I'm not a fan of Tim Roger's writings...It bleeds of self importance, egotism, and is inefficient in his use of words. He could have taken out the paragraph about getting Mario 3, and all of the story about his girlfriend in Tokyo not liking the game, and replaced it with a paragraph on why Mario Galaxy failed his expectations and a paragraph explaining how Mario 3's level design relates to Mario land. But no -- he had to write about himself before he could write about anything else.
Anyways, that aside, I love Mario Land 3DS. It's one of those games that's brimming with fun in every level. You'd think that every video game would be "fun", but some are merely engaging, or entertaining. But Mario Land is fun all of the way through. The only "chore" or fetch quest the game has is finding all of the Star coins but that doesn't feel too chorish; it's fun to play through the levels again. I was also impressed that it didn't feel like a sequel to me, even though it was 'just' another game in the series -- it felt fresh.