Super Mario 64

2025-06-03
Motorcycle Review #4
I think if I had a family when I finally played this in 2021 I would have been on the news for a murder suicide because of that star with the snowman’s head that blows you off the ice. They would have used a picture of me jet skiing in the broadcast.

???
Might seem edgy, me giving this game a 6, especially after I complained about it so much but I did honestly enjoy my time with it. I think the big reason I'm dinging it is because this is a rating for playing it in 2022. It's a super dated game. At the time it was unparalled-- it invented a ton of the things we take for granted in 3D platformers. But from the modern era it suffers a lot from: unforgiving/non-existent checkpoints, water levels, flight cap/pole-climbing controls, and honestly being too long.

Honestly the last point is the stickler for me. There's some really great levels I enjoyed and then there's some stinkers that really drove me up a wall. But the problem is you have to collect 70 stars to "beat" the game. That means while you can skip a bunch you end up having to stick it through a lot of levels to get the stars. Hell, I started using a guide to tell me how to find all of them like 1/3rd of the way through and I still wanted to shoot myself for large portions of the game. It's a tragedy because, like I said, I really enjoyed some levels (the first one, the one with the mountain that you climb with the monkeys).

Anyway, I'm glad I played it but god damn am I happy I'm done.