MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	SMB - Raiders of the Painting Realms, by Guinea
Review Author	Black Squirrel
Created	Feb 26 2009, 6:42 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

As a young lad back in the days when perfection wasn't a norm I lay awake at night wondering what the state of play was with the much anticipated Super Mario Bros. DDX. My non-existant lady friend would often leave disappointed and unsatisfied as my mind drifted to other things. Guinea, a.k.a. G WorX was a man who was creating near perfect Super Mario engines before it was popular, and many of us with small seats were sitting on the edge of them expecting the second coming of Christ in fangame form.

And SMBDDX was a nice game but what has Guinea done since? A few minigame comps and THIS. Raiders of the Painting Relams. Much like Raiders of the Lost Ark except without a Lost Ark and not a 1981 film starring Harrison Ford. It's a 2009 fangame starring Mario and Luigi as they go off in search of... paintings and the like. If this lady friend of mine existed I think she'd be more pleased.

Pros	-Oh come on it's a game made by Guinea. We have come to expect good engines -And the graphics are quite nice too. Not perfect by any means but I'm not put off by them -And lets just put in the high quality music in this section despite it being a bit... predictable.
Cons	-In its current state it's looking more like Super Mario 64 2D rather than an innovative new game -Bro switching is a bit... well I wouldn't say pointless but I don't think it's the best way to go.

Impressions

Gameplay 8 / 10	Peach has forgotten one of her basic human functions - to clean (whaaay), and as such her castle's a bit of a mess. So much of a mess that it doesn't even have an exit or more than three levels. And of course all the Toads sit there gawking at this mess while you go find some paintings. Personally I'd have gone for the water supply seeing as there's a currently unused flooded room, and though I don't know what the Mushroom Kingdom's water prices are, I don't imagine it's a good thing to have that much water on the first floor. Mario and Luigi are set up with the task of... finding paintings. Alright, in the full game you're due to find treasure but really there's only paintings here, bar the swinging ability. They do it by going into other paintings and doing various missions. Gameplay is your standard affair; Mario and Luigi run about in a 2D world stomping goombas etc. You've got a few hit-points rather than the "bigger-smaller" thing the series thrives on, and an infinate number of lives - each time you die you start playing as the other brother. Which is quite annoying especially if you're reasonably good at the game, because it may mean you waste valuable time navigating Luigi to the same spot Mario's in just to restart the level. And as they play pretty much identically it just seems a bit... unecessary to me. Sure you need their combined efforts to overcome some puzzles, but there are other ways to do this I'm sure. Remember how the NES and SNES games lied about their "2 player mode", still only allowing one player to play at one time, rather than two? It's a bit like that, except it's marked as a "1 player" game. Of course this is coming from the guy who's first 2-player game was Sonic 2, and that was leaps and bounds ahead of its competition at the time (in fact, in many ways it's still top of the list in terms of 2 player platformers). But I'm drifting again. One of the other possible problems with this game is that it's not particularly imaginative. Bob Omb Battlefield? Hazy Maze Cave? What is this, Super Mario 64 2D? The full game promises to have more original levels but I'm scoring the demo, and the demo is supposed to be a good interpretation of what the full game is like! Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with 2D renditions of Super Mario 64, but this is Guinea - he can surely do better! SMBDDX hit the nail on the head as far as originality goes (almost, anyway). Many people have done a 2D SM64 and it seems like a step back. Besides, when I think "treasure hunting" I think something more along the lines of Metroid or Kirby Super Star, not SM64. Wasted potential I think. But that's just me. But it's a great engine otherwise. Not too fond of King Bob Omb II - he seems a bit difficult for a first boss but there aren't really any other flaws here gameplay wise.
Graphics 7 / 10	Graphics are a mixed bag. Lots of them are custom, some are edits from Mario Party Advance, some from the SNES games. They work reasonably well together and I've got no real complaints about them. At the same time however, it's hard to get hyped up about them like you could do with SMB:DDX's. They're quite average, but you've got to remember a lot of games at MFGG are below average. But as I said, no real complaints here. Nice graphics tend to share the same boat as original levels and this demo doesn't really have many so you can see where this is going.
Sound 7 / 10	Super Mario 64 music throughout, apart from some Donkey Kong Country 3 music (which was based on Super Mario 64) for the castle itself. The sounds are decent too, though when the opportunity comes for Guinea to replace the Super Mario Galaxy voices with higher quality alternatives, he should probably take it. SM64's music has aged pretty well (which is surprising for the N64 - things like Super Smash Bros. often show us that things could have been improved when it comes to music) and as its not resorting to MIDIs the game sounds pretty good.
Replay 5 / 10	Demos and replay value don't mix but as a treasure hunting game there's no reason why this concept couldn't be expanded on to include hidden things. Even if it just takes a page from the book of Wario Land II. It's a bit short to really tell if that's the case just yet.

Final Words

I can't honestly say it's looking as good as SMB:DDX did back in the day, but a quality title nonetheless. Might have been better if it wasn't currently another Super Mario 64 2D thing.

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Comments

	Guinea Feb 26 2009, 7:32 PM
Wow a review. Thanks. I have to agree with most of your comments. So far it DOES look like a SM642D game and it is pretty much inspired by said game. About the bro switching, it actually IS a bit annoying in the current state of the game, since those first levels are indeed linear. I'm thinking about adding options to not be forced into switching. Also, now that you mention it, it's quite amusing to imagine reasons why the Princess's castle is full of water and other mess, lol But yeah I like this honest review of yours, and you can be sure that all flaws you pointed out are noted down in my books and like you said about a couple of them are already planned to be improved upon.

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