Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury parent review

Multiplayer Gaming

In Super Mario 3D World you can have four players playing at the same time. You can choose between Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach (and also Rosalina if you took my advice) and play at the same time.

The game has some interesting workaround for the multi-player experience I appreciated. If a question block has a power-up, hitting it multiple times will give you enough for each character to have the same power-up so you can all climb together as cats. Or, if you’re like my son Damian, you can horde the things for yourself but…I’m not mad…nope. *deep breath*

Also, let’s say only two of the three of us have catsuits (because someone hoarded the bells) and someone gets left behind, once a player is knocked off the edge of the screen, they’re thrown into a bubble and brought back with the rest of the group. It helps younger players feel like they’re not being left in the dust during parts where you can’t stop and wait.

You can also pick up and throw other players. This helped in some particularly difficult platforming parts where I just picked up Malcolm and ran across the platforms myself when he got a little frustrated.

Once again, in Bowser’s Fury, it’s a bit of a different story. Bowser’s Fury was not designed for multiplayer. It’s a Mario-based single-player story. A second player can, however, control Bowser Jr. but that player is merely to help Mario and does not get any benefits afforded to them. The camera stays behind Mario at all times so if you’re controlling Bowser Jr. it can be really uncomfortable trying to navigate a stage while someone else who is of a single-digit age is controlling the camera.

Luckily Bowser Jr. can fly but even with this benefit, Damian had a very hard time with it as he got frustrated with how hard it was to stay on camera. Also, when both of them played as Bowser Jr. I constantly reminded them that they were invincible but it didn’t stop them from panic hiding every time Bowser would attack.