Bobbler's Final Game: A Testament To A New Standard Of Platformer Games

Review by thelonewanderer on Monday, August 15th 2016

With "Mario's Revenge" Bobbler heads out to make the best game sploder has, and will ever, see. Did this game accomplish his goals, or has his final game run flat?

Funnily enough, for a game that was supposed to do everything right, the only thing I think it did perfectly was the general aesthetic look of the game. It is a marvelous creation with a nice blend of graphics in the vein of Mario and the aesthetic idea of creating a game that is 2.5D (That is one half a D, also known as a u, away from 3D if anyone is unaware). But who is to be credited for this? As we know, Undead is the sole-creator of the graphics in this game and while I believe he played a huge role in crafting the look of the game I think that what really pulled the game away from "looking good" to "looking gooder" is Bobbler's wonderful implementation of these graphics into creating a beautiful aesthetic look. Now I would like to make a distinction here between graphics and aesthetics, in real-world gaming, graphics are simply how crisp a game looks while aesthetics is the actual art-direction the game follows. This is why a game like Psychonauts (which was released back when the Xbox and PS2 were still things you would gift someone as a huge present) can be considered one of the best looking games while its graphics are really outdated. When I apply this to Sploder, I think of graphics as, well, each single graphic in the game, while aesthetics are the design elements implemented to put it all together. This shows that, when it really comes down to it, Aesthetics influence how beautiful a game is far more than Graphics

Now why is this important? I'll tell you!

Both members (Undead and Bobbler) have taken it upon themselves to start a huge argument as to who deserves more credit when it comes to the look of the game (and the game itself). We know that Undead is responsible for the graphics and that Bobbler is responsible for the aesthetics, following what we said earlier that Aesthetics > Graphics, I hope to settle this by saying that Bobbler deserves more credit when it comes to the look of the game.

Well, we now know how the game succeeded, but how did it fail?

There are only really two other features a game can employ, a Story and Game-mechanics. Since we have already talked about one part of the art form it is fair to talk about the second form - Story.

With the Story we follow a slightly-juvenile and slightly-comedic rendition of the typical Mario story. With it's few quips, it fits with the aesthetic design and accomplishes what it desires to do. This being said, I cannot in fair mind call this story anything but above average in comparison to the standard story provided in most sploder games. It doesn't do anything new, or special, and is a farcry from Sploder's best story. If Bobbler wants to own the game with the title "Best Game To Ever Be Created on Sploder" he will need to work on his creative writing, and in this reviewer's opinion - create a more mature product.

Finally we come to the game-mechanics, for what is a game without game-mechanics? Unorthodox is what it is. Fortunately for this game, Mario's Revenge is chalk-full of game-mechanics. Most are borrowed and re-hashed from his other games making the first few levels seem a bit derivative of his older games. Elevator Sequences, while slightly improved on, require players to apply twitch-finger reactions or to memorize barrel locations. Question-mark platforming sections hint to locations of empty bricks which you can fall through, but tiles you can walk on are spread slightly too far apart so even with this knowledge you are bound to fail multiple times. The railroad section takes the on-rails game aspect quite literally and fails to impress, while the mech-suit versus randomly placed enemies bit shows the assumed limitations of enemy placement and serves as a way to break you away from how impressive the game could be. This being said, the game does not punish the player for making mistakes, and rewards creativity. Something that most games are missing and do need.

So is this game the best game on Sploder? No, it isn't in my mind. That being said, my standards for game-making are a far throw from your average members, it may indeed be the best game on Sploder for 90% of the members and I would be able to see why.

Now I pose you guys with a quest of your own - Join the Forums at www.sploder.info, make a game with the best story you could possibly make, and send it to me through personal message, my username is ( ͡� ͜ʖ ͡�). If you do this, I will give it a playthrough and it may possibly be *suggested for the EGL!

* - Results may vary