Head of Vengarl
Banned
My gf surprised me with this game as an early anniversary gift, and I've been hooked since the moment I started playing.
SMG was hailed as being one of the best platform games ever, and I absolutely agreed once I got to play it. That's what makes this game so amazing — it's actually better than the first! It has the perfect balance of being similar to its predecessor, but just different enough so that it never feels rehashed or stale. The level design and platforming are just sublime. And it's more challenging than the first game.
There are some levels that are so impressively diabolical I was convinced a James Bond villain designed them. The most noteworthy one (so far) was the purple coin prankster comet for the Flip-Swap Galaxy. My god. First, it was on a timer to induce anxiety right off the bat. Then there were the chomps and moving electric fences which both had knockback effects when they damaged you, which usually resulted in Mario plunging to his death. But the most evil part was the main level design itself — the floor tiles that flip when you spin. If you played the first SMG then you probably have my same instinctive reaction to spin at the end of your jumps in order to assure you land properly. Doing so makes the game a lot easier because Mario's spin is basically a mini extra jump. But for this level, the designer said: "Fuck you Luap, I'm going to make this level kill you every time you spin at the end of a jump." And I fell for it. Again, and again, and again. Instinct is a very hard thing to shut off, even if you make a conscious effort to. Add in the stress of a timer and the other obstacles, and it was a goddamn bloodbath. It was maddening. It was ingenious. I didn't see the star until was already a man, by then it was nothing but blinding...
I've had it for a week and I'm already past 70 stars. Two big thumbs up for SMG2.
SMG was hailed as being one of the best platform games ever, and I absolutely agreed once I got to play it. That's what makes this game so amazing — it's actually better than the first! It has the perfect balance of being similar to its predecessor, but just different enough so that it never feels rehashed or stale. The level design and platforming are just sublime. And it's more challenging than the first game.
There are some levels that are so impressively diabolical I was convinced a James Bond villain designed them. The most noteworthy one (so far) was the purple coin prankster comet for the Flip-Swap Galaxy. My god. First, it was on a timer to induce anxiety right off the bat. Then there were the chomps and moving electric fences which both had knockback effects when they damaged you, which usually resulted in Mario plunging to his death. But the most evil part was the main level design itself — the floor tiles that flip when you spin. If you played the first SMG then you probably have my same instinctive reaction to spin at the end of your jumps in order to assure you land properly. Doing so makes the game a lot easier because Mario's spin is basically a mini extra jump. But for this level, the designer said: "Fuck you Luap, I'm going to make this level kill you every time you spin at the end of a jump." And I fell for it. Again, and again, and again. Instinct is a very hard thing to shut off, even if you make a conscious effort to. Add in the stress of a timer and the other obstacles, and it was a goddamn bloodbath. It was maddening. It was ingenious. I didn't see the star until was already a man, by then it was nothing but blinding...
I've had it for a week and I'm already past 70 stars. Two big thumbs up for SMG2.