Super Mario Galaxy - First Impressions

[Shino]

Wow. Just... Wow.

I was having a ton of fun with this game last night. I played it for about 2 1/2 hours and pretty much had to force myself to stop.

It's kinda interesting the way it works. Instead of "worlds" you have "Observatories" or Domes as they call them, that can see "Galaxies." And when you finish the boss area of one Dome it opens up a new one.

I've finished the first Dome getting 11 stars so far I think.

This is the first true successor to Mario 64. And it does a good job of filling those shoes.

There's some interesting additions to this. They actually added an extra collection element to it. Instead of collecting just coins, you also collect star bits. The good thing is for the star bits, you don't have to actually touch them to collect them. You can just point at them with the remote. Makes things a lot easier. Then, you can shoot them back at the screen. You can use them to stun enemies, feed Luna's (little creepy star people), or, in some spots, shoot out a coin.

If you collect 50 star bits in a stage, you get an extra life. Lives are not hard to come by in this game. By the time I finished the first Dome I was easily over 30 lives.

The Galaxies are well laid out and look great. You can see distant areas in the background that you eventually get to in a lot of cases. Each Galaxy that's actually a stage (as opposed to a "bonus" area) and not a boss area has 3 objectives. So you end up playing them multiple times, but each objective takes you on a different path. So you get to see new areas of the stage.

The boss area was pretty fun. Considering the way the game works, where you can basically walk all around a very small "planet," as you might imagine, you can climb up the bosses as if they were part of the planet. At least with the first one you can.

This game also brings on the triumphant return of Bullet Bill! And now, he homes in on you! But this turns out to be a good thing as you can get him to follow you and use him as a weapon!

I got to try out one of the new power ups too. The Bee Suit. Yes... Mario can turn into a bee. If you get hit, or touched by water, you turn back into regular Mario. But it's pretty cool... you have limited flight while using it. It also lets you climb on honey comb walls... among other things.

Visually, the game is ... well ... as good as you will find on the Wii. I would go as far as to say it looks better than the Majority of the Xbox 1 games out there. Unfortunately, that's still not enough for many. Plenty for me though, as long as the game is fun.

The control is great but gets ... odd .. sometimes. Mario seems to take a second to start actually running, so building up inertia for jumps in limited space is... annoying. It's also not nearly as easy to pull off your triple jump as it was in Mario 64. Sometimes the camera can get a little wacky, but you have limited control over it which helps. It's basically on rails and you can use the d-pad to move it left and right if it gets in a bad spot. There are some times where the camera is in a bad spot and you don't really know it yet. I got hit by this once last night. Some of the planets have ... well basically large holes in them. And there's a black whole in the middle of the planet. Fall in the hole and you die. Sometimes the camera is in such a position that you can't tell that there is a hole in front of you and you just continue walking... and die.

Story wise.. well... it's a Mario game. Save the princess. Oh no... I spoiled it for you. There's limited story obviously, at least so far, but I like the way they actually give reasoning for the stars. The more stars you find, the more power to the dome, so the further out the dome can see and you can get to more distant planets.

Anyway. Over all, I'm VERY satisfied. It's a lot of fun and the gameplay is compelling. I would suggest that, anyone with a Wii that enjoys platformers NEEDS to buy this game.

It makes up for my disappointment with Super Paper Mario.

[Aiman]

[Shino]

[Razer]

Also, for those of you that don't know...Toys R Us has a promo going (until the 17th) where if you buy the game at regular price ($50) you get a $25 gift card. That basically makes the game $25. There's really no reason not to buy it this week if you do ever plan on getting it. I got it for my girlfriend (XMas gift) and I'll use the $25 card for myself.

They are also doing a "Spend $75 and get a $10 card" but that card must be used by 12/31/07 and can't be combined with this (or any other) promo deal, of course. But you can buy videogame software, accessories to reach the total and that's like 1 PS3 game and a magazine.

[Shino]

After a couple more hours of play, I'm still having a ton of fun with this game.

I'm up to 20 stars right now and I can't wait to play it some more tonight.

I did run into another small gameplay issue. On some of the smaller planetoids, while you're running around them, the camera gets to such a point where the game doesn't know which way to go... whether it should turn you around or keep you going the direction you're going.

Still a definite buy. I agree with the mid to high 9 scores... but not the 10s.

[Aiman]

[Shino]

Well Unastrike and I have been hard at work on a new initiative that hopefully you guys will get a taste of soon... so the past couple of days I've been busy with that and haven't played anything because I haven't had time.

[Aiman]

Initiative, eh? Mysterious...

[Shino]

[Aiman]