Somewhat boring bros.

by ERIK LEIJON

In a year where the Nintendo Wii ran out of steam, a new Super Mario Bros. would appear to be the only force strong enough to reverse the poles and swing things back in the beleaguered console’s favour. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii/Nintendo, EAD) is a classic 2D Mario game partially deserving of its unimaginative and perhaps slightly pretentious moniker. Visually, it’s a spiritual cousin to the legendary Super Mario World, but instead of being simply a new Mario Bros. game, it’s the first instance in the beloved canon where four players (Mario, Luigi and two Toads) can simultaneously stomp goombas and smash blocks.

Does this make for a revolutionary experience? No. After witnessing the portly plumber’s starstudded future in Super Mario Galaxy, going back to 2D and dealing with those dastardly Lakitus and Koopa Kids feels like an unappreciated time warp rather than a momentous occasion in Mario history. Playing with three other Mushroom Kingdom dwellers is strictly an offline affair, which dramatically reduces your odds of being able to enjoy four-player action.

It’s a shame, because although Shigeru Miyamoto and his merry band of level designers deserve kudos for creating stages that work for both single and multiplayer excursions, multiplayer is really the only new feature keeping this game from being branded the more deserving title: Super Mario Bros. Some More Levels Edition. Bringing back the traditional overworld maps was a nice touch.

Speaking of trite titles, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3/SCE, Insomniac) is the kind of verbose name that screams, “maybe we have done too many sequels.” If you weren’t already on pins and needles awaiting the fate of the universe’s last Lombax and his robotic sidekick, there’s plenty more than a name to keep you on the sidelines. The game has some terrific cutscenes, genuinely interesting characters, as well as some incredibly ornate backgrounds, yet the foregrounds where the action actually takes place are constricted and lacking in variation.

The timid gunplay and platform gameplay hybrid feels like it was conceived during the post-Super Mario 64 gold rush of 3D action-adventures (when Jet Force Geminis were a dime-adozen). The game’s major calling card has always been its huge assortment of weapons, but they’re mostly here for show and hardly necessary for puzzle solving. The Clank missions involve creative use of altering time and creating duplicates, yet are so tricky that frustrated time warpers are given the choice to skip them altogether. Strange way to treat the game’s best missions.

Perhaps those two big-budget titles were over-thinking things. After all, some of the best platformers of all time brought nothing but speed and attitude to the party. RunMan: Race Around the World (PC) was created by Tom Sennett and Matt Thorson and it truly harkens back to the glamour days of platform gaming. Featuring some highly colourful graphics, possibly done using MS Paint, and an old jazz soundtrack, all RunMan must do is Usain Bolt to the finish line of each level, bouncing off walls and evading the many traps in front of him. Most levels can be completed in under a minute, but it’s the rather difficult boss chase scenes (that pit RunMan against some crudely drawn screen-sized opponents) where the Logan’s Run levels of desperation kick in.

“Dost thou love life?” the game asks in the intro. “Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” When it comes to platform gaming, that’s about as close to Zen as one can get. The game is available at whatareyouwait.info as a pay-what-youwant download.