Back in the CCCR, aka Control Customization Reviews Revisited, is a column where we review control customization options in video games.
It's been many long winters since we've been Back in the CCCR, but I thought I'd buy a Mario with my Christmas money and got exactly what I deserved. If there's anything that fires me up to write, it's muddled and overmapped controls with duplicate buttons that offer no customization whatsover.
I should be honest, though, and admit that New Super Mario Luigi U Deluxe Wii Brothers does have one option, and it's quite a pickler. The face buttons of the Switch controller (A, B, Y, X in the SNES diamond layout) are mapped in pairs to two functions - run and jump. Actually, it's a whole lot more functions than that, but hang tight. By default, A/B jump and Y/X run. If you'd like, "Controls 2" will swap the functions of B and X. However, A must remain as jump and Y must remain as run. This doesn't bother me so much as that I just don't get it*. Why not also swap the other two? Or just put the same-function buttons opposite each other (B/X run, A/Y jump) so that the player can get any configuration just by laying their thumb differently. Isn't that the point of dual mapping anyway?
Anyway, am I the only one that feels like Super Mario controls are getting kind of crappy? First of all, after playing various 3D Mario games, pressing down midair to ground-pound feels awful, especially on the already subobtimal non-gated analog stick or C-buttons. It's a dual mapping of actions that for maximum precision need to be synced - a ground-pound is a targeted action, and the targeting is performed by moving the stick while Mario is midair. So there's a moment when the player has Mario in position and now needs to swing down to actually trigger the action, meaning there will always be a delay. Compare to 3D Mario, where the L/R button is an independent input and frame-perfect timing isn't all that hard.
Then there's spin jump. Oh, the terrible spin jump. The default mapping on R/ZR is sensible enough if you're going to dual-map the face buttons like described above. Pressing R/ZR in mid-air performs a mid-air twirl for a bit of extra air-time - this is even more sensible, since there will be situations when a player needs to hold run, hold jump, and be ready to twirl, and all three on face buttons would preclude this. But then they start throwing wrenches in the gears. As is, this was too simple? complicated? so pressing jump again in midair ALSO performs the twirl, I guess for when your elderly grandfather is over for Toadette co-op and can only remember one button. This is a problem, because holding A midair has a different function - it extends jump height and puts Mario into enemy-bounce state. And these too functions are occasionally at odds: for instance if the player wants to do a short hop onto an enemy and bounce off (a common setup for jumps just out of normal reach). The correct button input for this would be tap A (short jump) then press and hold A (bounce state) before landing on the enemy. In Nu Luigi Mario: Two Deluxe Wii Brothers, this input sequence will trigger a midair twirl, slowing Mario's descent and fucking with the timing of the landing. This point, you could argue, is not inherently bad. It's just increasing the technicality of the gameplay. If you want to short hop and bounce without a twirl, you now need to time the second A to exactly the landing on the enemy. But didn't we just get through discussing an example where the gameplay has become less technical? We can't go both these directions at once. And the short hop and bounce has been in Mario Brothers since day one - for over 30 years - so I don't know why it needs to change now**. Just leave twirl on the other input you already established for it.
As usual, this stuff wouldn't be so frustrating if it wasn't done correctly right next door. It shows, or reinforces, that their focus with these games isn't solid action, but loosely sorta getting the right idea so you can play with your newborn baby and dog. Why does it matter if you can't get a frame-perfect ground-pound? asks Miyadumbo. We made it so that you can set a controller on your pregnant wife's stomach and the baby can kick Mario through the levels! And if your child was born with no head they can still beat the game without looking at the screen! More than anything, what makes Nintendo weird isn't so much that they pick weird targets, but that they refuse to broaden their aim just by adding in some very simple configuration (which I suppose does fit into the mentality of not considering your customers adults - we're having peas for dinner because I said so). I mean, is it really going to fuck with kids' heads so terribly if you let them put spin jump on a face button? You don't even write manuals for your games anymore.
*Actually, it does grate an extra 50% because the same exact "swap B and X" was the only control option in Zelda: BoW, and was substantially more pointless and obstructive there.
**I can't be fucked to remember when in the New Mario canon twirl was introduced - I don't remember it before this, but these games are designed with forgettability in mind.
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