MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Mario Learns About Colors, by Elyk
Review Author	Black Squirrel
Created	Aug 15 2008, 8:15 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

Ever played the game "De-Blob"? Think of it like being that NES classic "A Boy and his blob" except nothing like it. De-Blob has you play as a big rolling thing that crushes people to paint cities. Crushing the ethnic group of your choice will result in the big rolling thing changing colour, and hence hold the power to transfer colour into surrounding buildings. PC download's free, and there's an enhanced Wii verison. It's pretty cool. Go get it.

Mario Learns About Colours shares a very similar concept, except it scraps half of it and is therefore reduced to Mario just being able to change colour and wash himself. Then it adds some basic platforming, and POW - a platform-puzzler.

But is it good!?

Pros	-Semi-original idea -Clever
Cons	-About as bland as you can get because it deals in Super Mario World Graphics -Also uses your average Mario MIDIs which as we all know, I've grown to loathe over the years. -Doesn't really push the colouring idea as far as it probably should

Impressions

Gameplay 6 / 10	"Like De-Blob but not" gameplay has Mario hitting blocks to change his skin colour. Once you've changed colours, you can walk through walls of said colour. E.g. if you're red, you can walk through red walls. Your goal is to get to the pipe without getting yourself stuck or killed. Aaaand that's about it. Levels get harder. You find yourself needing more exotic colours like GREEN and PURPLE and ORANGE. Exciting! Oh and later there's switches to destroy walls. But yeah. Now don't get me wrong, I like the concept, but all it's used for is walking through walls and platforming. That's dull. So much you can do with colour and the surface has barely been scratched here. Ikaruga's a good example of what you could do. As is that Sutte Hakkun game for the SNES, and there's got to be more. Also the platforming itself isn't something to write home about. It's basic at best. Just seems like a really good idea wasted. Mario's purple! He shouldn't just be messing around with blocks!
Graphics 4 / 10	Graphics wise, it's just a bunch of recoloured Super Mario World graphics. Defaults. Boring. Seen it before. Oh sure it means nothing clashes, but they didn't look fantastic in the day, why should they nearly 20 years later? Not really much else I can say here. It's not exactly polished to perfection either.
Sound 3 / 10	Likewise with the sound. Basic MIDIs. Hey look it's a green Mario jumping to the sound of... SMB3 overworld themes. That game's even older than SMW! As usual, if you're new to the scene you probably won't give a damn if the stuff's been used before. For a 12 level game it's not worth making a custom soundtrack, but visiting a section of VGMusic that isn't Mario related wouldn't go a miss!
Replay 5 / 10	MLAC is a shortish game, but it's challenging and you might be compelled to come back for more. In a perfect world we'd have level editors to play with but it's not terrible as it stands now. Just not fantastic.

Final Words

It's like a really good idea was painted over by a dull shade of orange. It's reasonable, but it ain't brilliant.

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Comments

	Elyk Aug 16 2008, 7:03 AM
Well, I think I know what I'm doing for the NCFC now.

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