Review Information
Game Reviewed Super Mario 2D Land Demo, by moonrat
Review Author Cap'n Coconuts
Created Jun 20 2014, 2:56 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview
Super Mario 2D Land is a platformer (which for some reason is classified as an Adventure game at the time of this review), which adds no new content whatsoever to the Mario formula. Unless you are new to MFGG--or perhaps even new to the Mario franchise as a whole--you will not likely enjoy this game very much, as this game is mediocre as far as fan games go.

This is a clear example of an "engine clone", and is no different from teh dozens of Hello clones made by clueless game designers who elected to use their chosen codebase as a level editor. Unless you enjoy playing boring, mediocre games, I caution you to stay away from this one. Save yourself from the endless banality.
 
Pros + The game isn't installed and consists of one file, so you only need to exercise minimal effort to remove it from your hard drive.
 
Cons - Boring and unfinished level designs.
- Adds essentially nothing new to Dragezeey's engine.
- In fact, it almost feels like a step down from his engine.
- Bugs that interfere with progression
 
Impressions
Gameplay
4 / 10
I cannot say this enough: this demo adds nothing new to Dragezeey's engine. Early demos of games like Mushroom Kingdom Fusion have more thought put into them than this one, as from the early days MKF had crossover content with Halo, Mega Man, and DOOM. Mr. moonrat, on the other hand, has used DY's engine as no more than a level editor.

And what about those levels? Well, they're nothing new either. They aren't busy and exciting enough, and for significant portions of them you aren't really being challenged at all. The first level in particular is empty in the final stretch, having nothing but elevation changes and a handful of Goombas.

I stopped playing after completing the fourth level or so. This isn't so much because I was too bored as because the world map glitched on me. See, if you go up from level 3 to a completed level 4, Mario's map sprite keeps on going past level 4's tile and merrily walks off the island cliff, into the water and finally off the top of the screen.

In other words, Mario jumped off the island cliff and drowned himself because THESE LEVELS ARE TOO BORING.
 
Graphics
5 / 10
Again, nothing really new. SMB3 graphics (with a handful of tiles not from SMB3) are all the rage here. This isn't necessarily bad, but that style is also used in almost every other fan game ever, and therefore doesn't really stand out on its own.
 
Sound
5 / 10
You've got MIDIs that have been used over and over again. If you insist on using MIDI files, at least find some that people haven't used much--or better yet, compose some yourself.

But hey, it isn't completely ear rape, so I can't say that it's horrible. But I can't say that it's good either. It falls squarely within the realm of mediocrity.
 
Replay
1 / 10
It's a demo, and a boring one at that. I'd normally give a pass to demos without replay value, as they're... well, demos. But from what I can tell from this demo, I wouldn't be playing the gold release even if it did have some sort of replay value.
 
Final Words
4 / 10
It seems that Hello's engine is not the only one with banal engine clones.

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