Review: Mushroom Men

A bit over a month ago, I bought a new game. I blogged about it then, but hadn't yet played it.

Well, this past weekend we finished playing the game for the first time.

In general, I'll say that the game was pretty fun. It was not spectacular, but the graphics were good, the controls made sense most of the time, the mechanics were simple enough to pick up, and the story was fun. Many areas were darker than my eyes liked -- I prefer to be able to see my surroundings -- but after all, I was playing as a mushroom, and they live in the dark. One really nice aspect of the game is that there was no concept of "lives." One truly frustrating thing about Mario games is when you almost have a boss beaten and he takes your last life. You end up having to replay a bunch to get to him. MM's Pax (the main character) can die over and over and over and not end the game.

Like Pikmin, this game appears to be designed for replay. The total game-play time was about 10 hours, which is far quicker than games I like more (Pikmin, Mario) but still worth the money. There are items to collect in each stage, and when you complete a stage, the game informs you how many items you collected, and how many total there were to be found. I don't think we ever found every item available in a level.

There were a couple of game-play issues. First, there was a point in the last level where dying hung the game, and we had to power-off and power-on to get back in. Because the game has discrete save points, this made for some wasted time, as we had to replay a good portion of the level. Second, there are some creatures which, when they get the initiative, don't seem to give you an opportunity to react before they kill (or nearly kill) you.

Still, overall, this was worth the money. I will play it again at some point. With an awareness that there are items to collect, I will be more methodical. With experience, I will understand how to engage the end bosses and not waste as much time on pointless tactics (as long as I remember!)