I disagree, even after knowing your preferred method of reviewing. This game is the reason that we've turned the Wii on more times since Thanksgiving than January thru November this year. I don't know what anyone can expect from a side-scroller other than multiple on-screen characters. For reference: two-player side-scroller Alien Hominid HD got a 3.5...

And Marc - I'm not harping on your review on purpose. I'm respectfully disagreeing. I'm more surprised than anything else, because you tend to favor the more casual games, and I often lean on your optimism when on the fence about them.

I just wrote a huge huge huge comment and the site deleted it for me - something to do with losing a cookie, I think, because I just registered to post it.

I'm too frustrated to write it all out again, but the short of it was that I totally disagree with the co-op score.

This game gets played at least once a day at our household, almost every time with two - four players, rotating around 6 or 7 people (four roommates and three friends that have been coming over with increasing frequency to play. None of them knew each other, but they've all played together now and seem to be getting on rather well, haha)

My girl and I play all the time and I could see it being "divorce mode" as penny arcade joked, if we took it too seriously.

You need to take dying lightly, be willing to sacrifice yourself or laugh off bad jumps, and just have a good time with it. Eventually you get into the zone and it's much much much much more fun playing with others.

I would have given this game a 5 out of 5 for co-op, simply because it's already been played more this year than any other game in the past 3 for wii OR ps3. Mario Kart got a fair amount of play around here, and still does from time to time, but nothing has ever hooked this many disparate people so well.

Also, not to mention, you seem to think the bumping thing is all negative.

We've been pulling off increasingly complicated maneuvers using several players. We once had a stack of four players all jumping off each others heads to reach a secret area. I've saved people's lives by jumping to bump them up when I saw they were going to miss a jump. True, I've also thrown people off cliffs accidentally, but that's been just as funny. Play with it and you'll see that it can be an absolutely amazing feature.

Sorry, third comment, I know, but I had most of this in the original one that got deleted.

The picking up a player feature is amazing - two players stacked can run through a group of coins and get them all so quickly. You can also have two people fly if the top person has the propeller hat. There's a billion uses for this kind of thing. The longer I play, it seems like every feature of this game that I see people complain about was put in for a very good reason.

I'm sort of amazed at this score, all of my coworkers who own the game have been raving about how much fun the co-op is.

Of course, I haven't played it.

I think part of the problem might be playing with kids (who might have less patience or take "dying" more personally) or playing with people with a competitive nature.

It really really really is co-op, not competitive. Going into it with a competitive mindset is probably going to make it a lot less fun.

It's also pretty old school, which means it's challenging. On average we play through each level many times before beating, but it's really rewarding when we get it.

I was surprised as well when Marc told me he didn't care for the game, because I had heard so many people were enjoying it.

But I felt he defended his reasoning quite well, and for anyone that's serious about the platforming elements it sounds like the co-op hinders it.

It sounds like it's a real big issue when playing with "players of different skill levels."

@Jim Alien Hominid is a beat em up, not a platformer. I'd give it a 3.0 for co-op using our new review style. You don't have to worry about friendly fire in AH.

By no means should anyone assume the game isn't good because the co-op score is low. It's nearly perfect except for the issues I mentioned. Chaotic play can be fun, I know; we've spent hours playing Bomberman, which is not co-op at all. But in a game with levels, and bosses, and an end goal, the chaos can be frustrating.

This is easily the best Wii game of the year, and I can see why everyone loves it. I just don't see it as a great co-op experience. Maybe the three of us just suck at platforming!

With so many co-op innovations in recent games over the last couple of years, it's a matter of perspective whether or not New Mario Bros brings enough co-op to the table. For us and our Thanksgiving guests, the $50 was well-spent. I was glad to tear my brothers away from Call of Duty splitscreen versus for a while and to have a casual four-player co-op game worth playing.

I think it's good to see reviewers who don't let the games popularity get in the way of their review.

My personal score for this would also be higher. perhaps a 4.

What would be nice is to be able to choose whether or not you can bump a person around or not. Perhaps have different modes where you can, and cannot do that sort of stuff with each keeping track of their own set of levels. (all the same levels in all modes, but you have to clear them seperately in each mode.)

I have to say that its been a lot of fun playing the game with people that I dont normally get to play with.

I honestly think there is way too many Mario games. Yes it is Nintendo's staple, but couldn't they have anything NEW come out? Halo is pretty much Xbox's staple, but I hope it doesn't do the same as Mario.

Giving any Nintendo first party game anything less than a 4 seems brave nowadays as the fans will jump on you! If I can not play this with my Nephew there is no point - a Mario game should be open to all.

To be fair, he gave the game a 4.5 in relation to other review scores, he gave the Co-Op a 2.5.

--- Replying to xxW4R EAGL3xx -----

To be fair, Chief is getting there. Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3. . . And then all of a sudden there's Halo Wars, Halo ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo Waypoint (not a game, but still a game being paraded and used).

Sure, Mario's list is longer, but he's been around a lot more often. Master Chief is going to be there soon, I think -- there's really no doubt about that. Halo is fun once in awhile, but after the main trilogy of games, it's gotten to be a bit silly. I can't blame them, though; businesses are out for money, and if it's got "Halo" in the title, it'll sell millions.

As for the review in question, I sort of agree with the score. I love playing it with my mom, as she hasn't played a game in years, save a Rock Band fling that confused her enough to quit after one song. So, sitting next to her and playing, the score definitely seems higher, because I'm getting to play with someone I don't get to very often.

Then the 2.5 hit when my 3 best buds and I played. We had lots of laughs, sure, but we died so much by bumping into each other. "Sorry!" was one of the most common words thrown around. I'd love to see an option to turn off the bumping and stuff, and just let us walk through one another -- it'd make the game so much easier to handle in groups of three or four. As it stands, since we were killing each other more than the enemies and environment were, we couldn't see ourselves playing for longer than segments of one-world-stands.

It's a great game for catching up and bonding with someone you don't get to game with often. But when you try to get some larger co-op in, where everyone truly does want to get to the end of the level and work together, the frustrations become a bit more apparent.

I am always a fan of Marc's reviews (The watchmen one is probably the best review I have ever read!) but I must say after playing through the game last weekend with a group of 4 people. Ranging in age from 16 - 25 we had a blast the co-op was great. I mean you can shoot each other in left 4 dead and that gets annoying at times but doesn't take away from the co-op in the least. Not having a propeller helmet and having to pick up a friend and boost him up just high enough to get that last coin or to get to those hard to reach places is great. So I would have to disagree with the co-op rating as well 4.0 would be my rating but a 3.5 at least.

I see the points in this review, and as a game designer I would certainly never have made the players collide with one another in a game like this. It's like having extreme friendly fire turned on all the time.

However, that said, for lack of the "perfect" mode of co-op in a Mario game, this is certainly quite wonderful and my wife and I really enjoy it. The bubble has been used to great effect, usually as a last-ditch "save yourself" effect when one player gets too far ahead of the other, or one is about to fall off, or whatever.

The interesting thing is that I feel like the "always having friendly fire on" requires and encourages more cooperation for true success. You can go in and fight and bicker through levels, but you'll never succeed on the harder ones that way. The only way to really succeed is to pay close attention to what your teammates are doing.

Now, granted, I've only played this with two players (not 1, 3, or 4), and I imagine that with 3-4 players this would be a nightmare. But with 2 it's great. One of the most enjoyable Mario games I've played in a long time (and I've played them all), and a lot of that is because it is so hardcore-oriented along with having co-op in it.

For those who were hoping for a co-op experience that would allow for players of wildly different skill levels to play together (which would have been ideal by far), I can see why this scored a 2.5/5. For myself and my wife, this has been a 4.5/5 experience or higher, because of the co-op and the game experience in general. If the co-op had been a bit better, this would have been a 5/5, definitely.

One comment about the mushrooms being the secondary items coming out of question blocks. From my experience, that is not actually true. If all of the players are small, then yes, that's what happens. Normally in single player you would just get a single mushroom, so the extra powerup is sort of a bonus. But if there are a mix of big-or-better players and small players, you will get one good powerup per non-small player, and one mushroom per small player. If everyone is non-small, you just get good powerups. Seems sensible to me.

This game is not perfect, and part of me can really understand why you gave it a 2.5/5, but I hope that doesn't turn people away from the game who might otherwise enjoy it. It's quite good in co-op, under the right circumstances. It's that caveat there that's the cause of all the trouble.

Adam Blue says...
Very interesting angle to go at the co-op. I saw it as a true co-op experience where you are moving through the levels together to reach the end. If you're too far ahead of the screen that may enable a buddy to die, you're doing it wrong.

I've only done the co-op with a total of three players. One was a girl with no experience, the other a four year old. It was my job to keep them alive and moving throughout the stages, which opens a whole new way to play co-op games. Jump on shells before they hit them, throw them over jumps, guide them to power-ups, etc. Going at it any other way is no longer co-op.