Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 takes some bold steps in changing the gameplay of the original – and it pays off.
The game begins at an event unveiling Mario’s new theme park based on his hit clockwork toys. At his side during the occasion is Pauline (who starred in the original Donkey Kong back in the early 80s). Well, it just so happens that Donkey Kong is in the crowd, and when he sees Daisy making those love eyes at Mario, he blows his stack, kidnaps Daisy, and runs off into the theme park. So now it’s up to our valiant plumber to rush in there and show that ape who’s boss…right? Well, not exactly. While the original game had Mario running around with the Mini Mario toys marching behind him, this game stars the ceramic toys exclusively. You also won’t be directly controlling them – instead, you’ll use a few simple stylus gestures to direct their movements around the levels. The end result is something that feels more like the classic game Lemmings, wherein you feel as though you’re controlling things from an omnipresent point of view. Though they are initially stationary, simply swiping a line in the direction you wish a Mini Mario to go is enough to get things moving. If they’re on the verge of reaching a perilous situation, tapping them with the stylus will stop them. Swiping upward overtop of them will trigger a jump. Surprisingly, that’s about all you need to know to get things rolling; if you can grasp those basic mechanics, you’ll be jumping around on springs and the like in no time flat. The rest of the challenge, however, comes about in manipulating the environment.
Throughout Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, you’ll find a good number of apparatus that you can mess around with to get the Mini Mario’s out of danger. In addition to the original game’s color-coded switches that will expand contracting platforms of the color in question (while sliding other colored platforms back), these include things like riding on the backs of enemies across spike pits, shimmying around on tightropes, and classic Mario touches like pipes. What’s interesting is that instead of simply dumping more enemies and the like at you, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 begins to introduce the same sorts of obstacles with a new feature that complicates their use. For example, the networked system of pipes may have a movable middle piece you’ll need to slide around with the stylus to get your Mini Mario going in the right direction. The aforesaid tightropes will eventually come with a crank mechanism on the end – by spinning it, any Marios on it will begin to spin, and jumping during this will send them flying up a couple stories to an otherwise unreachable platform. It really helps lend a sense of progression to the game beyond simply moving up the floors.
Though the control scheme has changed, the format of the game remains the same – you’ll start at the first world – or ‘floor’, to keep in theme of being in a gigantic building. You’ll progress through a series of nine levels all drenched in a similar theme, be it more focused on using pipes or gravity-defying floors that allow you to scale walls and walk across ceilings. The goal of every level is to guide at least one Mini Mario through an assortment of obstacles and to a doorway marked with an ‘M.’ Initially you’ll simply have to make a couple jumps or maybe manipulate a lift or two to get there – later on, though, you’ll need to manipulate relatively complex series of color-coded switches to alter the platforms available to you, add and remove blocks to pieces of floor for a safe passage, and contend with a couple enemies. When you also consider that there are multiple Mini Marios in each stage starting in different corners of the level, and that hitting a certain switch may benefit one but put the others in danger, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 becomes an interesting balancing act. You often need to do a series of fluid, precise maneuvers, especially since your score on a given level is greatly increased if you deliver all the Mini Marios to the goal in a continuous chain.
A few problems with the controls do crop up from time to time; specifically, it can be a little tricky to lead a line of Mini Marios at a time. You’ll need to tap all of them when you want to stop and think about what to do next, but if you’re dealing with a lot of Marios and you don’t tap them quickly enough, a stray Mini will bump into others and get them moving again. This can have potentially disastrous results that end up killing a couple of the Mini Marios. It also takes a couple levels to get down the feel of exactly how accented your strokes must be to get just one Mario to do what you want amidst crowds of them. Luckily, these issues more or less evaporate as you play the game and develop a comfort level with it.
After getting to the end of a floor, you’ll need to do battle with Donkey Kong. These encounters basically have you manipulating a canon-like device with a crank and shooting the Mini Mario’s you’ve collected at Kong. After you hit him a half-dozen times or so, he’ll slink into the next area and you can move on. These battles are pretty interesting at first but quickly lose their luster; luckily, they’re dead easy, so you’ll be moving on to the next set of levels in to time flat.
Once you’re finished forging through the story mode – which will probably take you about five or six hours – there’s a pleasantly robust level creation tool called the Construction Set to mess with. After completing a floor in the story, you’ll unlock the theme and be able to use it to create your very own Mario vs. Donkey Kong levels. The themes run a wide breadth of aesthetic looks, and concise names like ‘Pipeworks’ and ‘Tropical Island’ make getting the feel of your level down quick and easy. Once you’re in the editor, you’ll find a simple but effective set of tools that allow you to easily place down pathways, enemies, Mini Marios, and all of the pipes and other mechanisms you found in the single player. It can take a lot of play testing to get your level working right, but the ability to quickly jump between the editor and a play test keep things moving along, and if the Construction Set rubs you the right way, it’s not too hard to imagine it becoming an extremely addictive diversion.
Some great audiovisuals lend Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2’s addictive gameplay a good helping of charm. Graphically, the game is bright and colorful, with lots of detailed sprites that animate well and have lots of different little touches. Let a Mini Mario take too big a fall, for example, and his ceramic body will shatter on impact. The game is played entirely on the touch screen, with the top screen used just to show your current score and other similar bits of info. The boss battles with DK use both screens for a greater sense of scale, and the Construction Set uses the top screen to give you a great, at-a-glance view of your creation. The audio has a collection of moderately memorable tunes that you’ll find stick with you after you’ve turned off your system. The cute sounds made by the Minis and by your adversaries also get the job done rather nicely. The problem is there’s just not enough to the sound design for it to really stand out. After spending a short amount of time with the game, you’ll likely find that the audio can more or less drown out at times.
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 takes some bold steps in changing the gameplay of the original – and it pays off. The end result is a markedly better package with more content, greater difficulty, a colorful presentation, and a potentially addictive editor. Although some control issues crop up from time to time and the boss battles are a little flat, this is a puzzler worth checking out.