By Ben Salter
Let me start off by saying New Super Mario Bros. Wii looks awesome, and is close to the top of my most wanted list. However, I’m still not sold on the super guide feature. I’m worried that Nintendo are trying to cater too much for casual players and, even worse, they are not trying to develop them into more skilled gamers. Essentially they are breeding an army of gaming noobs.
The super guide feature is a fancy name for auto play. If you fail a level 8 times a green box will appear when you respawn. You can chose to ignore it or smash the portly plumber’s head into it to active super guide for that level. If you do so the main character will switch to Luigi and play through the level for you in real time. At anytime you can chose to take over, but the game will still display being in help mode.
I have a whole list of problems with this. Sure I could just ignore it, but what are Nintendo doing to other, less frequent, gamers? Surely the Wii Sport type of player isn't going to improve their gaming skills if the computer takes over during all the hard bits. Isn’t that why we have easy, medium and hard settings? Developers realise gamers have different skill levels, but none of them have ever told the player to give up so it can do it for them; it’s almost insulting.
I’m sure we’ve all used a walkthrough for a game at some point or another, and to an extent it’s quite shameful for a proud gamer. It’s easy to jump onto the net and find a tip for that frustrating level you just can’t beat, but actually having that in the game is going too far. At least with a walkthrough you have to go through the shame of looking it up, and then following instructions to get past the level. At the end of the day you’re still playing the game yourself, with a little assistance. Super guide in New Super Mario Bros. Wii makes you redundant by doing everything itself. It’s like having the answers right next to a test. Actually no, it’s worse than that. It’s like having a teacher sitting next to you with a pen willing to do anything you give up on.
I’m worried about the future generations of gamers if they come to expect games to auto play when they get stuck. Sticking with Nintendo, how are they going to play through Metroid or Zelda if not only are they getting stuck in a Mario platformer, but the game is finishing off levels for them? What if they move over to one of the more adult friendly platforms? Fallout 3 isn’t going to hold their hand the entire way.
At first I didn’t think it would affect more seasoned gamers, but I’m beginning to think otherwise. With the rise of the casual gamer there are more and more titles for them and their skill level. If super guide is an overwhelming success will more games adopt the auto play feature to help out the “noobs” (as the Internet has labelled them)? Will it become standard for the game to cheat for us? You don’t even have to cheat yourself anymore!
On the other hand this could actually be good news for Nintendo fans. Maybe, just maybe, this will allow them to make harder games. We won’t know if that’s the case until we’ve finished NSMBW, but auto play could give Nintendo a license to make hard games that less skilled gamers will still buy and be able to complete.
I realise it’s a bit different doing this to a platformer, than say an FPS or action/adventure. But if it’s successful who’s to say it won’t make it into Super Mario Galaxy 2, or even Metroid: Other M? It would be an absolute disgrace if these games had anything close to a built-in walkthrough, let alone auto play. They’re meant to be challenging, you’re not meant to figure out every puzzle straight away; I just hope Nintendo know where to draw the line and don’t get too carried away.
What do you think? Are Nintendo training us to be “gaming noobs”, are they putting themselves in a position to make harder games that everyone will be able to play (computer included) or do you like the auto playing super guide feature?
Tags:
bros
Cheats
Guide
ICC
mario
New
noob
super
Walkthrough
wii
Submitted by ICC_06
21/10/2009
36
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