MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Mario's Dumb Holliday, by Sharb
Review Author	CM30
Created	Dec 24 2015, 2:11 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

For a single level demo put out to showcase a new Mario fan game engine, Mario's Dumb Holiday is a surprisingly decent game. With a lovely mix of custom and ripped sprites from various Mario games and sprite sheets, some pleasant background music and physics that mostly work how they're meant to, it's a nice quick time waster of a game.

Pros	Looks nice; the mix of Kopejo's tileset and sprites from various Mario games work well together Music is nice, and goes well with the game Physics mostly work how they're meant to Difficulty is kept to a reasonable level
Cons	Very short; it's one level that can be beaten in about five minutes. Variety is a bit lacking, the enemies used are the most basic SMB 1 and 2 monsters. Game feels a tad slow

Impressions

Gameplay 7 / 10	Gameplay wise, Mario's Dumb Holiday is a decent enough game. The physics work as they should, without Mario getting stuck on objects or sliding all over the place (perhaps ironic for a Christmas game set in ice land) and everything you encounter acts mostly how it should. That said, there are some issues. For one thing, it felt like the physics were a little clunky, with Mario not running as fast or jumping as high as he perhaps should have. There's also the fact that the level never really goes anywhere with any 'theme'. It's there, you've got things to do, power ups to collect and enemies to kill or dodge. Fine. But nothing ties them together that much, it just feels like a random assortment of 'stuff' added to test how the engine works. There's also a bit of cheap design at the start, where the first Goomba is set up to head straight for Mario when the game begins. This means that anyone who doesn't read the manual or who forgets the controls has about 20 seconds to figure them out before they get killed, which is a bit unfair. Good games should give you a small amount of breathing room in which to figure out how things work before taing out the game ahead. Either way, it's decent, just not quite as good as it could have been.
Graphics 9 / 10	Graphically, the game looks great. Okay, the tiles and sprites come from all manner of different sources (as the credits or manual will tell you), but they all work nicely together and I couldn't see anything that could be considered as 'clashing' or what not.
Sound 7 / 10	It's the song from DK Snowboard Cross in Mario Kart Wii, with some typical Mario sound effects played over it. A strange mix for sure, but it works well, and it's more interesting than yet another game with the Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World soundtrack.
Replay 2 / 10	Pretty much non existent, since it's a level long, the level has few (if any) bonus areas and there's no real reason to play it again. There is a multiplayer mode which I guess could be fun, though the playtime would probably be less than the time required to set it up in the first place... Either way, this is not a game you'll return to.

Final Words

Mario's Dumb Holiday is a surprisingly decent little game, given that it's a engine test made public with only a single level.

You'll just have be aware that this game has pretty much zero replay value.

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