Mario is back for REAL for the first time since Mario 64 and he revolutionizes the series, the genre and the gamingindustry before hes done! This is the game that Wii owners bought their console for last year and its the game that pretty much anyone whos ever heard of Mario has been wanting to try out since they first heard of it. Its the game that a whole world has gazed at in amazement for years and its finally here. It delivers on everything and only a few annoyances keeps this from being the perfect videogame. These are words I honestly thought I would never use, I was pretty sure the perfect game could not be made. Well, I´m still right but I feel like I´m wrong since Mario Galaxy is about as close as you can get.
Once every now and then a huge comet passes by the Mushroomkingdom with loads of starfalls and a big festival as a result. Its the night of the Comet Festival at the Princess Castle and the area is drenched in song, dance and falling stars of every one of the rainbows colors. Peach has sent an invitation to Mario to come to the castle since she has something she want to give him. Mario runs happy towards the castle, arms out like an airplane through the happy festival night when huge airships appear on the starry nightsky. Bowser and his armada starts a bombing run over the whole area, freezing toads in place, destoying buildings and lifts the very castle from the ground in huge chains to take it away to outer space with Peach still in it. Mario manages to hold on to the castle but loses grip when hes attacked and starts falling with the distant scream of Peach echoing through the very vacum of space. An unknown amount of time later he wakes up on a green field with beautiful flowers all around him. He soon realizes that this is not a field, its a little sphere in the middle of space with its own gravitation. Before the whole intro is over you´ll get help from a huge spaceship that passed by Earth but got drained of all its Power Stars by Bowser whos now planning to make his own galaxy with Peach by his side. This spaceship / spacestation is lead by the beautiful young girl Rosalina who has hundreds of small cute stars under her care. Her ship will act as your hub to all the galaxies you´ll explore to take back enough stars to power the ship back up and go after Bowser and Peach at the center of the universe to save Peach and to save the universe itself from destruction. You enter the first part of the hub after recieving your own little star wich you keep in your hat and that makes you able to fly through space. The adventure is on!
Mario Galaxy revolutionize the way we think about platforming. This game will bend and twist your mind until you are completely dizzy. The leveldesign of this game will literally blow your mind. You´ll run around from side to side on small spheres, jump between spheres, go inside of them outside of them and through them, You´ll cross bridges on them, under them and around them. You´ll walk on ceilings, walls, roofs, inside of balls, cylinders floating and twisting platforms. And when you think you´ve seen it all you´ll walk on a sphere, then inside of it, then flip the gravitation inside of it and walk inside of a 2D maze inside of the sphere then flip again, ride elevators upwards on the screen standing under the elevator then smash through the outer wall of the sphere, fly through space and land on cylinder thats also 4 stages in 1.
Every stage in Mario Galaxy is a game on its own. Every aspect and leveldesign-tweak could easily be a game on its own but here you get thrown into another just as awesome level just as you have started to understand the last and your mind is blown all over again, and it all makes perfect sense. Not once do you get confused about what you´re supposed to do and where you´re supposed to be going, you´re just riding along, screaming "wooow" at everything thrown at you. In the beginning you keep feeling a huge rush in your stomach each time you leap of a ledge thinking you´ll die just to flip around and land on the other side of the planet where you´ll continue to jump on goombas upside down.
From start to finish Mario Galaxy bends the very laws of gaming itself. Its like "The Matrix". It feels like you´re bending the gameworld to your will when you´re playing it and its a sensation I have never before felt in any game. This is hands down the best leveldesign ever in a game and it wouldnt even have to be set in a Mariogame to work. It would work without the nostalgiafactor that is Mario. Its platforming reinvented all over again!
You´really cant wait to check out the next unlocked galaxy since you´ll know it will feel like playing a new game evertime you enter one. Simply amazing!
But for this to work the controls has to be as tight as the leveldesign right? Well I can safely tell you that they are. The controls works perfect 95% of the time with perfect Wiimote support for launching launchstars, do your spinattack and collect Starbits that you use to unlock bonusgalaxies thats generally a bit more challenging than the normal ones. Once you get used to the controls they will feel like 2nd nature. Nothing to it. There are a few occasions however where the controls just fail completely and makes for some extremely frustrating bits. For once the swimcontrols feels very clunky. Swimming where you want to go is often easier said than done. Also some of Marios suits have kinda frustrating controlschemes. The springsuit that turns you into a human spring is the worst example sending you to your death countless times because you cant bounce it right.
Talking about suits. There are the springsuit, the fireflower, the iceflower, the boosuit and the beesuit. Theres also a healthmushroom that doubles your health until you have dropped down to your normal health again. Most of them are fun to use and makes for very interesting puzzles. This game also fixes some minor things from previous Mariogames like how you could stack up what felt like an infinite number of 1-Ups. Here you´ll start back at 4 lives each time you start playing the game so each gaming session is a 1-Up hunt. This ramps up the difficulty to a better level and is an excellent addition to the series. As for the difficulty its probably (again) the best balanced difficulty in a game ever. It stars you out easy and goes up as you go through the game with some extra crazy galaxies to unlock. The beginning of the game is a breeze where you´ll fly through the levels relaxed and laid back. This will not last forever however. Some of the later stages are REALLY challenging, forcing you to the edge of your seat and making handsweat cover your wiimote completely. But even when its that hard it never feels frustrating or unfair, its if possible even more fun when then game is really really challenging. The feeling of standing there under the star in the end of the insane level, just hearing nothing but the sparkling sound it makes is a feeling of accomplishment not very common in games.
Concerning graphics this game is pretty much a work of art. Its one of the visually most beautiful games i have (again) EVER played. And its not because of the technical part. This games artdirection, artwork and visual style beats most of whats out there and the way camerangles and events are used to really immerse you in the experience are insane. Completing a part of a level, launching youself from that part towards the camera and seeing the part of the level you just completed blow up in the background while you rocket towards the next part of the level with starbits circling around you and while pillars of fire, stardust and rocks fly past is completely mindblowing every time it happens. The visual design of the game is stenghtened with whats the hands down best soundtrack in the history of gaming. Using many new really epic tunes combined with alot of remade classics mainly from Mario 64, SMB3 and SMB. The epic songs playing when your flying through the galaxies and jumping through space makes me think of soundtracks in Jerry Bruckheimer productions. The oldschool songs adds that factor of nostaliga that makes old fans melt like butter and they are made with so much love you want to replay galaxies just to hear more of them. They are all so well composed and produced they heighten the experience to the place where this game belongs, amongst the best experiences you´ll ever have in a game.
The camera isnt always where you want it to be, you do have some control over it in most cases but in some very rare cases the camera just go nuts and blocks your view completely. This together with the occasionally unprecise controls (I also often feel like Marios jumps are way to short) stops this game from being the perfect videogame. Everything is locked in perfect place. Every designchoice is made just right. They have thought of everything. "How do I know when I will fall of a planet and when I wont?". You see it by noticing black holes around the planets where you can fall off. "How do I know when I can do my spin attack again". The star you keep in you hat falls out and then flies in there again. All the little details like this maeks it so that you never ever have to stop and wonder about something. Everything comes natural. Details like how the stars are designed, how the hub is organized and how the beautiful backstory of Rosalina and her spaceship is told ( the best goodnight story there is, ill write it down and tell it for my kids one day) comes together to form one truly great game that also happens to be a Mariogame. And since it is a Mariogame it adds a layer of recognition and nostalgia in many of us that makes it a real trip both back and forward in time to play. On a sidenote the ending in this game is the most beautiful ending I have witnessed. Yea yea, I know you´re thinking "Mario is gameplay only and it cant be beautiful" but the ending is truly touching, romantic and beautiful like no other ending. The direction of the final cutscene with stars, love, space, galaxies, relationships, sadness, evil, beauty and closure is a true masterpiece!
So when you´re sitting there, flying through mindblowing level design, completing truly epic bosses (Shadow of the Colossus eat your heart out), sucking in the beautiful environments, listening to the best soundtrack you´ll ever hear and fighting to save the universe and your special one you realize that this is the reason to go out and find a Wii NOW if you havent bought one already. I dont care if you´re a Sony fanboy, a platformhater or both. This is art, this is beauty, a nostaligatrip, a rich experience and a revolution that rocks the very foundations of gaming.
Its a milestone. Its like putting all the games ever made in a pile and then building a throne on it and putting the Galaxybox there. You dont have to be a Nintendofanboy or even a gamer to love this. You´ll be blown away by it even if youre 45, newly divorced and havent seen a Wii before in your life.
With this game Nintendo finally nails down their "gaming for everyone" policy.
