I have just now played and completed Mario and Luigi on the DS.

Now, pretty much every review of this little gem I have read suggests that it should take between 10 and 12 hours for an ‘average’ player to complete.

It took me just over 21 hours.

Not that I am a completely useless gamer, but I am the anti-uber gamer incarnate. Give me anything with more than 3 controls and I crap out pretty quickly.

Things were so much simpler back in the day

Example 1 - Resi 4 - (me) approaches zombie in first village. Zombies attack. Press wrong button somewhere and my weapon of choice now becomes an unusable shotgun. Dead.

Example 2 - Any FPS - Alien zombie dinosaur mutant axe wielder lobs some sort of missile at me. The experts (i.e. everyone else) jumps then strafes left / right and finishes said naughty enemy. Me presses crouch key by accident and desperately tries to find correct key to strafe. Look up from keyboard, dead.

Example 3 - Any RTS - Spend a good time building a nice army of infantry types. Enemy rushes me with grunts. All attempts to activate the infantry who are happily picking their noses and watching the nice scenery go unfounded as I get a building to produce tanks by accident.

Example 4 - Mario Sunshine - don't even get me started - the hose jet thingy just pissed water in every direction but where I wanted it.

It's not that I am bad - my reactions are quick, my puzzle solving is excellent, and I can do turn based things where I get a chance to think about what I'm doing - but I just cannot cope with anything requiring more than 2 actions at a time (my Missus will back me up on this...).

What has this got to do with M+L Partners in time? Well, in this game you control 4 characters. That requires remembering which character is allocated to which button - A, B, X or Y AND how to carry out the combi move. A slip of the button and your little fellas can be toast on the boss battles. 4 controls? Aaarrrggghhh!

Apparently the game can be beaten easily by using the Mix Flowers or Copy Flowers where each character in turn has an attack, and continues to do so while you press their corresponding button. So, an attack that should be worth a 160 bang for me gets a disappointing 5 point pop as I straight away press Baby Luigi's button instead of Mario's.

Translation:’You’re Shit, go and play Civ instead you muppet’

I did finish the game in the end - although not without judicial use of health mushrooms. All a bit silly really, but good fun I guess. By the by.

Does anyone else suffer from this problem or should I just relegate myself to being a 3rd division games player / stick to RPGs and Civilization?

April 2006

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