STACK #197 Mar 2021

GAMING REVIEWS

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SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD + BOWSER’S FURY PLATFORMER MULTIPLAYER OUT NOW

Mario and friends get catty in the latest Wii U title to be expertly recycled for Nintendo’s Switch. Plus, there’s a bonus game. Let’s-a go exploring! Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad stumble upon a glass pipe protruding from the ground. Our intrepid quartet enter it and plop into a curious kingdom of fluffy growths, marshmallow platforms,

green stars and more weird stuff – business-as-usual for Mario games. You see, while Super Mario 3D World will be new to many, it’ll also be familiar – like that old pair of trackie dacks that you just can’t

TOAD DIE FOR! Joy of joys, Captain Toad returns! The original Super Mario 3D World spawned Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and its isometric puzzles, starring everybody’s favourite mushroom-headed Indiana Jones wannabe, and mini-adventures are dotted about the various worlds.

Traipsing through eight main worlds and four unlockable bonus ones, you’ll encounter most platformer tropes that have existed since Mario first tugged on the dungarees and jumped. As Nintendo basically invented the genre, it’s a great tour into the genius minds of their designers. Meanwhile, Bowser’s Fury is a whole new game. Bowser Jr. calls upon Mario to help him stop his poppa’s dark rampage. Mario, accommodating chap that he is, agrees to assist the chip off the old turtle/dragon/lizard thing. The feline theme persists, as you uncover ‘Cat Shines’ to power lighthouses, while dealing with regular outbreaks of Bowser losing his nut at you in fiery fashion. Ultimately, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury should tide us over nicely until Super Mario Odyssey 2 …There is a Super Mario Odyssey 2 on the way, isn’t there Mr. Miyamoto? AF

chuck out. The music recalls Mario’s first steps, as do several gameplay mechanisms. Imagine Super Mario 64 diced into bite- sized, flag-ended chunks like the original 2D platformers. Naturally new stuff’s been introduced. Mario and up to three friends simultaneously can go catty, meowing it up with wall- climbing and pounce abilities. Then there’s cloning – we’re seeing double here, four Marios!

HITMAN III

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The grand finale to the ‘World of Assassination’ trilogy, Hitman III saves some of the most breathtaking levels and razor-sharp encounters for last, providing a stunning conclusion to one of the best franchise reboots in recent memory. Gameplay-wise, the moving parts of

Hitman III remain largely akin to those in the previous two entries. As the unnervingly calm Agent 47, players are deployed into large, complex sandbox levels in which any number of NPCs run on highly detailed schedules, with the

REF JAM Hitman III is packed with knowing references. Like delving into the depths of a dystopian cyberpunk data facility ripped straight from the year 2077, or when crafting pistol silencers out of aluminium cans à la Ellie in The Last of Us Part II .

One of the unique pleasures is figuring out the different restrictions and opportunities that exist in a level, while also creating your own with new gear that you unlock. There’s an extremely satisfying balancing act to be performed, between reacting to your target’s movements, taking advantage of the tools available to you (fibre-wire, crowbars, feather dusters…), and creating the circumstances leading to a ridiculously massive chandelier falling on the head of a powerful Russian oligarch. Hitman III is a narrative capper to Agent 47’s journey, and a final chance for developers IO Interactive to experiment with the core gameplay loop before moving on to new projects. It’s these experiments that make Hitman III a success, and that makes knowing that the series is done for now sting just that little bit more. NK

map itself a patchwork of public and private spaces that 47 may need to gain access to. Agent 47 can don disguises to slip past security, scale buildings to gain a vantage point, and deploy more tricks than we could list here in his mission to eliminate his targets. Unique to each location are ‘Mission Stories’, which are structured ways to get closer to your target, usually involving specific interactions or disguises.

12 MARCH 2021

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