Game Review 2# Super Mario Run iOS

The first few levels of Super Mario Run will make any Mario fan feel right at home, with the series' polished aesthetic, and Mario's characteristic agility, present and accounted for. Gaming's foremost plumber has even picked up a few new tricks that, ironically, make him seem more acrobatic despite Super Mario Run's simpler-than-usual controls. The game immediately feels like a winner, and you might find that it continues to be; it all depends on your willingness to revisit the same levels over and over again in search of modest rewards.

To be fair, Run is the most convenient Mario game there is, with 2D level design that lives up to the series' rock-solid reputation. It's also complemented with graphics and moves that compare favorably to the refined New Super Mario Bros. games on DS and 3DS. With portability, however, comes a few understandable sacrifices: you don't have full control of the new, ever-running Mario, and levels are short to better suit typical smartphone play sensibilities. Regardless of these changes, Run feels like a Mario game from beginning to the end of its adventure, and the ease with which you can make Mario jump, bounce off walls, and spin attack enemies in mid-air with a simple tap of the screen feels great, not limiting.

Rather than fight to reach the end of a level by mastering platforming, which is the easiest it's ever been, your ultimate goal is to collect coins on your way to the finish line. Familiar gold coins are aplenty, and are banked at the end of a level to construct your personal Mushroom Kingdom later on. But there are other, harder to reach coins in every level--five a piece--that require more finesse and strategic platforming than usual to acquire. Once you've grabbed every special coin in a given level, a new set of five is distributed that are harder to grab--with three sets of five per level.

There's also the fact that Run's smartphone-game tendencies bleed over a bit too much and remind you that, while this is indeed a Mario game, it's a mobile game first and foremost. Beyond its "free-to-start" nature, there are timed bonus stages that beg you to jump back in every eight hours, but the rewards--small levels of chance where you may or may not earn the tickets required to participate in Toad Rally races--are hardly compelling reasons to watch the clock and jump back in as soon as possible. Strange as it may sound, if $10 won't unlock every character in the game, it would be nice to have an option to pay a small fee to Nintendo to simply unlock extra characters, rather than be forced to jump through hoops in different modes to access them in a roundabout way.

That's to say nothing of the game's always-online requirement. On one hand, it's a relief that should your phone lose a data connection in the middle of a level, you can still make it to the finish line, but Run simply will not start, or allow you to continue, if you are in a dead zone or without WiFi. For a game without traditional microtransactions or open-ended online competition, this requirement is simply baffling.