Review Information
Game Reviewed Super Mario Prism, by Hello
Review Author EvilYoshiToes
Created Mar 18 2019, 9:50 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview
Hello tried something new, and that's great to see. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out well.
 
Pros + A new step for Hello
 
Cons - Unfinished in both look and feel
- Poor visuals
- Awful physics
- Bland environments
- Almost every other aspect of this game, unfortunately
 
Impressions
Gameplay
1 / 10
Mario's physics needed a lot of tweaking. He feels very awkward and weightless, and none of his moveset feels smooth. He is nearly impossible to control. His momentum doesn't stop when he lands, making it extremely difficult to platform. Overall, controlling Mario is an unpleasant experience, which is a big issue considering that's all you do in this game.

Being able to control the camera is nice, but it'd also be nice to have a camera courteous enough to re-position itself decently instead of freaking out when it goes inside a wall and positioning itself inside of Mario's model instead. Especially considering how annoying it is to use the keyboard's keys to adjust the camera, it really needs to do a better job adjusting itself.

The level design is boring and haphazardly thrown together. None of it is creative or memorable.
 
Graphics
2 / 10
Mario's animations are very rough. None of them look natural and they do not flow smoothly at all. There are also a lot of missing animations, like a landing animation (well, landing on the ground in general seems to be missing!). Some of the other characters' animations look ok, though.

The models don't have much texture at all. They look like they're made of clay and have ugly, colorless shadows. This makes them look very lifeless.

The dialogue boxes are lazily implemented. Rather than approaching a character and entering dialogue with them by pressing a button, a billboard of text appears over the characters' heads when you get to be a certain distance away from them. The billboard looks awkward and the NPCs aren't engaging at all. I think Mario galaxy had a similar mechanic where approaching characters brought up their dialogue boxes rather than the press of a button - unless it was important dialogue - but there it looked much better and was a lot less distracting.

The environments are very unnatural looking. They're really blocky and don't feel like worlds anyone could live in. This isn't really a bad thing by itself since some Mario games, like 3D World, have very stylized blocky looks to their worlds, but in a gameplay style that encourages exploration this doesn't work very well. I have no desire to explore the worlds in this game.

The lighting is bland. This sucks any potential life out of the game's visuals.
 
Sound
1 / 10
Like much else in the game, the sound feels so unfinished. The music is repetitive and there are very few sound effects. I don't even think you can hear Mario walk (or land on the ground!).
 
Replay
1 / 10
I would not replay this game.
 
Final Words
1 / 10
It's great to see a creator try something new, but this game needed a lot more time in the oven. It plays poorly, it's a visual mess, and it has no spirit.

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