Nostalgic yet innovativeand new!
Princess Peach is captured once again by bowser and you have to go from world to world beating levels castles in all sorts of different terrain.
This game doesn't take too much advantage of the touch screen controls, but it's ok because it's a Mario platformer and the basic stomping on goombas is good enough.
We see the entrance of some new powerups and the return of others. We still have the super mushroom and fire mushroom. Now there's the entrance of mini mario that allows you to access secret areas, there's shell mario which gives the powers of a koopa troopa, and the Mega mushroom which turns the game into a classic game of Rampage.
The graphics are pseudo-3d, which are totally appropriate for 2-D platformer for the DS. It looks great though, the environments vary and are great eye candy.
You can also wall jump now.
Saving is an issue, whereas there are checkpoints you can't save for several levels until you beat a mid-castle or world castle. This can be really frustrating when there's 3 levels until the next castle and they're particularily hard. However, you'll get over this and the game will still be fun.
There's plenty of mini-games to play which offer additional fun gameplay. Multiplayer isn't anything special, but it's fun nevertheless.
This is a great addition to Mario series. You'll be glab you got this game. You WILL have fun =) .