mario minis guided in mario vs. donkey kong: minis march again!

the mario vs. donkey kong series has been a waiting game for me, namely, waiting to slog through the early entries so i could get to the games that i might actually enjoy. i wasn’t a fan of the simplistic platforming of either donkey kong ’94 on game boy or mario vs. donkey kong on GBA, and although i liked the more puzzle-like aspects of mario vs. donkey kong 2: march of the minis, having to guide the minis with the stylus felt cumbersome. i found myself looking forward to the follow-ups, in which the games take a more lemmings like approach and you don’t directly control the minis’ movements.

which brings us to mario vs. donkey kong: minis march again!, one of the first-party highlights of the DSiware service. the game feels like a big improvement over the previous games in the series, as the minis’ paths are fixed and predictable and instead of directing them the focus is on clearing a path to the exit for them. most of the time this boils down to removing blocks in their path, or adding blocks to either create staircases or create walls to force them to turn around. the larger multi-screen stages can get a bit unwieldy and the controls are still a little fussy, but the gameplay is much more satisfying than before and there’s a surprising amount of variety in goals for each of its 100+ stages. simply passing each level isn’t too difficult, but trying to reach the “gold star” score definitely increases worthwhile replayability. the boss battles are identical to the previous game and are still repetitive and dull, but i’m sure many people find the level editor and opportunity to download custom levels (including ones from nintendo) a huge draw.

all in all this was an enjoyable-enough diversion, although the series still has yet to reach the heights of the best of the genre, such as toki tori for GBC. will the next entry, a full DS release, do better? we’ll just have to see …

guide the minis to these mario vs. donkey kong 3 links:
– review at nintendolife.com
– list of unlockables at gamefaqs

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