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Into The Pit

  • Addit
  • 09/01/2014 12:37 PM
  • 3673 views


A Game Made By: SpoonyBardOL & Isrieri
Including The Assistance Of:
Ifnkovhgroghprm, PapillonReel, Dart Zaidyer, madhair60, Elements,
Din, RedSilvers, TE-Ryan, Alex Scott, Rogue, McClain, Jikkuryuu
Created Using: Super Mario Bros. X
It's A: PLATFORMER Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 10 - 14 Hours To Complete
And It's A... COMPLETED GAME!!!


Another review request - and from Isrieri of all people!? Surely you jest! But…then again, I don’t really have anything else in mind to review at this point - so why the hell not? Challenge accepted.

I’m pretty sure that you guys have been following me throughout my stint of being some sort of a reviewer…guy, that I’ve mentioned countless times of how much I love Super RMN World and the day that it fell into my lap and it seems like that nothing has seemed to topple it as of yet with its majestic beauty and such…

At least, until today.

That’s right my friends; I have finally found the kryptonite to Super RMN World at long last! And apparently, I didn’t even have to look that very far as it came from its buddying rival series to the west in the form of the “Super Talking Time Bros.” series. What’s that, you say? You’ve NEVER of heard of Super Talking Time Bros.? Well, you guys might after reading this whole review and seeing the big “5” pop up next to its name – and how could you not? Anytime I see somebody around here give a game a 5 star rating I immediately am curious about it...that or a 1.

So apparently there’s was this whole backstory about both series’ going at it and all the members of each side having a falling out with one another and many countless wars were started because of it, but since all of that was so long ago and I wasn’t really around back then (you know, being banned, and all that), I guess that’s not really that important right now. What is important as that these guys managed to produce three games in total up here and I’m quite surprised, after playing this game, that not a lot of people talk about these games more often. Well, I guess that’s what you get when you’re trying to upstage the king.

I never really knew about any of these games until Isrieri mentioned them to me a little while ago…that and probably Solitayre – but I was too blind with Super RMN World love to even listen to them. But now I see…now I see, indeed.

Anyways, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been playing this game for the past two weeks clocking in at over 20 hours of gameplay and I’ve only uncovered around 60 of the game’s 101 stars – jesus! If it wasn’t for the fact that I want my Space Jam so badly, I would have probably held this off until then - but I can skimp out on that sort of stuff once and a while, considering I already have beaten the game, and that’s what really counts in the end, right?

Anyways, let’s go nab us a Space Jam, by…playing a game that centers around being in…space…

…It’s like fate, what can I tell ya.


The Story


Jesus, Bowser… You’ve really gone to town this time.


Looks like Bowser’s f**king out of it this time. After Mario, Luigi, Toad, Princess Peach and…Link (what?) for some reason are escorting Kirby (who looks like in this game that he’s received a total lobotomy) back to Dreamland after “borrowing” Tatanga’s Starbase (remember him from Super Mario Land?), they suddenly are being chased by Bowser’s huge array of battleships and are sent hurling off towards a mysterious anomaly in the middle of space. Well that’s just f**king great!

Upon crash landing, it appears that a whole new world to explore has open up with Bowser wreaking havoc somewhere within the area. (What a dick!)

- It looks like this a job for the Super Squad!!!

(Yeah, that kinda sounded really lame – but whaddya gonna do.)

Actually, one thing that really impressed me with this game compared to all the other SMBX games I’ve played so far is that this game actually uses a custom opening instead of just plopping you in straight into the game – and these cutscenes are pretty cool! It’s a bit odd at first glance to see Kirby there alongside with Link and company, but I suppose it works. I would have probably ditched them in favour of some other Mario characters and kept it straight to that, but then again Super RMN World had some other guest appearances in there too, so I guess that’s okay for this sort of thing.

The story really isn’t anything major to write home about - but at least it’s not something like this:



*shutters*


The Gameplay


Mario: “You…musta have me confused with somebody else…”


Super Talking Time Bros. 2.5 – The Last Levels pretty much plays like all the other SMBX games around here and all the 2D traditional Mario platformers, so if you’re used to those then you should be pretty used to this, so I don’t need to go over the controls and what not.

But what I can over is the structure of how this game breaks down in regards to its levels. You see, once you’ve gotten off the starbase, you have a choice of heading down two entirely different paths on your way to your ultimate goal towards the end. It doesn’t matter how you get there, but both paths do end up connecting to each other down towards the yellow brick road. What I absolutely LOVE about this is that once you’ve completely finished one path and have beaten the whole game, you can just take the other path and go through an entirely new set of levels and different challenges to explore. That’s a great deal! And if you have a second player along for the ride, you can race each other to see who can get to the end first. That’s just plain awesome.

Speaking of challenges, each level in the game has a particular “star” to find, sometimes two, that aren’t entirely necessary to finishing the game but is a requirement to unlock one of the two “special worlds” that this game has to offer in the end if you’re looking for more of an additional challenge. At this point of the review, I’ve collect around 65 of the game’s 101 stars, so I need a few more, but it’s something that I’m really looking forward to exploring in the near future. You need around 90 of them to fully access this world, so I’m pretty close to doing so. Although this game will probably take you around 10 hours or so to probably finish, this game can easily triple or quadruple that if you’re planning on collecting all the stars, finishing both paths and finding and completing both special worlds. There’s also the other special world that you find on your merit that doesn’t require a certain amount of stars, but those levels are more “goofball” sort of levels more than anything else else.

These stars can range from being incredibly easy to get to absolutely controller frustrating, I wanna bang my head on the coffee table, sort of hard. It’s not impossible, but it’s gonna take a while, that’s for sure. And some of these stars are just so god damn cryptic, it’s almost like you’re going to need a guide on finding some of them. I would advise against trying to find them all at first and just simply try to beat the game before undertaking this act. I initially tried to get all the stars first due to my nature, but I ended up getting ultimately frustrated before finally saying, “F*** this, let’s just beat the bloody god damn game first.”

And speaking of challenge, some of the levels, like Sushi Samba and The Void, seem like they were designed to screw with the player in mind. Now, this game isn’t as bulls*it hard as Castles – Masterpiece Set was - but it’s still pretty f**king hard. Nothing that made me ragequit and sucked all the fun out of the overall experience, but it was still pretty tough. I don’t even think 99 lives is going to cut it here – so you better stock up. Luckily, a little ways in, there’s a lot of places to get a whole slewfull of lives.

The levels themselves have some pretty nice gimmicks to them – and a lot of them are pretty fun to play through. It’s pretty much on par with Super RMN World’s level design, in my opinion, and I even like the “green star” mini-challenges there that are a nice diversion from the main game itself. Frankly, this game has the most “feel” out of all the SMBX games I’ve played so far that emulates the structure of what a traditional 2D Mario game feels like.

The only really major problem I have with some of the level designs, well, besides some of the lag that comes with some of the tricky platforming jumps, is that some of the levels absolutely require you to beat it with a certain character but the levels themselves don’t really give you that option to switch to that character when needed for a particular part. For example, in one of the stages against a boss, there’s no way to damage or hurt it unless you’re playing as Link. But there’s no Link character boxes to switch to before the fight starts, so you’re basically trying to spin jump on its head, trying to wait him out a little with the other characters and doing everything else you can before ultimately switching to Link after you die and then finally beating him. It’s not a total major game breaking issue, but it did bother me a little. At least with Super RMN World, the game’s levels would distinctly tell me that I couldn’t progress any further without switching to a particular character – and to this game’s credit, some of the levels do, do that – but not all of them do. I think some more additional testing purposes would have been greatly in order.

Also, speaking of Link, compared to Super RMN World, he’s pretty much almost useless in this game – hell, even the rest of the characters are pretty much useless besides Princess Peach. That could be just me and my sort of playstyle, but I like to think because of most of the level’s structures that this game was perfectly suited for her and was pretty much the only character I mostly played as. I still used Mario, Luigi and Link once a while when the situation called for them, but it wasn’t as frequent.

Boss fights are just as clever and just as fun to fight against. There were some real doozies here, but I really liked how all the boss battles handled themselves, here. There were some hard ones here, sure, but they were more fun than they were challenging. It’s was quite nice that these guys really put some effort into designing the boss fights in this game.


The Soundtrack


…I sure hope not.


Music wise, this game features a lot of different various Mario tunes, like from Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros and Super Mario RPG, including a boatload of other tunes from other Nintendo and non-Nintendo games, like Donkey Kong Country, The Legend Of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Gradius and the various different 2D Sonic games. You might think they all clash together in a bad way, but it surprisingly works quite well for a game like this due to the level design and structure of each of the stages being that way. I really didn’t have too much of a problem with any of the tunes used here, and I even liked how some of the authors really went out of their way to find songs that aren’t really widely familiar or memorable. That’s a good thing, in my books.

Sound effects are your typical fare here, just like all the other SMBX games, so there’s not really much to speak of here. It all works quite well, I guess.


The Aesthetics


...Really?


Overall, the entire game looks great and perfectly replicates what a Mario game looks and feels like. Some of the levels here in this game aren’t quite as artistically as good as some, but, hey, we can’t all have a White Christmas here. I also have to give a shout out to whoever it was that designed the overworld map, because, frankly, I really like the look of it. This is a game that perfectly fits the image and there’s really nothing I can say in terms of any overall improvement in this area.

The End Result


Link: “Can I go home now?”


Super Talking Time Bros. 2.5 – The Last Levels is everything you could bloody well ask of a Mario fangame – this game has it all: fantastic levels, a decent amount of challenge, even more content to find once you’ve beaten the main game, many different characters to play as, tons of little things thrown in there to make you laugh – and did I mention all the wonderful new power-up’s? It’s amazing to think that I’ve beaten this game and I’m STILL playing it in order to uncover all the rest of the levels and find all the stars in it – 20 hours in. It’s an amazing accomplishment.

I may like Super RMN World because it was a lot more streamlined and focused on being a more straight forward game where all that was needed was just to finish the level – which is perfect for a more general audience of sorts – but this game – this game – just seems to have a ton more content to explore and find with all the different levels and many different challenges. I guess that’s not really entirely fair to Super RMN World, but that’s just how it is, I suppose.

I can definitely recommend this game to any 2D Mario enthusiast or anybody that’s looking for a great platformer to satisfy their time. This game can be quite hard at times, but that’s how most old school Mario’s were back in the day. At least it’s not Castles – Masterpiece Set sort of hard…which is a good thing.

Isrieri – thanks for the recommendation. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going back to collecting some more red stars.




OVERALL GRADE:
5 / 5 - A ~ Perfection. Absolute Perfection.

Posts

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Isrieri
"My father told me this would happen."
6155
I always love how enthusiastic your reviews are, Addit. I appreciate it!

I too, love the world map. SpoonyBardOL put some professional quality love & care into it.

Any favorite levels so far?
I haven’t finished all the levels and collected all the stars as of yet, but, so far, my favorite levels are: Albino Dino Rhino Dash, High Speed Fortress, Temple Of Time, Machu Peachu, Castle Of Misfit Monsters and Storm Fortress.

Also, I just realized that YOU were the one who made that Sushi Samba level, Isrieri, and that Moonlight Mountain one too. (Grrrr…)

I actually didn’t really mind Moonlight Mountain the level itself, it was just trying to get that blasted star towards the end. I originally didn’t know about that pipe that leads to that propeller block that you can nab in order to get it, as I thought you needed to take a Yoshi up there and commit suicide in order to get it, so I tried sooooooo many times to get up there with Luigi to no avail until I thought about seeing if there was another way to get it and, lol and behold – I found the pipe with the propeller box inside. (Maybe I was just getting a bit tired that night?)

(Also, I’m wondering how many people I’ve made enemies with now, now that I’ve said that I like this one a bit more over Super RMN World?)
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