MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Paper Bowser World: Operation G.R.O.M., by toodles_team
Review Author	Dim_Yimma_H
Created	Apr 8 2009, 3:21 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

Bowser is very angry, and he looks paper-thin yet awesome. Operation G.R.O.M. is a game focusing on that, and a lot of funny jokes, rather than platform jumps.

Pros	+ The music always suits the appearance of the worlds. + Stylistic graphics that're composed into gorgeous scenes. + Smart puzzles. + Swimming control, like shoot'em up.
Cons	- The slow running control. - A feeling of inexact character shape. - Sometimes uneven difficulty.

Impressions

Gameplay 5 / 10	Worlds: The game has a good introduction, in the first Green Meadows world, where Bowser goes and reads signs and learns how to play, and he's all angry and that, it's pretty funny. When about to leave the first world Bowser says "Finally! I'm sick of this place!", haha, the angry attitude is a theme throughout the game. Many objects in the worlds are destructible, like pipes and blocks, which moves focus to total destruction rather than platform jumping. It feels good to just ruin everything! This is especially true when Bowser turns into an even larger 8-bit sprite that reduces all objects to ashes. World 1-3 is the big block switch world, there are red, green and blue blocks which can appear and disappear when switches are pressed, and it gets really puzzling sometimes when they are the only platforms to walk on. World 2-2, a dry desert, is also of the puzzle kind, this time with passable walls indicated by occasional holes and coins. It makes you feel smart when you "predict" where the open paths are hidden. So Operation G.R.O.M. shows strength in other areas than platform jumping, and at one point in the desert the jumps get a bit frustrating when you have to jump over cactus and die by touching them once. World 3 is the Deep Deep Sea, and I like the swimming control enough to secretly wish the whole game had swimming levels! It's great to be able to breath fire at the same times as swimming, it feels like a shoot'em up. There are five worlds, each divided into four areas, and it takes one or two hours to see it all. I would also like to hint about a remake of the building structure in classic Donkey Kong! That part is the best challenge in my opinion, with patrolling enemies that can only be defeated with great timing to move up the platforms. Controls: The jump control feels nice, and it's very quick compared to the slower running control, which is rather realistic considering how massive Bowser is after all. It might've felt nice to be able to run a little faster as there are quite long parts of running. Bowser is relatively large compared to the game screen, and that's one thing that may feel strange, because it's very easy to see how his head overlaps blocks when moving near them, so the control only feels a bit inexact because the large graphics emphasize the difference between graphics and physics.
Graphics 8 / 10	The first thing that impresses me is the graphics, both levels and backgrounds. They look quite simplistic in colors and lines, but the final composition of the scenes look surprisingly gorgeous. Take the intro background for example, with dark stars covering a sky, then panning down to the moon and the stars kind of form shaded clouds around the moon. That's very stylistic and appealing. I've also heard that the sprites are custom made, and they are very smoothly shaped, large and nice to look at with their subtle outlines.
Sound 8 / 10	The music always seems to suit the current atmosphere. Sound effects are nearly perfect, the only one that sounded a bit off is when breathing fire many times in a row, and Bowser keeps shouting "Huargh!".
Replay 4 / 10	The world layouts are quite linear, so after playing through them once you've seen everything. There are coins to collect, though I believe it would've felt encouraging if they were stored in a highscore list for example.

Final Words

The angry humor is funny and uses a mild language, so it's easy to like. The game play is straight-forward with an easy control that has one drawback, the slow running. Make sure to enjoy the water world, because it has one of the best swimming controls I've seen in a Mario game.

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Comments

	toodles_team Apr 27 2009, 4:31 PM
Boy, you certainly seem to like the game a lot more than the score would suggest...


	Dim_Yimma_H May 2 2009, 8:53 PM
Quote (toodles_team on Apr 27 2009, 5:31 PM) Boy, you certainly seem to like the game a lot more than the score would suggest... It might be because I try to rate games by counting pros and cons. 4 pros versus 3 cons becomes 4 / (4 + 3) = 57% So I rounded that to 60%, to equal 6 / 10. I can also admit that I wanted to kind of promote the game a little in the text :) The game is actually unusually well-done compared to many other fan games. I felt a bit unfamiliar with the different headlines in the submission form, so "Final Words" turned out a bit unbalanced.

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