Monday, November 26, 2007

Super Mario Galaxy is a Very Good Game

As a self-proclaimed Nintendo nerd, my relationship with the Wii has been a rocky one. We've had our ups and downs. I mean, c'mon, the system is basically a mini-game machine except for a handful of real games. And one of those real games is Super Mario Galaxy.

Now as of this writing I am taking my sweet time through the game and am around 40 stars or so. I've looked at reviews for the game and at one point the average review of SMG rated it as the number game in the world. Blasphemy! The bestest game ever is of course The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. But that does not mean Galaxy is a slouch. It's just not the best game ever nor even the best Mario game. However, it is an improvement over Mario's previous outing : Super Mario Sunshine.

Super Mario Galaxy is more about platforming than Sunshine ever was, and that is what makes a mario game a mario game: when there's jumping on platforms. In sunshine, there was too much talking and spraying with the water pack. I hate water in my games. It's never fun to swim in a video game, just ask anyone. Galaxy is more like those weird pipe levels in Sunshine. Those are the levels that make absolutely no sense physically (moving platforms in the middle of space?) but that's why they made Galaxy so fun. I don't need a reason or backstory to jump around in a mario game. Just tell me where to get the star/shine/mushroom/flag/princess and show me the moving/tricky/falling platforms and I'm good to go.


Galaxy is not without its faults, though. It is a little too easy. In some levels, I barely knew what I was doing and beat them in under 5 minutes. Maybe if the levels got progressively harder the easy levels would be justified, but they haven't seem to increase (Yet). I'll let you guys know if I get into trouble later on.

My most favorite part of the game, though is the gravity "physics". The Wii is not a very powerful system so I doubt that the physics engine in the game is very intricate, but it's just so damn fun to orbit a tiny planet/platfrom and see how many times you can go around it. Sometimes, instead of going for the stars I just spend 20 minutes jumping around a small sphere in space to break my record of revolutions.

Super Mario Galaxy is ultimately a very good game. It's brought back my faith in the Mario franchise. I just hope other developers see that the Wii is more than just a party box and put more time to create games like SMG.

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