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Super Mario Maker 2’s versus play is hilariously unfair

@jeffgrubb

Nintendo has a reputation for making multiplayer games that often disregard player skill. That’s a nice way of saying that the publisher is responsible for a lot of BS factories. You can try to get good at Mario Kart or Mario Party, but Nintendo is still gonna throw random junk at you. Well, now that tendency has filtered down to Nintendo fans as well thanks to the recently released Super Mario Maker 2. One of the best new modes in Super Mario Maker 2 is its online versus challenge, which pits you against three other people in a race to the finish. And as with most of the game, players create every level. And oh the horrors they have wrought.

If you’re spending most of your time in Endless Challenge, you might think that players have improved their overall level quality for Super Mario Maker 2. That’s wrong. The bad levels have all moved to multiplayer instead. I’ve played a lot of stages that are 3 seconds long and just about running 10 feet from the start to the end-stage goal. But most levels are just a parade of bullshit.

May the luckiest person win

Like in Mario Kart and Mario Party, no lead is safe in Super Mario Maker 2. You may completely outplay your opponents, but go down the wrong pipe and you may end getting sent all the way to the beginning. Or let’s say you get to the end first, but a springy enemy comes out of nowhere and shoots you over the flag pole as you’re about to hit it. Sounds frustrating? It is. You can watch it happen in the video below:

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Despite all of this, I’m still really enjoying Super Mario Maker 2’s versus multiplayer. It’s broken a lot of the time. If someone has a bad connection, it slows the whole session down to a crawl. The lag is miserable. But I’m finding that about 80% of matches work as they should. It’s also rare to find a truly decent multiplayer stage. I found one where players couldn’t advance until every one ended up in their own specific lane. Then all four players had to through an identical obstacle course. That level was extremely well thought out, and it’s also unique in that forethought.

Instead, most of the time, you’ll end up with something like this stage where players have to guess which box to hit to get a key. If you guess wrong, the floor turns to coins and everyone dies.

Again, this is infuriating. This stage can completely break and you have to get everyone to agree to start the whole level over. But I’m not even mad. It’s actually hilarious, and it still feels great to win even if you know it’s just because you were the lucky one this time around. You have to embrace the chaos. Nintendo gave players a way to mess with each other, and we are all reveling in that. It’s amazing, and I love it.