A lot of gamers hold Nintendo highly when compared to other developers over the years. But if Dr. Mario World is a sign of things to come, then it’s fair to say they will lose a lot of respect.
Well below expectations
Where do I begin with this one? There are so many match-three games on the Play store that to stand out, you have to do something different. Nintendo managed to do something different, they made the match-three system even worse.
When you place a pill, it slowly drops from the bottom of your screen towards the top. Although, you can still manipulate it, as long as you don’t drag the pill upwards. This means you can place a pill in a tight gap and then rotate it, in an impossible space.
Gameplay is boring
My gripes are with every part of the pill placing and rotating system. You can drag and let multiple pills fall to the ceiling, but they can push and affect one another.
Which I don’t mind because that is what would happen in reality, but then why can you rotate pills at the very last second? It seems weird for pills to affect each other while falling, but they can clip through each other to be rotated.
These are just minor points to my main argument. The actual game itself is tedious, stale and actually not enjoyable. The game has Mario, Bowser and various other famous faces, yet they don’t even say a word.
The PvP section is another area that lets the game down. You make matches and attack the other player in order to increase the size of their game space. But there are no warnings and no time to react.
Many times I was milliseconds away from making a match myself when my entire game board jumps and there is nothing I can do but lose. This makes the entire online experience frustrating and unreliable. One second you are on for a win, then you blink and the match you were trying to make moved and ruined your entire board.
Predatory Practices
I recently reviewed a game which had pay to win aspects and I didn’t criticise it all that much. This is because the overall gameplay was fun and not ruined by the fact that I had to pay to get better or to have more fun.
In Dr. Mario World I need to pay to play online again. I chose Bowser because the first 20 levels I had to play as a mute Mario. Little did I know this choice was permanent and now I am stuck as a heavy character. His attacks online take so long that I am often nearly defeated before I have attacked the opponent once.
Oh, but don’t worry, a top tip inside the game is to try other characters out to see who you like. Good thing it will cost me 40 gems to try my luck at another character. Or I might be lucky and get skill points for Bowser again!
Gambling and unfair
Had the game told me that the character I chose is one I am stuck with, I probably wouldn’t have chosen Bowser. Had the game allowed me to try out a few characters before making a permanent decision, I probably wouldn’t have chosen Bowser.
They designed the game to give you a bad time with the solution to your misery being just one crate away. This is the predatory practices all gamers should know, the deceptive and evil methods used by big game developers to encourage you to spend a few extra bucks.
It makes perfect sense why they wouldn’t adjust this game to fit the new laws in Belgium. Because if they did, they would probably have a decent free game where players would not need to spend any money to enjoy it. Something the executives at Nintendo cannot let happen at any cost!
A total load of money-grabbing garbage designed to give you bad experiences so you pay to have a better time.
If you want to spend money on quite frankly a boring and stale premise, then go ahead. If I was you, I would stay well clear of this disgrace and I regret the amount of time I have played. P.
