TwiddleGeek

If you haven’t already heard the raving praises being piled onto Super Mario Galaxy, you are clearly out of the proverbial loop. I probably don’t need to tell you that it’s a fantastic game, but I’m going to add my two cents anyway.

The game starts us off with the same story as always: Princess Peach has been kidnapped by Bowser, yet again (why don’t they staple her to the floor already?). A few new characters come to Mario’s aid - the Lumas, personified stars, and their leader, Rosalina, a Peach-look-alike with a big, albeit broken, starship. To restore the ship and pursue Bowser, Mario must hop across various galaxies to collect stars. While the story is clearly flimsy… who really cares?

Also, while the Wii’s graphics are obviously not on par with the other consoles of its generation, again I must ask, does it matter? Galaxy is bright and colorful, with appropriate cartoon style. And it has bunnies. The music is catchy as well, with a number of tracks that are revitalized renderings of classic Mario music. The voice acting is… awful, but thankfully very limited.

While it’s certainly not one of the hardest games out there, the difficulty curve is appreciable. Early levels can be quite simple, while some of the later ones are likely to trump you on your first try… or your first few tries (”Luigi’s Purple Coins” is now a registered SpaceKitty torture method). Most bosses follow the same pattern: the first few hits are cake, but getting that last one requires a step up. … (Read More)

I’ve finally gotten around to playing Mario Galaxy after finishing Mario Sunshine, and thanks to SpaceKitty, who is lending me her copy. My feelings on Sunshine were obviously lukewarm at best, but Galaxy has proven itself right off the bat of being in a whole different league. Familiar enemies return, familiar settings are once again remixed into beautiful 3D, and we’re back once more to collecting stars.

So far I love the creative planets, gravity platforming, classic enemies, and more free-form and exploration encouraging structure of the levels. The speed run challenges are especially interesting, and I like the fact they get you to replay the levels in a more meaningful way than the usual secret stars. The graphics are obviously beautiful, more so than Sunshine in my opinion, filled with color and style.

I would say my only real complaints so far in is that there are too many pointless loose ends. Why is there a coin collection high score count, and hidden switches that activate secret coins, when collecting them does not matter? Why give us so many chances for extra lives, if every time you save and quit you are reset back to 3? Why limit Mario’s attacks to a simple spin and star bits? None of these complaints stop it from being fun, but things like the coin count seem like a half completed thought.

After a lot of retries and frustration on the final stage, I’ve finally completed the 60 star run on Mario Galaxy to see the end. It was certainly a great trip from start to finish, full of good challenges and fun battles. I’m definitely going to get all 120 stars this time, unlike Mario Sunshine where I was content to simply finish the game. Can’t say I want to do the 120 run twice with Luigi though to get the Grand Final Galaxy — I’ll leave that to SpaceKitty. She likes to replay games.

I have to admit that Galaxy has given me a bit more respect for her platforming skills. While it’s certainly possible with enough tries, and it’s no Ninja Gaiden Black, Galaxy has some very tricky challenges and stages to overcome even in the standard run. While I’m sure a kid could have fun playing a game like this, I suspect it would be like my old days of video gaming when I played simply for the sake of playing. Actually completing a game wasn’t even a concern, though perhaps that’s largely because games in those days were nigh impossible.

I do have two small annoyances with the controls though. One is that I constantly have to put up with the cursor on the screen, since pointing at the screen is rather natural. Except that, for most of the game, the cursor is useless. The number of times you actually need to shoot something is extremely limited, so I could do without it floating around all the time. Secondly, I don’t know if it’s because of the nunchuck being detached or because of Galaxy’s camera system, but I sometimes have a harder time keeping Mario running in the right direction than I’m accustomed to. Either way, the controls and the camera system are both leaps and bounds over Sunshine.

It’s a good testament to a game when it’s fun right up to the very last star, when getting every star is fun and fulfilling rather than simply an exercise in obsessive collecting and completionism. I have to agree with what I’ve heard others say though that while I like the star challenge nature of the game for it’s pick up and play ease — the game would have a much more epic feel if it were a seamless linear adventure. At times, the extreme randomness and disconnect between the levels works against it just a bit, but that’s just the nature of modern Mario games.

I’m still not one to replay games very often though, and looking at Luigi he just doesn’t seem different enough for me to want to go for another play through. It’s great for the people who do want to go through it again, but I’m rather satisfied after the first 120 run. As far as overall thoughts go, I can only echo what others have said about the sheer mind-bending awesomeness of gravity defying platforming. What I find particularly impressive is that often times when you’re flying between planets in a level, entire stages can often be seen just floating around in the background — just because they can.

Unsurprisingly, Mario Galaxy is easily the game that most defines the Wii so far. It doesn’t make nearly as much use of the controls as it could since there’s little here that couldn’t be done with a Gamecube controller, but frankly I don’t think Nintendo really knows what they want to do with the Wiimote most of the time. I still enjoy games that control primarily in old school methods, but I wish Nintendo would make up their minds on how they want to use their new control methods apart from just mini-games.