Mario and Luigi Dream Team: First Impressions

It’s not often you get to step inside your own brother’s head and get a first hand experience of how much of an inferiority complex he really has.

Mario and Luigi Dream Team is the latest installment of the Super Mario Bros. RPG style games, and it definitely has its own sort of appeal. It has an amazingly original storyline, allowing for some of the most of amusing game play a player can experience on a handheld. The characters are a bit stale, but that isn’t to say they aren’t funny. You’ll find yourself giggling at the schtick while hopping around as the famous plumber brothers.

One of the biggest problems with the game though is a huge plot hole screaming the entire game. Players get to step inside Luigi’s head as Mario, as a “Dreamy Luigi” tags alongside him. The story explains that what happens inside the dream world is a projection of Luigi’s self-conscience. The problem with this is that in his own dream world Luigi STILL isn’t powerful.

Luigi is capable of some interesting abilities, but he is still not all the strong. It must have been all those years he spent in his brother’s shadow that degraded his self esteem to the point he couldn’t even dream himself stronger than Mario. The dream world offers some amusing puzzles as you pull on Luigi’s mustache in the real world to send Mario flying across the map with a mustache-like tree in the dream world. The concept of interlacing a dream and real reality together is beautifully done, but leaves some questions to be asked.

The game also does a great job at adding powers to the dream world even after hours of game play. It is a bit irritating to stop in every puzzle you reach to get another explanation of another ability, but this just leaves for more challenging puzzles later on. If you don’t mind some hand holding early on, the Mario RPGs have a tendency to leave you be after you get through about 25% of the game.

Don’t expect any real sort of challenge from it if you have the coordination beyond that of your average 10 year old, but the comical nature of each event and puzzle offers more than enough to keep you entertained for hours. The comical nature alongside the unbound creativity of stepping inside a reality only bound by imagination easily makes Mario and Luigi Dream Team a great casual play for someone of any age.