Review: Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Super Mario Galaxy had a lot to live up to. For one, it had to be good enough not to sully the illustrious name of Mario with which it had been entrusted. For another, it had to utilize the Wii’s unique control system in such a way as to not be boring or derivative. Finally, in an age when a lot of high-profile, big budget games get crammed with so much stuff as to make them pointless to play, Mario Galaxy had to be, well, fun.
As an ironic bonus, Galaxy’s predecessor, Super Mario Sunshine, was rather sub-par, being in effect a glorified rehash of the genre-busting Mario 64. This meant that, basically, Galaxy just had to be better than Sunshine for it to be well received. Fortunately, I can tell you now that yes, Galaxy not only is better than Sunshine, but is also at the very least the best game I’ve played this year.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll assume familiarity with most of the ideas behind modern Mario games, and plunge straight into the use of the Wii remote and nunchuk to control our portly protagonist. As may be expected, a nunchuk is required to play, and the analog stick on same is what controls Mario’s direction. The new elements in control revolve, of course, around the Wii remote. Shaking the remote makes Mario do a spin attack, while pointing it at the screen allows the player to collect and shoot “star bits.” If these were the only ways that the Wii remote was featured in the game, I would have been disappointed — but fortunately, there are many more interesting uses for it. For instance, some levels have Mario surfing on a stingray, where he is moved left and right by twists of the remote. Other areas place Mario in a bubble, where the remote is used to push him around. Still others make him balance on top of a giant ball, and the remote is used like a joystick to move Mario around. In a nutshell, there are many instances where it is used, and surprisingly, none of them feel particularly forced. The designers had to stretch their minds a bit in order to bring these Wii-specific concepts to the game, but I think they all work well.
The major concern of mine regarding Galaxy was the camera. Mario Sunshine’s camera was notoriously bad: often re-positioning itself after you had patiently aligned it just the way you wanted for a certain jump. Camera control in Galaxy is almost a non-issue. Levels in Galaxy are much more linear than the more open-ended levels in Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine, which means that the programmers could place the camera in positions optimal for each situation. Of course, the player also has control of the camera, using the ‘C’ button on the ‘chuck to center the view behind Mario (almost like Z-targeting in the Zelda series) or using the D-pad on the remote to offset the view to the left or right. However, I rarely found myself even wanting to move the camera, which is obviously a good thing. The player should never have to worry about positioning their view – it detracts in a negative way from the gameplay. The only time I felt mild frustration with the camera was in some underwater areas.
The fact that the camera works so well is even more amazing considering the theme that the level designers explore throughout the game: gravity. Mario runs on small planets from which he can literally jump out of orbit. He sticks to walls, turns upside down, and goes through so many different twists and turns that his guts are probably tied in knots by now.
If you were turned off by the small number of levels in Mario Sunshine, be prepared to get blown away by the massive number of them in Galaxy. Even after beating the game, there were some levels that I had not played at all. These were not hidden levels, either, but those unlocked during the normal course of gameplay. Basically, even though levels are more linear, the length and variety of the game does not suffer because of it. Certain basic level themes return, such as a lava world and ice world, but there are many other new, interesting themes, mostly based around a space motif.
Tributes to old Mario games abound, yet are not heavy handed. Some old enemies return, but alongside a host of new. Galaxy is all that a gamer could ask for in a next-generation sequel: it takes inspiration from, but is not totally derivative of, it’s predecessors. If you own a Wii, this is a must-buy. My purchase of a Wii for this game was completely justified.
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