Sorry about the lack of videos and such, been trying out the game's features and learning to set up my capture card stuff. But I may as well give some... preliminary thoughts on the game.
Basically, the level editor is great.
The levels people make with that level editor on the other hand...
But I'll start with the positive side. The editor is great, it feels fun to use, it's easy as anything to make levels, place tiles, set up enemies, etc. And the little extras like the sound effects, enemy changes after shaking them, etc are really cool too.
Oh, and the music played in the editor is amazing too. A tad let down by the constant sound effects (do we really need to sing along to every object and tile ever put down?), but damn:
Add the nice system for sharing levels, and what not, and it works really well as an editing tool.
However, there's just one place where it kind of falls apart.
Playing levels. Why? For the same reason SMW hacking, Super Mario Bros X and Mario Fan Games Galaxy often fall apart.
Your average Joe is NOT cut out to be a game designer.
You will learn this very quickly when playing the 100 Mario Challenge mode. Random levels plus bad labelling of the difficulties (on the fans part) equals one hell of a frustrating experience. A potentially amusing one to some degree (like picking random games off Steam Greenlight and mocking them in video reviews), but an annoying one none the less.
Just count how many levels end up being a big cluster[beep] of enemies and objects that seems to have been 'designed' to wind up as many people as possible. This is especially notable on the 100 Mario Challenge's expert mode, where 1/3 of levels seem to be huge blobs of random stuff to dodge with about 2 pixels to spare, 1/3 are kaizo without save states and 1/3 are actually well designed and interesting difficult levels.
Thank god for the skip option. You'll be using that a lot, especially if you want the 100 Amiibo costumes you need to beat this mode 100 times for.
But yeah, it's been a fun game so far. I'll have a review up within the week, and I'll probably start playing and videoing you guys' levels soon as well. I expect your level design skills will be much better than 'random guy on Youtube's'.
Basically, the level editor is great.
The levels people make with that level editor on the other hand...
But I'll start with the positive side. The editor is great, it feels fun to use, it's easy as anything to make levels, place tiles, set up enemies, etc. And the little extras like the sound effects, enemy changes after shaking them, etc are really cool too.
Oh, and the music played in the editor is amazing too. A tad let down by the constant sound effects (do we really need to sing along to every object and tile ever put down?), but damn:
Add the nice system for sharing levels, and what not, and it works really well as an editing tool.
However, there's just one place where it kind of falls apart.
Playing levels. Why? For the same reason SMW hacking, Super Mario Bros X and Mario Fan Games Galaxy often fall apart.
Your average Joe is NOT cut out to be a game designer.
You will learn this very quickly when playing the 100 Mario Challenge mode. Random levels plus bad labelling of the difficulties (on the fans part) equals one hell of a frustrating experience. A potentially amusing one to some degree (like picking random games off Steam Greenlight and mocking them in video reviews), but an annoying one none the less.
Just count how many levels end up being a big cluster[beep] of enemies and objects that seems to have been 'designed' to wind up as many people as possible. This is especially notable on the 100 Mario Challenge's expert mode, where 1/3 of levels seem to be huge blobs of random stuff to dodge with about 2 pixels to spare, 1/3 are kaizo without save states and 1/3 are actually well designed and interesting difficult levels.
Thank god for the skip option. You'll be using that a lot, especially if you want the 100 Amiibo costumes you need to beat this mode 100 times for.
But yeah, it's been a fun game so far. I'll have a review up within the week, and I'll probably start playing and videoing you guys' levels soon as well. I expect your level design skills will be much better than 'random guy on Youtube's'.
