Super Mario Galaxy
Despite seeing Super Mario Galaxy at a few events over the past year I was far from convinced that this wasn’t going to be just another Mario game. From my limited time with the game it wasn’t clear to me whether the controls were anything more than a gimmick, something to help pretty up a game we’ve already played before. I was wrong. Very wrong.
Super Mario Galaxy is everything Mario fans and platform aficionados have been craving since Super Mario 64 redefined how we think about the genre. It’s constantly fresh and entertaining and the perfectly ramped difficulty will ease you in before twisting you to your limit. In short, Mario is back, and he’s better than ever.
It all starts familiarly enough. The residents of the Mushroom Kingdom are out on the streets of the realm on the night of the Star Festival, a celebration of the arrival of a sparkling comet many years ago. The occasion is expectedly interrupted when an armada of pirate ships comes floating in, and Bowser abducts Princess Peach, stealing her away to a faraway place with the help of an alien ship.
Your goal: to save the princess. Not entirely original, I’m sure you’ll agree, but this nod to the past is supplemented by a huge cast of characters new and old who will help you on your way, including Rosalina, a beautiful woman who just happens to have an interstellar craft called the Comet Observatory. But there’s a problem. Rosalina and the cute, star-like Lumas entrusted to her can’t go anywhere until they repair their ship, and to do that, you need to help them to collect Stars.
Sprinkled around the observatory are various domes equipped with telescopes that allow you to travel to galaxies far away. These galaxies are the stages in Super Mario Galaxy, and the planets within them are the various sub-stages. The levels themselves are a good place to start, because it’s their variation that is the heart of the appeal of Mario’s new game.
Mario games live and die by the level design and Nintendo has surpassed all expectations. The visual flair of each of the galaxies is only matched by their impeccable layout, little treats luring you to all the crucial spots just as easily as the hints lead you to the hidden areas with their bonus rewards. If exploration is your thing, Galaxy is a dream and the curious mind will be rewarded at every turn. Learning each of the levels has its rewards too, as sometimes you’ll need to pick out a level you’ve played based on nothing but a taunting snapshot. That’s all part of one of the best secrets in the game, something I wouldn’t think of spoiling for you here.
It’s a long road to Bowser, a path paved with 120 stars (though you only need half that to actually finish the game) and many boss encounters and sub-bosses along the way. Some you’ll recognize, some you’ll think you recognize, and they’re all perfectly designed to test how well you’ve learned the skills you pick up along the way.
Because, when you boil it right down, that’s what makes Super Mario Galaxy such an enormous joy to play. This is a game that’s all about the journey. How you get to your ultimate goal is mostly up to you, with the design of the galaxy clusters made in such a way that you can make the game as hard or as simple as you want. It’s been a decade since Shigeru Miyamoto gave us Super Mario 64, and many fans have been waiting for a game that could equal the Nintendo 64 game’s well-deserved status. This is not that game.
Super Mario Galaxy is the sort of game that makes you want to call up your friends and ask them what they thought of this and that stage, but since uncovering it all is such a large part of the fun, it would be selfish to ruin it here. Instead, I’ll end off by saying that I came into this game looking for Nintendo to show me that it still knows how to make games for gamers, and I walked away feeling satisfied that they’ve done that and much, much more.
The Final Word: Super Mario Galaxy is pure joy from start to finish. Play it and you’ll see.
By Alex Wollenschlaeger www.kikizo.com |
