A game that really drew me to this year’s Eurogamer expo was Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. My attention span is not my greatest quality; I much prefer a good handheld game that I can play at my convenience, rather than a long RPG which can have some gamers hooked for hours on end (no names mentioned…). However, much to my surprise this game introduced me to a new small-scale version of an RPG on a handheld. This originality tweaked my interest as to whether I could enjoy an RPG style game on a handheld console.
The game switches between three characters: Mario and Luigi are found together inside Bowser’s body for the first part of the game, exploring a 2-D platform-style environment. However, battles are still turn based, and are initiated by touching the enemies on-screen. Bowser explores the Mushroom Kingdom in a 3/4 overhead-view world, much like the previous Mario & Luigi games, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.
However, further into the game, Mario & Luigi can leave Bowser’s body to explore the Kingdom as well. From this point onwards, they can then use pipes to go back inside Bowser’s body if they wish.
The plot of the game revolves around a mysterious infection called “The Blorbs” which is taking over the Kingdom. The infection makes the Toads grow in size, and causes them to roll around against their will. The Mario brothers, as part of a council, are called in to discuss what needs to be done – the apparent cause some strange item called a “Blorb Shroom”. However, the meeting is disturbed by Bowser, who is up to his usual tricks and trying to kidnap Princess Peach. But Mario, Peach’s permanent knight in shining armour once again fights him and defeats him and saves the fair maiden.
Bowser later finds himself in a strange forest, where a dodgy figure offers him a “Lucky Mushroom”, promising him that it will grant him power to finally defeat Mario. However, it causes Bowser to go ballistic and inhale everything in his path, including everyone in the council meeting before collapsing. Mario and co., as well as the council, are shrunk to tiny proportions and find themselves inside Bowser’s body. The mysterious figure takes over both Peach’s and Bowser’s Castle. When Bowser awakens, he tries to reclaim his castle; meanwhile, Mario and Luigi, their friends, and the rest of the inhaled Toads must work alongside Bowser from within in order to find an exit, stop the bad guy, and rescue Princess Peach (yet again, trouble must be her middle name!).
The battle system is a continuation of that from the previous Mario and Luigi titles, and this time Bowser is also a playable character. Bowser’s battle system is much like Mario and Luigi’s, although fights alone, much stronger than the italian plumbers. He can also gain the ability to purposely inhale his enemies later on, enabling Mario and Luigi to fight the enemy inside Bowser, in a strange sort of Bowser-Mario co-operation.
The game is controlled via the X,Y,A,B buttons – with Mario and Luigi each being assigned two of the buttons. In the platform areas, you control both of their directions with the D-pad, but must press their individual jump buttons for the platforming elements – although I found this a little odd, I’m sure it’s something you’d get used to. Similarly, battle commands for the brothers are also performed with their respective buttons, many of the attacks being performed like mini-games – such as timing button presses to kick a shell back and forth off of an enemy to string up a combo and increase the damage of the attack.
What makes this game different to the previous two installments is the introduction of the ranking system, where players increase their rank as they level up. By earning ranks, the characters are able to equip more items, buy more equipment, and maybe earn a new item. In the game, there are 6 ranks for Mario and Luigi and 4 ranks for Bowser.
A great feature of this game is the minigames. Being quite the avid fan of minigames (possibly as result of low attention span or indeed the cause of it??) it was great to learn that this game has introduced more minigames than the previous two games which only featured one. The minigames within the game revolve around the parts of Bowser’s body including strengthening his arms and legs (each an independent minigame) as well as helping Bowser digest his food. One of the minigames even results in Bowser being made into a giant, which allows the player to enter a new battle system where the DS is held open like a book, and the stylus and microphone are used to control the attacks rather than the A, B, X or Y buttons, for example blowing the microphone results in Bowser breathing fire.
In this game, you gain Skill Points (SP) which work in the same way as Bros. Points (BP) from the previous games, however with the introduction of Bowser they needed to be renamed. Further to this, you can also acquire items by collecting 10 “Attack Parts”. Once all ten parts of an item have been collected, the player can then repeatedly use the completed item, but, using it requires set amounts of skill points, much like MP in traditional RPGs. Bowser works in a slightly different way, he can also gain special attacks, but in order to do so he must free his minions or collecting Blitties which he can give to Broque Monsieur. Furthermore, in comparison to Mario and Luigi who require the directional pad to perform special attacks, all of Bowser’s attacks use the touch screen to function.
Overall, I found this an enjoyable game which uses all elements of the DS controls. At times, I found controlling both Mario and Luigi simultaneously a little tricky but this is more than likely due to my lack of hand-eye coordination rather than a technical issue. I am sure with a bit of practice I will soon get the hang of it. The game is graphically similar to the previous Mario RPG with a more traditional battle system, Paper Mario. The game also keeps to its classic platforming roots with level similar to the classic Mario style that we all know and love. However, this game does shows clear progression with a more enhanced RPG style battle system which will able to those gamers who want an RPG that is not some time-consuming as the ones on the PS3 and Xbox which can end up consuming your life.
-Sam
