So, I got a Wii for Christmas with NSMBWii...that didn't take too long to beat so I decided to buy another game. Super Mario Galaxy seemed to be the obvious choice. I had played a bit of it here and there, but not too much, and it seems to be widely regarded as the best Wii game.
Anyhow, I've played quite a bit of it (up to around 60 stars), and I'm having some mixed opinions. I suppose that I'll start with the good:
Like all Mario games (Nintendo games for that matter) it has superb art direction, for the hardware the graphics are amazing. All the levels look spectacular and the animations are spot on. Apart from that the controls are excellent, extremely tight and responsive. The music is awesome as well...nothing too memorable, just very consistent throughout. The gravity has to be the best part of the game, the way they got it to work so fluidly blows my mind, easily one of the biggest changes to 3d platformers in recent years.
Now the bad....I simply can't stand the way they handled the level design in the game. In Mario 64 you would basically jump into the painting, select the star you were going after, and go into the world. Thing is, once you get into the world, you can basically explore it fully at your will, and you don't necessarily have to get the star that you selected at the level screen. Depending on what star you select there might be some minor differences, but that was really it.
Super Mario Galaxy, not so much. You select a star, and get thrown into the world. However, unlike in SM64 you can't explore the whole world, no. You can explore the planets that lead to the star you selected, and that's it. It pretty much plays like a sidescroller, you can't explore anything, and there's never a question of where you should go to look for the star because 90% of the time there's only one place to go. Maybe 10% of the time you'll get to a planet where the way off isn't entirely obvious, but the majority of the time you just collect 5 pieces of a launch pad and it appears (this is my candidate for most overused 'puzzle' this gen by the way)...worst case scenario you fuck around for 20 seconds (due to the fact that the planets are usually small) and you figure out what to do.
That's the major (and it is major) issue I have with the game. Sure, it's kind of clever that the levels change based on what star you go for, but it pretty much breaks any challenge the game could have. You jump from planet to planet to planet, and reach the star...nearly EVERY time. I can't imagine why Nintendo would choose to do this...why not at least have more than one possible path to follow? Considering the only real challenge in the 3d Mario games has always been figuring out how to get the star this just boggles my mind. It's not as if they upped the difficulty somewhere else, they just took the puzzle element out of the majority of the game. Did they think it would be too overwhelming to have a whole world open with the gravity mechanic included? That's really the only possibility I can think of....
It just pisses me off, because besides this the game is nearly flawless. I know Nintendo can do great puzzles, I've seen it before, it's the fact that they chose not to that angers me. The only other complaint I have is the size of the hub world...exploring the castle was always fun in Mario 64, and you always wanted to unlock that next door to see what was behind it...now you basically just unlock tiny rooms with nothing in it.
Regardless, I'm not done the game yet, and a lot could change. Either way it's still a good game, just not Mario 64 good.
Anyhow, I've played quite a bit of it (up to around 60 stars), and I'm having some mixed opinions. I suppose that I'll start with the good:
Like all Mario games (Nintendo games for that matter) it has superb art direction, for the hardware the graphics are amazing. All the levels look spectacular and the animations are spot on. Apart from that the controls are excellent, extremely tight and responsive. The music is awesome as well...nothing too memorable, just very consistent throughout. The gravity has to be the best part of the game, the way they got it to work so fluidly blows my mind, easily one of the biggest changes to 3d platformers in recent years.
Now the bad....I simply can't stand the way they handled the level design in the game. In Mario 64 you would basically jump into the painting, select the star you were going after, and go into the world. Thing is, once you get into the world, you can basically explore it fully at your will, and you don't necessarily have to get the star that you selected at the level screen. Depending on what star you select there might be some minor differences, but that was really it.
Super Mario Galaxy, not so much. You select a star, and get thrown into the world. However, unlike in SM64 you can't explore the whole world, no. You can explore the planets that lead to the star you selected, and that's it. It pretty much plays like a sidescroller, you can't explore anything, and there's never a question of where you should go to look for the star because 90% of the time there's only one place to go. Maybe 10% of the time you'll get to a planet where the way off isn't entirely obvious, but the majority of the time you just collect 5 pieces of a launch pad and it appears (this is my candidate for most overused 'puzzle' this gen by the way)...worst case scenario you fuck around for 20 seconds (due to the fact that the planets are usually small) and you figure out what to do.
That's the major (and it is major) issue I have with the game. Sure, it's kind of clever that the levels change based on what star you go for, but it pretty much breaks any challenge the game could have. You jump from planet to planet to planet, and reach the star...nearly EVERY time. I can't imagine why Nintendo would choose to do this...why not at least have more than one possible path to follow? Considering the only real challenge in the 3d Mario games has always been figuring out how to get the star this just boggles my mind. It's not as if they upped the difficulty somewhere else, they just took the puzzle element out of the majority of the game. Did they think it would be too overwhelming to have a whole world open with the gravity mechanic included? That's really the only possibility I can think of....
It just pisses me off, because besides this the game is nearly flawless. I know Nintendo can do great puzzles, I've seen it before, it's the fact that they chose not to that angers me. The only other complaint I have is the size of the hub world...exploring the castle was always fun in Mario 64, and you always wanted to unlock that next door to see what was behind it...now you basically just unlock tiny rooms with nothing in it.
Regardless, I'm not done the game yet, and a lot could change. Either way it's still a good game, just not Mario 64 good.
