Welcome to the final part of my Super Mario Galaxy impressions.
I am pleased to say that my initial impressions of the game were wrong, dead wrong. Almost immediately after picking up the wii-mote again I was treated to some devilishly creative levels and bosses. Much like Mario 64 the game is broken up into a series of levels that can be revisited as often as you like and usually contain a few stars with varying goals to obtain them. In Super Mario Galaxy these levels are called galaxies and work exactly the same way. There are usually five galaxies to a dome with the final galaxy being an enemy base.
Everything that made Mario 64 such an amazing game has returned. The levels are devilishly creative, sometimes sadistic, and always genius. The bee costume, which I’ll admit, looked a little fruity in the early videos of the game are still just as fruity now as they were then, but a hell of a lot of fun to use. The bee costume gives you a little extra lift to fly from platform to platform and even comes in handy on the boss of this particular galaxy. The first enemy base finds you facing off against one of the Koopa Kids from Super Mario 3 and his massive robot that is many, many times larger than the planet you are standing on. Like Shadow of the Colossus for the PS2 you’ll find yourself climbing this bad boy trying to find the weak spot.
Originally I was pretty put off by the controls. It felt like the camera wasn’t keeping up with Mario and that sometimes his considerable bulk built up more momentum than I could handle. Again, I was wrong. Sure, like any platformer you are going to find some occasions where you wish the camera were in a better position or the camera does something odd, but generally this is not the case in Super Mario Galaxy. The camera quickly becomes your greatest ally when you realize just how well it does actually move along with you.
I’m still not sold on having to waggle the wii-mote around to attack. I like the ability to shoot star bits by pointing at the screen after I have collected them, I like waggling the controller to launch from star pads, and it works quite well when you need to spin around a vine, but for the basic attack in the game - PLEASE! I want a button!
So there you have it, I was wrong and Super Mario Galaxy is going to be a great game that has the potential to be a game of the year contender. I have been through the first two domes of the game and some of the bonus stages, one reminiscent of the slides in Mario 64 except now you ride a manta ray down a wavy water course. I’ll leave the prankster comets to all of you as a surprise, but let me tell you they can be quite fun. There is an incredible amount of game to be found here and I am sure there are many more bonus and hidden areas that I didn’t discover. I hope to give everyone a full and final review when the game releases late November.
