Mario makes Jason Vorhees proud!
Nintendo has to be on something. Think about it. If I told you that a small Italian plumber flies through space to save the universe and his (pseudo) girlfriend, you would probably start foaming at the mouth and fall to the ground convulsing or run away screaming and failing your arms wildly. Nevertheless, Super Mario Galaxy provides an amazingly challenging platformer dressed up in a super cute polish with a new mind-bending look at something we have never seen before in the Mario universe: The Galaxy.
Mario is having another bad day when Princess Peach invites him to the castle yet again. Upon arrival, Bowser shows up with a grip of airships (ala Super Mario Bros. 3) and a UFO(?) which abducts the entire castle with Mario on it. As Mario hangs on to the castle, a magic koopa by the name of Kamek blasts him with the playstation symbols (also from Super Mario World) he shoots from his wand. When Mario regains consciousness, he is greeted by the first of the star people named Luma, and a new (and hotter) Princess named Rosalina. She is a watcher of the stars who helps Mario on his quest to save his "special one". The only way to do this is to gather the seven Grand Stars to restore the observatory. Whew, that is a lot of text coming from a Mario game's story and in the game there are a lot more cut scenes that previous Mario's, but the scenes do sport some of the best graphics on the system to date.
Mario has been jumping, running, and kicking for 20+ years and it's no different here, except for the Wii related controls. Pointing at the screen with the Wii remote collects star bits, and every fifty star bits you collect nets you an extra life. You can also use your star bits to stun enemies by pointing and shooting. Also, there are other points where you have to use just the Wii remote to complete a more precise task, but as scary as that sounds it never messes up what makes Mario so great: jumping from one platform to another.
The difficulty is very confusing at first. At the beginning, the game holds your hand, introducing new gameplay like with the gravity changing based on what planetoid you're on and adjusting your brain to being able to walk all the way around a world without falling into bottomless dark holes. Later on, the game gets frustratingly difficult at points, but fans of Mario 64 will love (repeating) LOVE these levels, but loath the majority of stars that are easy.
One of the cool things about the game is that you never know what's going to be in the next galaxy. While it still has ice planets, fire and lava, desert planets, and all the other kind of platforming levels, it keeps it interesting by showing them in a new light with space being all around and changing the gravity over and over multiple times. Also, the audio is worth noting being totally orchestral, which sounds incredible and interactive with what your doing at times.
Problems arise with the camera. The camera tries to quickly pan around to give you the best look at Mario jumping on platforms, but sometimes the camera gets trapped behind houses or enemies causing you to see a shadow of Mario potentially fall into a dark hole because you couldn't see where he was walking. Also it's worth noting that the d-pad controls the camera but must of the time it will not allow you to alter the camera in any way other than going to a first-person perspective, which is strange being that in other 3D Mario games you had more control over the camera.
There is also a co-op mode that will allow a second person to grab another Wii remote and point at the screen to help you collect more star bits, which is nice for a mom to help her 8 year old play, but more often than not you're going to want to be controlling Mario instead of a cursor on-screen. There is, in cl@ssic Mario fashion, 120 stars in the game...make sure you grab all of them. You won't be disappointed.
To sum it up, Super Mario Galaxy deserves to be in your collection. It's a fun, challenging, inventive, super cute, family friendly, polished, and a fresh take on a old franchise. When was the last time you said that about one game?
