The most anticipated title for the Wii this season, Super Mario Galaxy has definitely been well worth the long wait, and may possibly be the best game on the Wii system to date. The game’s hook of using gravity, or lack thereof, in combination with the Mario series’ bag of tricks makes for a game that feels in parts like Super Mario Bros. 3, in other parts like Super Mario 64, and yet still has a very strong identify of its own. This may even be the greatest Mario title to date, and certainly makes up for the rather disappointing Super Mario Sunshine.
This time around, Bowser has happened to harness the power of a comet to whisk away Peach and the castle to deep space. Mario finds himself on the Comet Observatory with Rosalina, who explains the fate of the Princess but offers her and her Lumas’ assistance in restoring power to the Observatory by collecting Power Stars across several galaxies.
Similar to Super Mario 64, each galaxy requires a number of stars to access, and each galaxy can contain anywhere from one to five or even more Stars to collect, determined by various missions. Some missions are straight forward, others are available if you can find the appropriate secret in the level, while even others still are based on the random appearance of comets in each galaxy that create special challenges such as a time attack run, finishing a boss without taking damage, or racing against a Cosmic Mario. While 60 stars are needed to complete the story, that’s only about 1/4th of what you can actually do in the game. Given about 8 to 10 hours to complete that first section, Super Mario Galaxy offers a great abundance of gameplay.
Once you’re in a galaxy, you’ll quickly find one component of what makes Super Mario Galaxy an outstanding game, and that’s the way it handles gravity and similar effects to fully exploit the three dimensions and provide very unique gameplay styles. Most galaxies are composed of small planetoids, and Mario can walk all over their surfaces, possibly ending up upside down or sideways. Special launch stars are used to move Mario from planetoid to planetoid, along with other means, but there’s also points where Mario can drift free in space, using special drag stars to pull him along to the safety. If Mario drifts too far away or falls away from a gravity field, he’ll find himself sucked into one of several black holes that scatter the galaxy. The design of several of these levels is impressive to say the least, but surprisingly it is very easy to get used to maneuvering on these surfaces with ease, and with excellent camera work, one rarely gets any sort of vertigo while exploring the levels. Even more so, these elements as well as other aspects of gameplay are introduced in a very nice and progressive learning curve such that by the time you hit the last few levels, you can recognize easily when certain moves are necessary.
The other part of Super Mario Galaxy that really makes the game outstanding is the intuitive use of the Wii Remote. While most of the basic movements are handled through the nunchunk and remote buttons, Mario gains the ability to spin attack to stun enemies, bash boxes, catch the currents of tornadoes, and many other uses in the game, simply by flicking the remote briefly. This action is really easy to learn and barely disrupts the rest of the controls, but adds a lot of features to the standard gameplay for a Mario title that yet still fit in with the theme of the game. Furthermore, the remote itself can be used to collect Star Bits left by enemies or scattered about the level without having to direct Mario to those points. As with coins, collecting 50 of these nets an extra life, and there’s a lot more Star Bits just scattered about levels to collect. A special co-op mode can allow the second play to perform this action for the first player as well. If there’s only one point where Super Mario Galaxy may have a problem is that the controls for swimming are a little iffy compared to everything else, in that you may find yourself swimming in the complete opposite direction you thought you were, but other features of the game outweigh this.
Even new powerups for the game feel completely at home in the game despite, in some cases, sounding absurd. The Bee outfit is probably the most interesting of the new ones, as it allow Mario to fly up for a bit, as well as crawl across honey-coated surfaces, but goes away as soon as Mario touches water. This makes for some interesting puzzles with and without the gravity features in the game as well. There’s also a Boo powerup (allowing Mario to float and able to pass through objects for short times), a Spring powerup (allowing Mario to make super high jumps), and Ice Flower (allowing Mario to walk across the surface of water and lava after turning it to ice). There’s also a mushroom that increases Mario’s default health from 3 to 6, and as long as the Mario doesn’t let his health down below 3, he can recover health back up to 6 - very useful for bosses and tough sections of the game.
The game is stunningly beautiful- this is probably one of the first Wii games that I wished the Wii could output better than 480p just to improve the graphics even better. Between the brightly colored worlds, the amazing stellar backgrounds, and otherwise general eye candy, there’s always something happening on the screen yet without overwhelming the senses. The audio is incredible as well - the game sports a fully orchestrated soundtrack with nice dynamic changes through some galaxies, and feels fresh and new throughout the game.
Super Mario Galaxy is a stunning achievement in both game design and presentation, and by far surpasses any other game for the Wii, even Metroid Prime 3: Corruption or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess in controls, graphics, and just general fun. This game deserves numerous commendations and definitely your time to thoroughly enjoy the masterpiece that the Nintendo team has put together.
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wow its as if we haven’t seen it played several months ago. But now when people actually get to play it - its like a whole new level of appreciation. I wonder how long N can keep this up
[...] 360 was the month’s top selling game, with 1.56 million copies now in customer’s hands. Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii was next, with 1.12 million copies, followed by Assassin’s Creed for the Xbox 360 [...]