Earlier this week, I played 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Mario Bros. Wonder with three other editors at TheGamer. Or at least, I tried to. For a game that is otherwise amongst the GOTY contenders in one of the strongest years we've ever seen, its online play is nothing short of abysmal. It turns all of your friends' into ghosts, and you feel like a ghost too, playing out some macabre spectacle of a multiplayer game long past, floating lifelessly through levels, haunting memories, screaming out and never being heard.

It's worth noting there are two basic ways to play multiplayer with friends. The first is to all be in the same place, and play a four player game. I've done the two player version of this, and it works fine. There's no collision, and the idea is you're both exploring together, dropping standees to help the other players out, and death turns them into a ghost who can be saved if you get to them, or they get to you, within five seconds. While there's no collision, you can ride any player using Yoshi, so that can be helpful with harder to reach areas. It's not the most robust multiplayer in the world, but it works and it's fun. The online version only has one of those things.

To its credit, it works. In a Nintendo game, the online play working is not a foregone conclusion, so there is hope for playing Wonder online. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring the fun. Technically, you could play in a similar way to the local multiplayer, all running through the level at once. You can still place standees, and can still revive ghosts. However, it never feels like a team effort. In local multiplayer, you move the screen collectively, and need to take care to be doing the whole thing as one. Online, you're all just ghosts. Someone can stay at the start line while I race ahead, or we can even be playing different levels.

As usual, there's no chat via the game itself, so we were talking over Discord. But doing it this way, just all playing whatever, is basically just having a phone call while all of you run through different Mario levels. Why even play Mario at all, when the experience would be the same if I was playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man 2 instead? Super Mario Bros. Wonder has a way around this, but again, only kindဣa.

You can check out the carnage for yourself here

If you want to play together more actively, you can race each other through levels. There's a block at the start of each level that appears when multiplayer is active, and everyone who hits it will enter into the race. Once more, if you fall behind you can't see what's happening with other players, but maybe that's to be expected of a race. That's no different from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mario Kart, or if you're a gamer of taste, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Crash Team Racing. But in Mario Kart, the big draw is the power-ups and the unique ways they change the game. That's how it works in Super Mario Bros. Wonder too... except in multiplayer.

Since the only way to actively play with friends is to race them, you're incentivised to rush through levels as fast as possible. This means never looking for secrets, never touching the Wonder Flower, and not even wasting an extra second to hit the checkpoint. Start to finish in a straight line, no time for anything else. It turns the game into Sonic, and while Sonic has always been a distant second to Mario, Sonic games work whether you rush through them as fast as you can or stop to smell the chao gardens. Mario was not made to be dashed through at breakneck pace, and nowhere has that ever been more true than Wonder. By ignoring its secrets, you're not just missing out on some hidden treats, you're only playing half the game.

And yet, that's the only way to play multiplayer online. Either play the full game separately, or half the game together. You'd think a character with the most popular kart racing, party, and arcade sports games to his name might know a thing or two about helping people play together, but I guess not. Super Mario Bros. Wonder is great, as long as you have absolutely no friends.

Next: After Wonder, It's Time For Super Mario Odyssey 2