The game was not great, but I did expect a lot from the game, if you get it expect very little you you may enjoy it.
User Rating: 5 | Mario vs. Donkey Kong GBA
Mario vs Donkey Kong is a game that could have been sooo much better if they had tried harder with the game. The ideas were really good, but the presentation, well I think it was bad. My brother liked the game more than I did, but he did say it was bad... I really don’t know what the reviewer was smoking when he gave it an 8. Really! Maybe a 6 or 7, but the game is pathetically easy, but to make up for it it’s glitchy. (mind, I tend to rail on the bad things) Gameplay: The game is longer than it looks, it show four world, each with 5 levels and a boss, there are four more worlds with 4 levels and a boss, each of these levels are half as long, but I think that they are better than the first ones. There are also expert levels, which are a harder version of the first half of the original levels, basically, from what I can tell. To be honest, my brother and I died most of the time because of either glitches in the game or the fact that Mario has really weird handling. He goes from zero to top (which is pathetically slow mind you) immediately. Mario was never fast, but he wasn’t slow either (except in the head). And what were you thinking Nintendo? Mario has a crappy jump. Mario not being able to jump well?!? That’s like one of his trademarks! That’s almost as bad as making Sonic slow! Sorry, ranting. Okay, one of the worst things about the game was that you would die a lot, and when you did you repeated that little part of the level. Y’know how some games are hard and you die a lot but they’re still fun? Well Mario vs DK was frustrating, not hard. I think it was because of the short repetitions. As I said Mario could die from falling. The thing was, we could never tell when he was going to die. He would fall on his back and take forever to get up if he fell from too high but didn’t die from it, so sometimes you would think he was dead. The Mini Mario idea was clever, they were so dumb, it was almost too much. That pretty well managed to work, they would hurl themselves to their death trying to follow you, but that was okay. The thing that was funny was that Mario could stand on them and jump off them, but if a bad guy so much as touch them, they’d die. Doesn’t make sense but okay. Maybe I’m being too harsh on the game. It did have some clever things. It took ideas from other Mario games and stuck them together. Like if you’re hit once you die, and the whole pick up the bad guys thing from Mario 2. They brought back the falling fruit from DK Jr. and the bosses had shades of the original Donkey Kong arcade game. So I can see why some people might like the game. But I don’t know.... Graphics and Sound: I don’t really care that much about either of these, but I’ll tell you anyway. The music was up to Nintendo’s standards, aka really good. Mario was really chatty, and I really wish they’d give him a decent voice, God help us. Anyway, He did the whole bit with his jumping, y’know the “Hoo” “Wa” and “Yahoo” and when he falls too far he does the “Oof”. I’ve also noticed that Mario has lost his silent hero thing now, he talks in the game. Weird. I guess it’s hard to keep them that way, huh? The one thing that really annoyed me was the Mini Marios, they had an even higher voice than Mario for one thing. And when they got off-screen the would go “Hey Mario!” about every two seconds. That made me want to get a shotgun. The graphics were fine. It was kinda goofy, well not kinda, it was goofy. It didn’t really matter, the story didn’t make sense, but whatever. The problem I had was DK felt a little out of character at the end of the game, but, as I said, whatever. It would have been fine if I had liked the game better. Now, most of the reviews I have seen for this game say it was good, or at least decent. So maybe my brother and I are special, or critical, I donno. So if you see this game for cheap, go ahead, you may like it... Perhaps if you don’t expect much, you’ll like the game. 
