Fans should cheer and welcome their old friend coming back, not just Mario but the old-school gameplay.
It won't take you long to complete the game but some levels are not easy and you might try a few times, and maybe you need to go back to store some mushroom power-up.
You can see some new and interesting designs like the moving bomb will be ignited by the falling firing stones. The mini and huge mushroom offers much fun.
The familiar and sweet world impressed me, but when I finished this game, I knew it's not the best Mario. It lacks the essence of Mario. When you play Yoshi Island, you are smiling all the time. When you see baby mario covering his eyes with his tiny hands, you cann't help smiling. People love mario not just because its smooth control and secrets, but also its lovely world full of sunshine. Sometimes, you just play some gadgets in the level, it's fun. In this new Mario, I only had a big smile when I was trying to jump for the flag and hit by the snowball.
And the secrets... Just go to gamefaqs and check the walkthrough, you'll find there's not much about the secrets in this game. When you finish collecting all the big coins, there's no more meaningful challenge. Yes, you can try to see how fast you can finish the game, but you can do that in almost every game. You won't play this new Mario for very long time. The Mario Kart, Mario vs Donkey Kong lasts much longer than this game.
If you're a huge Mario fan, you'll be absolutely touched when you take the first glance at this game. But soon you'll be as disappointed as me and hoping this is not the game you have been waiting so long. It's still a very great game, but it's just not a very "Mario" one.