It is always a shame when you have a pretty solid game that is really ruined by a single aspect of it. Unfortunately that is exactly what happened here. The game has solid graphics and an interesting level system but alas the controls are just dreadful. They actually make the Wii Remote look good in comparison! Trust me, you’re going to be feeling rather down about the whole thing by the time you’re done. Still, this was the first new Mario game I’ve played in quite a while so that was pretty cool.

The game lets you choose between Mario, Yoshi, and Peach. Naturally I had to go with Peach because she doesn’t get many chances to shine, but also because her walking speed is slower. That is actually very important in this game because the character is always moving. How it works is that Wario has thrown a bucket over the hero’s head and so you play as a fairy who has to keep the road clear. You will tap on blocks to summon them in front of the player or attack enemies who would have been in the way otherwise. This takes a lot of precision timing and you have to react quickly. So when the player is slower, it ends up helping out a lot.

There isn’t really a plot beyond that unfortunately. There are 10 worlds here and each world has around 10 levels in it So that’s a lot of levels but they tend to be very quick. Most levels you can beat in around 2 minutes or so. The levels start to become more like puzzles once you get deeper into them though. In World 10 there were several times where I just didn’t know where to go. That’s rather impressive in a game like this where there are only a limited amount of actions you can take.

You really have to memorize how high the springs will send you here for example. Otherwise you won’t reach the target or you will go way past it. So it’s definitely something to chew on a bit there. You can use the fairy to reverse Peach’s direction as well which will be key in the final levels. You have to do this a whole lot and with quick timing to avoid the various traps. I can tell you this, without the rewind feature this would have really been a very difficult game to complete.

The artstyle is pretty fun and has definitely aged well. It’s something that Nintendo in particular has done really well over the years. The soundtrack also isn’t bad. It’s not extremely good or anything like that but the main tune doesn’t get too tiring even after hearing it for a large chunk of the game. It’s clear that some real thought was put into the game and that’s why it is a shame that the controls are no good. The gameplay itself is fine. It’s all about pointing and clicking but I have no problems with that.

No, where the problem lies is in the controller itself. To play this game on the Switch Online you need to use the Joypad and then convert it into mouse mode. Nobody wants to use mouse mode. I don’t even know why this is a thing in the first place. Sometimes Nintendo just develops new gimmicks for no real reason. It has really hurt this game and it will hurt others if it continues to be a mandatory style of playing.

There is some replay value here as you don’t have to clear every level to get to the final one. If you go back and do them all, you unlock a final boss level. So you may want to do that to see how the story really ends. Ultimately I just couldn’t get past the controls to do that though. They are really draining the whole time and so you don’t get a whole lot of enjoyment out of them. You’ll die quite a few times even when you know exactly what to do because the controller just isn’t listening to you. Those are always the worst ways to go out and you’ll be left just shaking your head.

Overall, Mario & Wario may have finally arrived on modern consoles but unfortunately it should have been left to history rather than return in this form. It tarnishes the Mario brand and ends up being a waste even with Wario being the big villain. This is the kind of game that could desperately use some kind of high budget remake. I think there are many ways they could improve upon the source material without drastically changing things. It could be a worthy puzzle rival to Mario vs DK. In the meantime though, this is the kind of game you’ll want to skip. If you have the Switch Online then you may as well check it out for free but otherwise I certainly wouldn’t spend any money on it.

Overall 3/10