run anywhere. But yeah multiplayer works a bit better in local than what you described. Haven’t bothered with online multiplayer at all.
Well now I feel kind of dumb. The pause menu was the first place I went and neither my wife or I noticed the prompt to disable online features, so we ended up quitting the level to hunt down the little wifi tower thing in the game. Next time we play, I’ll look more carefully.
Local is much better in terms cooperative play, but what others are calling the “crown system” makes it really frustrating if any one person in the group decides to explore while waiting for someone else to try something.Sorry, I didn’t mean to indicate that it’s available in the level, but you can definitely turn it off from the pause menu in the overworld, you don’t need to run around to find the tower. I don’t remember if you can do it in the level.
and yeah, multiplayer is frustrating. I still have never seen as good of a system as the lego games in any local multiplayer game.
Yes, it’s not ideal for coop. It still still miles better than Mario Bros U Deluxe which - together with issues listed in this post - had player collision. This made the game more frustrating than anything as suddenly there were more obstacles for everyone in a shape of diffetent players.
It is a problem with 2D mario. It’s the same there was on Nintendo 3ds - the camera is your enemy in coop. I think 3D World is much better suited for shared screen/online as there’s simply more space for the players.
Player collision was the best thing about the local coop! It both allowed you to work together to reach high-up places, as well as screw each other over for fun!
Player collision has caused more arguments with my kids than any other feature in video games. At a very minimum you should be able to turn it off and on.
Agreed. And not just player collision but combined with a screen aspect ratio such that the obvious solution - spreading out left to right - punishes the third and fourth player for the slightest delay.
I personally had a lot of fun with my brother playing this. The only thing I dislike was the crown system which kept the camera focused on a single person, instead of expanding the camera to fit all players.
At least going off screen wouldn’t kill you, but would rather turn you into a ghost and keep your power up when revived.
It’s the correct opinion though.
