4/5 ★ – jdraco's review of New Super Luigi U.

It’s finally about damn time that Luigi gets some respect put on his name Because New Super Luigi U is a great game… It’s a game that takes the original New Super Mario Bros. U, removes Mario entirely from the game, shortens and remixes every level, and makes the game overall much more difficult And the result is a very tight and challenging platformer that doesn’t waste your time and is fun from start to finish I mean, the level design in this game is scientifically engineered to not waste your time, and almost every level is fun to play as a result of this In almost every Mario game, there are some levels that are dragged down by being auto-scrollers or long, boring water levels, for example And while Luigi U does have some of these, they never overstay their welcome and are usually over before you ever start to feel even slightly bored So yeah, I think the levels being short in this game is absolutely perfect, and it really is fun to be able to breeze through some of these levels That’s not at all to say every level is a breeze, though; again, this game can genuinely be quite difficult, especially if you’re going for all the star coins The level design in this game takes every asset from the base New Super Mario Bros. U game and goes fucking nuts with them for some of these levels Unique, challenging level designs and concepts are present throughout this entire game Enemies, or obstacles that you’d never expect to be in a certain world/level, could be anywhere The sky is legitimately the limit in terms of the level design in this game, and you just get the feeling that anything was on the table when the game developers were making levels for this game And honestly, that’s how every one of these New Super Mario Bros. games should’ve been Now I love most of the games in the New Super Mario Bros. series, but so many of them just feel like they have to stick to this strict formula and can just never go crazy or unique with any ideas or concepts Which is genuinely a shame, because this game is living proof that using all of their game assets and going fucking nuts with them can be incredibly beneficial and result in some of the most unique and fun levels that I’ve seen in the entire series And I’m pretty sure that this game even introduced new enemies and level assets as well I could be entirely wrong, though, because I actually haven’t even played the original New Super Mario Bros. U from start to finish But honestly, after playing this game, I probably don’t really ever need to, because I can’t think of any way that the original game would be better than this I will say, though, that the world map that the original game introduced is pretty good I mean, it’s not cohesive at all; you can just walk up from grassy plains to a desert in 1 second But it is a very nice and colorful world to look at and explore, and it has a nice amount of secrets to explore and other things to keep you visually interested Two more things that I want to bring up with the game, though, before I wrap up this review, are control and boss fights And I want to touch on the boss fights first because I really don’t have that much to say about them But yeah, they’re not that good A lot of them just boil down to you jumping on the boss's head, waiting for them to get up, and then doing it immediately again until you win in 15 seconds They’re pretty bad Except for a few of them, because my favorite bosses in the game are the ones that take basic enemies and turn them into unique boss fights Like the Kamek boss fight, as well as the Sumo Bro These bosses were really fun and genuinely did feel pretty distinct from every other boss in the game I mean, they were still easy as shit, but at least they were unique, and I wish that they had done more bosses like them and not just copy and pasted the Boom Boom boss fight 8 thousand times And then as for the control of the game, it’s good; I actually really liked it Luigi controls way more slippery than Mario, but he also jumps way higher and has a flutter, which is incredibly fun and satisfying to platform with Oh, and I didn’t even touch on the power-ups either; I completely forgot, and that’s probably because they’re completely forgettable The flying squirrel power-up that they introduced is okay, and I think that’s literally it as for new power-ups that they introduced I mean, they also put Baby Yoshi’s in the game too, I guess But they suck; the pink one is the only good one Regardless of the mediocre power-ups, though, this is, again, a very solid platformer that I had a really good time with It’s definitely no masterpiece or anything But as it stands, this is a very good, short, and to-the-point platformer So with that all being said I’m going to give this game, a 4/5