I want more games like BOWSER'S FURY (and NIGHTREIGN)
the first game I played on my switch 2 was, of course, not a switch 2 game, because the switch 2 does not have games. instead I played a game I’d bought years ago: mario 3d world + bowser’s fury.
I don’t really understand why these two games are stuck together this way, except that it either let nintendo resell a wii u game at a retail price (though simply repackaging the wii u game as-is hadn’t stopped them before) or they simply decided bowser’s fury is too weird in its mechanics and moreover in its cat-obsessiveness without 3d world for context. I dunno man.
anyway, let’s ignore 3d world because it’s not interesting.
bowser’s fury is a standalone, 6-hour-ish mario game with 100 stars (they’re “cat shines” here) and a roughly “open-world” design, though in practice it simply feels like an XXL-sized level of mario odyssey. the game also features some extremely strange kaiju sections in which you fight an enormous bowser using a similarly enormous, super-saiyan-esque cat mario.
the level design in bowser’s fury is fascinating. each island has its own set of shines, like any given world in mario 64 or whatever, but the shines themselves aren’t usually very creative. they’re almost all parallels — like if “collect 8 red stars” was the template for every single star in 64. get mega-bowser to blow up some blocks; race from here to here in a time limit; collect blue coins. you get the idea.
because it’s more of a “world” and thus more thematically cohesive than, say, 3d world (ahem), it is less obsessed with arbitrary uniqueness on a per-level basis than most mario games of the wii/wii u era. instead it simply refines and reiterates within dense, fun platforming design, and ties it together with the immensely satisfying traversal mechanic of “ride a dinosaur like he’s a jetski”. it’s over in a flash — a delightful, charming flash.
and the thing I really love about bowser’s fury is that it’s a cheap-o asset flip! it should cost $10 on the nintendo eshop and be worth ten times that much in the ever-elusive FUN FACTOR. the real reason it’s stuck onto 3d world is that it’s re-using basically everything from that game, from engine to assets to interface and mechanics, without introducing anything truly novel. it’s nintendo’s verison of whipping up a dynamite mario maker level pack.
and it rules! it’s the sonic “I want shorter games with worse graphics” meme, at least to the extent a behemoth like nintendo can pull that off. it makes me think of why I’m fond of elden ring: nightreign, the not-especially-beloved fromsoft-meets-fortnite: it uses a pre-existing engine and pre-made assets to whip up something strange and experimental without dropping anything near a AAA budget to do so, and it gets to be priced accordingly.
we should get dozens of games like this from the heavy hitters every year! it’d certainly make it easier to swallow the fact that, for example, I just paid nearly $500 for a console with no fucking games!
(post-script: I will say that 3d world + BF is a game that got a switch 2 patch and bowser’s fury is the specific beneficiary thereof — it runs in smooth 1080p/60fps in handheld and either that or 4k in docked, as opposed to the hitchy 30fps it was getting on the first console, and much like playing an upscaled emulation of mario galaxy 2 on dolphin, it really highlights just how beautiful and timeless nintendo’s art style was in this period.)