Pros: Great addition to the Mario series. Great sound and pretty good graphics. Fun puzzle action.
Cons: A little on the short side.
The bottom line: This is a great puzzle game for people of any age. I would definitely buy it.
Mario Vs. Donkey Kong is one of the new Mario games that aren't like the traditional Mario games. I think most, if not all Mario fans will say that they want the same old sidescroller with new features, because we absolutely love those games. Now of course we have the Mario basketball game, soccer game, and recently a Princess Peach game. Mario vs. Donkey kong may look like the older ones at first glance, but it isn't a sidescrolling action game where you go from point A to point B killing everything store, actually, this is a puzzle game. It is a bold step, but it really is the only one in the series that is a truly good game.

You play as Mario and for some reason you are trying to hunt down Donkey Kong. In every level you start in a little area where there are different buttons to press and you see a key somewhere in the level. Your goal is to get that key and put it in the door that is locked. To get that key you will have to do various things, and as the game goes on, the level of difficulty increases and you have more things to do. To get the key you will have to climb ropes, watch for enemies, throw items, and press various buttons. The buttons in the game take away different bricks that you walk. You need to get rid of these levels to get different items to different levels or to travel to a part that you couldn't get to before.

Once you get the key to that level and unlock another door, you are then in another room but instead of getting a key, you get a Mini-Mario. You need these for your boss battle at the end of the 6 levels you have to go through to get the boss. There are 6 6 level parts of the game where you face the boss at the end. The boss is always Donkey Kong and his way of attacking you is always different, and you have to figure out how to damage him. The puzzle of finding out how to damage him is extremely simple and you should be able to find it out within a little bit, it generally always relies on just throwing something at him. If you don't succeed with your first Mario, you have a bunch of the Mini-Marios to back you up.

The combat in the game is nothing like the other Mario games. In this game, to kill something, you can either drop something from above onto the enemy, or throw something at it. Obviously this game isn't your average Mario game and being a puzzle game, Mario runs really slow, and I would have liked it more if the game was faster game but that would make the game even shoter than it is, which is only about probably 5 or 6 hours, but for a puzzle game that's pretty long.

This is really a lot like the some of the puzzle games that used to be out a while ago, but honestly, this is probably the best one of these types of games I've ever played. If you like puzzle games, or even if you aren't, you are likely to like this game. There is a lot of gameplay in the story mode for the type of game that it is, and the gameplay is terrific and I definitely would say that it is a must play, but some people who want the action and fast paced adventure type of game won't really see the fun in this game.

When you think of a mario game, you pretty much usually know what it's going to look like, if it's 3d it's got that 3d Mario look, when it's 2d it's got that colorful look to it. Well, if you are expecting that look with this game, you're wrong. Mario vs. Donkey Kong actually has more of Donkey Kong Country style graphics. The levels are darker than mario's and so are the enemies. The characters in the game look like clay animations that move realisticly and they look like character design from games like Donkey Kong and Mortal Kombat, (2d games). I think the new character animations look cool, but I don't think it would work for the regular mario game style. The other Mario games constantly had you seeing new textures throughout. In Mario vs Donkey Kong, because the game is mostly indoors the same landscape textures are pretty much used throughout the whole game, and they repeat the enemies constantly too. So this game was a little bit lazy on the graphics front, besides the character design.

The sound in the game is great. Although you don't hear a lot of the Mario music in it, it still has a lot of that good old catchy Nintendo music feel to it. The music goes with the speed of the level and the color to it. If a level is dark it will likely have a little bit of a more dark sound to the music. There are some voice overs from Mario that have been recycled from the N64 games that sound great. The voiceovers are never long, just something along the lines of "Yipee" or "Haha."

All in all, this game is a terrific puzzle game and if you are willing to accept the fact that this isn't your regular Mario game and you are willing to get past the pace that is kinda slow, I'd say definitely go out and buy this. It's a great game.