It was time to play some Super Mario 3D World, so I started up my Wii U and resumed my game. I’m on the 7th world, but it isn’t called World 7. It’s called World Castle (actually it uses a castle icon instead of the word castle), which just sounds a bit strange. But it takes place within Bowser’s castle, with lots of fire and lava everywhere. I started the first level, World Castle-1, which is subtitled Fort Fire Bros. It has a unique visual style, with blue lava surrounding everything. Piggybacking Goombas may carry power-ups or even other enemies such as Fire Bros. It’s an easy, but enjoyable level, and a good start to the world.
The next level is World Castle-2: Switchblack Ruins. It takes place in a dark cave and Mario has limited visibility. Some parts of the level have torches that can be lit with a fireball; it reminded me of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. There are some rooms in this level that have better lighting (thanks to lava), and those areas often have you stepping on tiles, turning question marks into exclamation points.
World Castle-3: Red Hot Run is a race against the clock. Mario has only 100 ticks on the clock to make his way through across narrow platforms while avoiding spikes (and spiky rolling pins). It’s a tricky level, but it’s fun.
World Castle-5: Trick Trap Tower is quite an interesting level. It has lots of moving platforms and Thwomps that you must climb to ascend to the top of a tower. Once you reach the top, you’ll fight three Magikoopas on the Lego-covered roof.
You then move on to another tower, where you have to collect five keys. But reaching the top of this tower unleashes some purple poisonous gas, and Mario has to escape in a hurry! Me-YOWZA!
World Castle-6: Rammerhead Reef is an underwater level where Mario must avoid the “rammerheads,” whose heads resemble the spiky rolling pins I mentioned earlier. There are also bloopers swimming around. I’m not generally a fan of water levels, but this one is pretty cool.
Once you reach the castle, it’s time to fight Bowser in the ridiculously named “World Castle-Castle.” Also known as Bowser’s Lava Lake Keep, this level has you battling Bowser in his car. It’s a pretty cool boss fight, but after knocking Bowser into the lava, I saw this:
It was kind of funny to run out of time right then, actually. But I beat him again, this time with more time remaining on the clock. This is a bit of a spoiler coming up, so you may want to skip the rest of this blog entry if you don’t want to know what happens. But as I crossed the flag of this world, all seven of those floaty fairy munchkin girls were there. I guess the game was trying to trick me into thinking I beat the whole thing. But then suddenly, Bowser drops in and puts them all in a bottle again and takes them all away. I’m not sure how Bowser recovered that quickly, but that’s video game logic for you.
I found myself back on the world map, and I took a clear pipe up to the 8th world, World Bowser. This world appears to be a noen-filled amusement park…I love it! It looks great, and I’m looking forward to going there next time.