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Nintendo is definitely continuing their “we’re not better, we’re different” mentality with Mario Galaxy. I was reluctant to get this game because I thought it was too childish-looking. Seriously, the commercials make it seem geared for 6 and under. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Nintendo fan boy through and through, but my series preference defintely goes Zelda series, Metroid series, then Mario. And even then, I’ve always enjoyed the Paper Mario series over the standard games.

But man was I wrong. This game is damn impressive. There isn’t a single thing this game has in common, playability-wise, with other platform games I’ve played. Here’s why:

Gravity
Yeah, big deal, right? Up till now, video games taught us that “if you run over the side, you’re dead…” Not here. If you’re on something like a tiny planet you can just run over the side and end up on the bottom. It’s disconcerting at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s fun as hell. Likewise, you can be on one planet next to another, jump and get pulled to the neighboring orb.

Camera Work
You’re gonna hate it. When you pick up the game, you will actually shout “why aren’t you staying behind him?!?!” at the camera man. But play it. Get used to it. Be one with the camera. The camera work is definitely great. Soon after you start playing, the camera becomes predictable, even helpful. If you had to deal with positioning it all the time (think Zelda, Ocarina of Time), you’d probably throw yourself out a window. One level has you running up around a column, reversing gravity, and avoiding baddies, but the intelligent camera just swoops around so you always have the right point of view.

Tasteful use of the Wii controller
The Wii controller for bowling was cool, boxing was fun, baseball, smeh… Then, after a while, you start to long for the simple controls of the gamecube/360/ps3 type controller. For a comparison, Tony Hawk: Proving Ground is a good example of this. There was nothing wrong with the Tony Hawk controls of old, but now they tried to use the Wii controller and went way overboard (but that’s for another review). In Galaxy, player 1 only uses the Wii motion/point controls for a few things: collecting star bits, shaking the controller for a spin attack or high jump, and a few mini-games. That’s it.

Two can play
The best part is the seamless 2-player co-op. It’s not your usual alternating players like Super Mario 3 for NES. My roommate can be playing and I can pick up player 2 in the middle of his game, power it on, and I’m in, collect star bits for Player 1 with a point of the wii controller. The fun part is actually being able to watch and be useful. Player 2 can just point at an enemy and press A to hold them in place, or shoot them with star bits to get them out of the way for good. It the game so much more fun for spectators than just watching someone else play, it almost makes you feel useful.

So is it the best game ever?
Well, don’t go that far. It’s great. But… It’s a little easy. I don’t know why, but it seems like you go into a world, and before you know it, you’ve completed the level and are back out in the overworld. I guess I want more within each world rather than so many worlds? I’m not sure. But seriously, this is probably the best game that doesn’t have that Wii Sports control novelty on it. If I wasn’t such a fan of Zelda, it’d probably be the best game available for the Wii.

Go buy it. You will definitely thank me.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 12:53 am and is filed under Technical Jargon, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.