Mario vs. Donkey Kong vs. Me
Plus, I feel the Pulse (Elite)
Mario vs. Donkey Kong comes out today. It’s another Nintendo remake and another safe, small bet ahead of a new console that may end up coming out in 2025. Along with Sony’s confirmation that no flagship games await the PS5 this year after Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, it may be a much slower 2024 than I had expected.
Still, there’s lots to look forward to, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong ain’t bad either. As Polygon’s Oli Welsh writes, the game “belongs in a curious lineage of Mario platformers, almost an alternate history for what the games might look like if 1985’s revolutionary Super Mario Bros. had never happened.”
Retro as it is, this remake doesn’t lack for glamor. Here are the highlights from my NPR review:
Presented with new cutscenes nearly as polished as The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the game is exquisitely animated and precisely engineered. But it can be just as frustrating as fun — and it seesaws between both extremes most when you're playing its new cooperative mode. […]
While the second-player Toad character can boost your jumps, the cooperative mode also introduces a silver key to collect and a gold one that normally unlocks each exit. While my wife and I relished the extra complexity on some levels, others completely drained our lives and left us despondent. Over time, we lost the appetite to play together.
Despite souring on the multiplayer gameplay, I still found Mario vs. Donkey Kong to be compact and clever. Think of it as an amuse-bouche compared to the sumptuous buffet that was Super Mario Bros. Wonder. $50 is steep for such an appetizer, but Mario fans and puzzle gourmands will surely eat it up.
Also this week: another review — this time for gaming hardware. Sony’s upcoming Pulse Elite wireless headset is among the better headphones I’ve tried. It’s got a much clearer mic than my PC’s Razer BlackShark, is more comfortable than the Arctis Pro, but is less comfortable than the Sennheisers I use daily. But the coolest feature? It can connect wirelessly to my PS5 and my phone at the same time — this week I listened to a meeting while playing a game (don’t tell my bosses!).
Here’s how I ended that review:
Who, then, is the Pulse Elite for? Well, Sony’s obviously catering to obsessives like me who could put the headphones on in the morning and never take them off until bed, sliding seamlessly from regular Bluetooth connections to PlayStation Link audio as the situation demands. But if you already have a decent Bluetooth headset the Elite isn’t quite revelatory enough to make me recommend it as a replacement. If you’re in the market for a pair, however, and want maximal convenience when gaming on a PS5, it’s certainly worth the investment.
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