MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Mario vs New Wario Order World Tour, by biebersoft
Review Author	N/A
Created	Oct 12 2005, 10:15 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

With this game's title a spoof of a wrestling game, you might expect it to involve wrestling and fighting. Well, sorry, no. This game is a total take-off on Diddy Kong Racing. As with there, you advance in the game by beating kart races which you enter through an overworld. Except here, the overworld is a platforming stage played on foot. The cast is mostly Mario characters, plus Sonic, Donkey Kong, and an odd, flatulant fellow named Bubba. Interesting concept. Too bad the gameplay in both areas sucks.

Pros	MFGG has one of the better versions of this game, instead of one of the early versions that performed internal errors every minute or so. Some well-done graphics. Good sound. The Title. Sorry, but that is literally the best thing about this game.
Cons	Bad gameplay in all aspects. Poor level design, horrid physics, glitchy (not as bad as earlier versions, but still farily bad). Kart races that use 8-directional movement instead of racecar, very little challenge, lasts at least three times as long. Some well-done graphics, but many others look horrible. SONIC'S CONTROLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Impressions

Gameplay 3 / 10	This is where it really falls apart. Simply put, this gameplay is broken in almost every way imaginable. The one thing that is potentially impressive is the multiple characters, but that barely matters when the game hardly even gets one of them right. Only Luigi and Sonic can jump attack. Mario's fireballs go straight and in a random direction. Bowser, Bubba, and DK have horribly short-ranged attacks. Sonic has his trademark speed but instant acceleration makes him all-but un manageable. The game uses the built-in platform movement, but it adds insult to injury by setting absolutely no objects as obstacles. That means that not only can you stand on top of a platform, you can stand INSIDE it. A particularly bad glitch made Mario jump automatically and disabled his fireballs, so I had to play the rest of the game bouncing all around the overworld. Lastly, the level design has some depth, but no incentive to explore. Simply stick to the ground and you'll make it to the race courses in no time. Said races are just as bad. For some reason, they don't use race car movement; they use 8-directional movement, so every character has excellent handling. Master the controls and you pretty much eliminate any challenges. Eventually the game makes a vain attempt to challenge you by adding courses where the road cuts off and the route is unclear, but these are no challenge once you learn them in about 3 seconds. The game does make opponents faster as you get further, but by that time, you'll be too bored to want to keep playing.
Graphics 5 / 10	There is a general 3-D look to this game. With the exception of Sonic, all character sprites are from 3-D/pseudo 3-D games. There are also some simple computer models--probably nothing more than amalgamations of standard primitives, but they look nice enough. However, with the exception of what the developer could make with simple modeling knowledge, all of the sprites are just the best thing Bieber could salvage to go along with his 3-D aesthetic, which sometimes is not much. The majority of Mario characters (both playable and enemies) are SMRPG sprites. Given that they are isometric in angle and this game is not, they clash, especially Bowser. Seeing him looking like he is perpetually hopping on what foot is perhaps the most hilarious graphical flaw outside of Paper Mario World. Donkey Kong is from the ever-popular 2.5-D Donkey Kong Country games, and his sprite would fit well, except his animation is missing so many frames it is pathetic. Particularly funny is his punch attack, which is actually just a single frame of his chest-beating idle animation. Same old sitch with Sonic. His sprite faces the right way, but he lacks many animations. Yoshi is actually from a DKC game as well, from his cameo in Cranky's video game hero museum in DKC2, but that sprite, while 3-D, lacked many animations, such as walking, and Bieber has not compensated much. His tongue attack is worse; his mouth does not open, his tongue shoots in random directions rather than forward, and often he even gets several tongues at once! Wario is the Mario Kart 64 character selcetion icon, but for all parts of him not covered, they were hand-drawn and look hilarious. Those of us who have played Paper Mario World have seen this awful sprite recycled. The karts are worse. They look like litle more than ugly, boxy plastic wagons that we played with as kids. And lastly, there are many graphics that are enlarged and horribly pixelated. I'll give it a 5 because the computer models were a nice touch, but no more, because this game still looks sloppy.
Sound 8 / 10	This isn't too bad. There's a large collection of midis, from various games, like SML2, Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Kart 64, and maybe others I'm forgetting. There are some good sound effects, too. But once Mario Kart 64 midi is very incomplete. Also, Bowser's fire breath sound is way too loud. And Sonic's jump sounds hideous.
Replay 3 / 10	I can't tell whether this game has too little or too MUCH replay. Technically, it's not that long. There are only so many race courses, and then you're back to square one to play harder versions of the same courses. It takes at least three times as much time to beat this game as it does to see all of its content.

Final Words

I'd forgive this if it were a n00bish programming experiment, although you probably shouldn't start with something this complex. But the fact that the game was made with click software and still is this bad makes it intolerable. I have never made a full game, but even I can use click software much better than this.

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