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New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Mario and Luigi, Back to the Wii: The More Players, the Deadlier

New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Nintendo's challenging game has graphics that belie the punishing chalenges. It's not for casual play.







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The Super Mario Bros. recipe remains one of the simplest possible: rescue the princess by traversing ever more challenging two-dimensional levels. Jump at the wrong time, land in the wrong place, move in the wrong direction or touch the wrong thing, and you die. If you die, you start over. If you die too many times, you start over even further back.



This is how it has always been, and so it apparently shall remain. Yet New Super Mario Bros. Wii is far more difficult than the most recent major Mario title, Super Mario Galaxy (2007). Many of the same children and parents who enjoyed Super Mario Galaxy will be crushed into submission by New Super Mario Bros. Wii as they lose over and over again.



In that sense the new game feels trapped uncomfortably among Nintendo’s past, present and future. Nintendo clearly wants this game to appease grumbling longtime fans who resent the company’s move toward the mainstream. And for some it will do so.



At the same time, however, the Wii has been marketed quite brilliantly as casual living room entertainment for groups of friends who aren’t necessarily longtime gamers. And so New Super Mario Bros. includes the ability for up to four players to control separate characters simultaneously in the game, a first for the series.



The problem is that the multiplayer mode is nearly a complete disaster for nonexperts who might actually want to get through each level. With each person who joins the action, the game becomes even more difficult.



That is because the various player-controlled characters, including the brothers themselves, bounce off one another to their doom, push one another off ledges and shove one another into killer monsters. It can be very difficult for players (like the people I invited to my home to play) to keep track of their characters on the screen. In a game that requires precise control and punishes the slightest mistake with death, the multiplayer mode generates exponential confusion.



Even worse, the one concession the game makes to newer players does not even work in multiplayer. Perhaps the best addition to the new game is a feature that guides players past a level if they have died on it repeatedly. But inexplicably, it only works in solo play.



So New Super Mario Bros. Wii offers multiplayer support, but the actual design of the game encourages most people to play by themselves. That is not what Nintendo is supposed to be all about these days.

Nothing is true; everything is permitted." We learned this adage in the original Assassin's Creed, and Assassin's Creed II carries on the tradition beautifully, inspiring you to rethink the conspiracy at the heart of the series--and to reconsider what you should expect from a sequel. The franchise's second console outing is an impressive piece of work. Developer Ubisoft Montreal has addressed almost all of Assassin's Creed's flaws by filling its follow-up with fresh and enjoyable mission types and layering on new and mostly excellent features, while still retaining the joy of movement and atmospheric wonder that characterized the original. These enhancements range from the subtle (you can swim now) to the game-changing (there's an economy), but aside from a few small missteps, every tweak makes for a more enjoyable, more engaging adventure. The cohesive story and a terrific new character will draw you in, and you aren't apt to forget the memorable and explosive ending that will have you eager for the chronology starring bartender Desmond Miles, and another featuring one of Desmond's ancestors. When you start the game, you'll catch up with Desmond right where the original left him, though as fans of the original can guess, the Abstergo labs are no longer a safe haven. You'll spend a bit of time with Desmond during the course of the game, though the shoes you most frequently fill are those of Ezio Auditore di Firenze, the charmingly impetuous son of a 15th-century Italian banker. Ezio is an instantly likable firebrand, as passionate about family and honor as he is about wine and women. When you first meet him, Ezio is living a carefree life and has not yet donned his assassin's robe, nor is he familiar with the creed. However, Ezio's devil-may-care freedom is soon cut short by murder and betrayal instigated by the assassins' greatest threat: the Templars.

Assassin's Creed's Altair was an interesting character, but only for the stealthy order he represented, not because you ever got to know the man under the white hood. Ezio is far more appealing, for he's not just quick with a secret blade, but he's a fully realized protagonist. He isn't at the mercy of the plot, but rather, the narrative evolves from his need to uncover the truth behind his sorrows. It's the personal nature of the narrative that makes Assassin's Creed II's story more compelling than its predecessor's. The few modern-day segments featuring Desmond pack a lot more punch this time around as well, and the conspiracies driving that story arc become a lot clearer and, as a result, more provocative. While the original ended on a vague and unsatisfying note, the latest chapter's climax is downright electrifying.

Ezio isn't Assassin's Creed II's only headliner. The Italy he inhabits is a character in and of itself, filled with visual and sonic details that infuse the world with life and elegance. The cities you explore--Florence, Venice, and more--are larger and more detailed than the environs of the first game. Citizens go about their daily lives, and they look authentic doing so. Merchants sweep the street in front of their shops; small groups stroll along, making conversation with each other; and courtesans smirk and cajole as you pass by. These folks aren't cookie-cutter character models. They are dressed differently enough from each other and are animated so expressively that it's as if the population would go about its business with or without your presence. More impressive are the cityscapes themselves as they unfold in front of you, inviting you to take in their splendor. This is an incredibly good-looking game: the lighting is sumptuous, the draw distance is vast, and textures are crisp. The PlayStation 3 version does suffer from some frame rate jitters, more frequent texture fade-in, and lesser color . Both versions are still attractive, however, and apart from a few small flaws, you rarely get the feeling that visual compromises were made to make the game's open world run Assassin's Creed II's sense of place and time isn't due just to its visuals, however. Its high-quality sound design is equally responsible, delivering a busy-sounding Florence while still allowing the little quips of citizens commenting on your acrobatics to shine through. There's a good variety of such dialogue now, so you won't tire of repeated lines, and because the citizen rescues of the original Assassin's Creed have been excised, you won't hear the monotonous whines of complaining peasants. Two aspects of the sound design are particularly noteworthy: the music and the voice acting. The game's splendid orchestral score is subtle and soothing when it needs to be, never intruding on the exploration and never manipulating your emotions with inappropriate musical melodrama. The simple but effective cello and double bass motif you hear when climbing to a perch and synchronizing your map is the perfect example of this smart melodic restraint. As for the voice acting, it is uniformly excellent. Not only is Ezio voiced with charm and energy, but the surrounding cast is mostly superb--though one particular line delivered by Ezio's uncle Mario might  you cringe.
The greatest beauty of Assassin's Creed II's exquisitely detailed environments is that you can run and jump across the rooftops with ease and climb the tallest towers to get a bird's-eye view of the game's glorious vistas. You control Ezio much as you did Altair, though movement feels a bit tighter and even more fluid than before. The game strikes an excellent middle ground between responding to player input and automating actions like leaping from one surface to the next, so it's simple to leap about the city smoothly without worrying that you're going to plummet to your death on the next hop. . installment.