I think Mario Run dissing is a mix of backlash to the extreme hype by Apple + Nintendo, and on the other hand due to the fact that it's a "pretty good game" instead of a "really awesome game", while the contrours of a "really awesome game" are hiding just behind it. The game was crippled by some seemingly arbitrary choices. Those are either the result of Nintendo trying to find its footing in mobile, or of Nintendo deliberately making its mobile games a watered-down version of the true greatness on its consoles, to stimulate console sales by introducing arbitrary limitations into its mobile games.
Imagine if Nintendo would have done just a few things differently:
- Price it at 5,99$, that would have made it immune from the vast majority of backlash.
- But really, even at 9,99$, just make it a paid app instead of free + single IAP. People who hadn't been following the news in detail got upset when they hit a paywall after 3 levels, and this caused much of the 1-star reviews.
- Always online? Hell no.
- After I downloaded the game, the first thing I run into is a "downloading..." screen? Weird and unnecessary.
- Include 40 levels (8x5) instead of 24 (6x4) so that people don't get that "this is it?" feeling after finishing their 9,99$ game after 2 hours. Would have not been that difficult (they're damn good at making awesome levels), they just chose to keep it very limited in order to position mobile games as much more limited than console games.
- Yes, replay value (black coins!) is pretty damn good, we all agree on that - but making something seem shallow at first and only deep on second sight isn't a good marketing approach
- Make the miniboss levels extra long (90 sec is short) and less repetitive (why is it every time the same koopa jr? come on, it feels like you're barely even trying)
- One of the fun elements in classic mario games is always the secret exits / warp zones, would have been nice to have a few of those here. Again, not a difficult element to add, they just chose not to.
- Have at least 1 powerup other than the mushroom (fire flower could have worked well with mid-air spin jump)
- Scrap the nonsenical "kingdom building" part, focus on single player and toad rally
- Temporary events on toad rally that actually have temporary content rather than a temporary 1.5x coin multiplier
- For the toad rally, a few straight-up speed run levels could have been great (there's a big speed running community out there, could have tapped into that).
- With some type of built-in support for Twitch or ReplayKit Live the above could have really been a hype.
- When you play it on multiple devices, the game is both buggy (it crashes unexpectedly) and annoyingly makes you go through the purchase screen again to get all levels (many people won't know that Apple doesn't charge you twice for the same purchase). This could have been ironed out in testing.
- And finally, and I know this isn't Nintendo's fault, the "NOTIFY" feature that Apple built specifically for Nintendo sucked. If I pre-order a game, I either expect some type of benefit or discount, or expect it to install automatically, or whatever. Instead I just got a late notification.
So yeah, I agree it's a good game. But as a long-time Nintendo customer, I'm pissed that they didn't make it an amazing game, when greatness was well within reach.
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