Dr. Mario Online RX
By popular demand (that being that one person asked), I have decided to give me take on the latest Dr. Mario release.
As most of you may know, I love Dr. Mario. Oblivion may be an enormous time-sink with it's hours and hours of content for me to explore, but it still hasn't put a dent in the countless numbers of hours that I have spent with the good Doc. I love it so much I was greatly disappointed when the doc didn't make a return in the new Smash game (travesty!). So how does the new version stack up?
Of course the standard play modes have returned (with claim of up to 4 players, although I'm not sure I could find 4 people to play with me), and there is even the new "Virus Buster" mode. I was skeptical of this mode at first (dragging the pills into place?) but it was actually really fun. There is also an online mode, complete with leader board, so I can finally see how I stack up with the competition worldwide. Not surprisingly the current Top10 all seem to be Japanese, go figure!
But now onto the bad. There are still the annoying "friend code" issues with online play (I seriously wish Nintendo would just bite the bullet and do away with it, but it ain't gonna happen) and as far as I can tell online play is restricted to standard mode on level 4. I can't imagine that this is a system limitation (and if it is then Nintendo has some serious problems with their online setup), so I can only assume that this means online was just an afterthought that was given no real effort, and that's a shame. Dr. Mario has always been a multiplayer game.
There are also a couple of other minor things that I would have liked to have seen cleared up since the N64 version, but these are mostly minor nitpicks that most people probably don't run into, but I think they deserve mention anyway. First off, there is no save feature. I know this sounds silly, but on the N64 I have been known to play games that last over 2 hours. My record on high speed was level 59, and it takes quite a while to get that far (even at 3 mins a level, times 39 levels, you get about 2 hours). And my record on medium speed was... undetermined (due to the fact that the old game stopped counting after level 99; I have yet to test if RX fixes this issue), but it did take me at least 3 hours to get up to the 3,000,000 points before I decided to just quit. Yes I know this isn't a problem that most casual gamers would run into, but it doesn't take a whole lot to fix either. Just let me "pause" the game between levels and come back to it later without having the leave the system on. Is that too much to ask?
But in the end I am glad to see Dr. Mario make a return, and finally have online play (even if it is rather sparse). And the price isn't too bad either at only $10 (it could have been a bit cheaper for what it includes, but I still find it more than worth it).
RATING: If you have a Wii and like puzzle games get it, hell I'd suggest it to any Wii owner.