I got this game to play with my wife and her family. The characters are adorable, the levels are full of charm, the music is outstanding, and the platforming is really tight.
However, the multiplayer is an exercise in frustration.
- The camera constantly jumps ahead at minimal prompts, forsaking anyone who isn’t adept enough to get every jump as perfectly as the best player, even if that player is the kind who is inclined to wait. The camera just makes whoever it follows into an ass to the other players.
- Online connection options aren’t intuitive. It cannot even be disabled in the middle of a level. You have to quit, run somewhere on the map, disable it there, go back and restart the level. Contrary to the intent, it takes you completely out of the game.
- There is no shared progression with online friends. If a step is particularly complicated and you leave your friend behind, you don’t really have a means to “carry” them through the level or get the items for them. If they get stuck and you want to progress together, you just have to wait in the over world until they struggle it out for themselves. Otherwise hope they understand you as you try to explain what buttons they need to press, when and where. I think my wife and I spent an hour in online co-op with her parents just waiting for them to finish a challenge that her father refused to give up on. We ended up not doing anything else that night and a bit disappointed in ourselves.
I just don’t know why they needed to go with this whole ghost thing. Just let 4 of us play in the same world, the same levels, and collect the same resources. Why is that so hard?
I have the impression it’s hard, if not impossible to create a 2D platformer that is both enjoyable at 1 and 2 players. Super Mario Bros U Deluxe is a good example : Fun with friends, but solo is not on par with older 2D Mario.
Have you tried that new Mickey Mouse platformer? I think it does multiplayer platforming really well.
What do you mean by that? (And another question, since I haven’t played the Deluxe version on Swtich, only the “OG” U version; is there any difference, that maybe I don’t know about or they are identical in terms of Marioness?)
When the game’s level design is set up to comfortably accommodate four players (which NSMBU is), those accommodations don’t necessarily make the game better when played solo. NSMBU has a lot of “extra” space and a really wide camera zoom compared to traditional 2D marios like World or Bros 3, and very few jumps require any degree of precision or P-speed (because if they did, it’d be really hard for four players to do them at the same time due to collision and camera shift).
Wonder has really tight level design, which makes the 2-4p feel cramped and necessitates the removal of player collision. But those changes make it a much better single player experience.
those two “modern” rayman games managed to make something that was enjoyable from 1-4 players - I would say that mario wonder leans pretty heavy on those for inspiration too (trying to make every level unique and surprising). but nintendo always add a tonne of awkwardness into their games for seemingly no reason
I used to think it was because they didn’t look at competition so didn’t know “the right well understood way”, but then a lot of their games in the last decade have taken a lot of inspiration from others so that doesn’t fly so well anymore
Yeah. Rayman Legends is a delight, and really the high watermark for platforming in multiplayer.
I can’t speak strongly to single player, beacuse I’ve enjoyed it in single player, but it honestly pretty much 100% picks up a second, or third and fourth player every time I play it.