At the Eurogamer Expo last week I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to play the latest Super Mario game coming out for Nintendo 3DS. Super Mario 3D Land is in short an attempt by Nintendo to bring the magic of Super Mario Galaxy to your handheld whilst also staying far enough away from the concept so that the game feels fresh as opposed to a poor man’s version of the Wii games.

In a lot of ways Super Mario 3D Land does this admirably. The inclusion of the Tanuki suit is a fun addition to the game and has allowed Nintendo to throw out a marketing campaign based on recreating nostalgic moments from Super Mario 3. This is yet more evident in game where you find Goombas with tails running about as well as a number of blocks situated on the floor, begging for a tail smash. Nintendo even add on end of level flags, a la Super Mario 1 as well as the New Super Mario Bros. Series, that require you to solve a puzzle in order to reach the top. So whilst many comparisons can be drawn to the Galaxy series, Super Mario 3D Land strives to be its own game.

Yet the lessons of the Galaxy series still appear to have been taken on board. The levels I played as well as the boss fight all had their own ideas and the game never failed to show me something new and interesting to play with. It is comforting to see all the different aspects of Super Mario’s rich history come together so seamlessly.

Graphically speaking, no pictures or videos do the game justice. It frankly looks incredible in 3D, remaining as vibrant as its counterparts on the Wii. It’s cliché now to remark about how vibrant colouring makes such a difference in a world populated by brown shooters, but in this case, the game is truly worthy of that praise.

And yet, despite all of these positives there is one single overwhelming negative that I find I just cannot ignore.

It just didn’t handle that well.

See, for all the mastery of level design that Nintendo showed me, where they have failed is in an area that they mastered fifteen years ago with Super Mario 64. A Mario game is nothing without tight control. Super Mario Galaxy is almost always panned retrospectively because of a camera that was just slightly problematic.

Super Mario 3D Land’s issue is that the 3DS thumbstick was never truly meant for the kind of movement that a Mario game requires. Given that it is necessarily smaller than a joystick it has less room in which to move and this has meant that to ensure precision of control Nintendo have slowed Mario down, a lot.

Yet in slowing Mario down the precision Nintendo were attempting to find has disappeared. It feels like Mario should be able to jump a lot farther than he does and this simply put leads to death. It feels like Mario should be able to move a lot faster than he does and this also leads to death.

The worst part is that this cannot even be compensated through long-jumping everywhere as we once did in Mario 64. The long jump itself seems to get no more range than its normal counterpart and trades a significant level of height to do so. The Tanuki suit is no doubt here to remedy the problem, yet you can’t fly with it, so in reality it just acts as a slow fall. Not only is that disappointing when compared to the freedom the suit once gave you in Super Mario 3, but it serves to make the game feel even more sluggish as your falls are slowed to a snail’s pace, yet you get very little distance from the whole affair.

Ultimately the game is compensating for a thumbstick that simply wasn’t designed for this level of control in a 3D environment. Where it might be perfect for Star Fox or for Kid Icarus when it comes to precision platforming it just doesn’t hold up.

I came out of my time with Super Mario 3D land with one simple question, “Does this game really belong on 3DS?”

I’m not so sure.