Super Mario Galaxy Review

By King White Goomba

 
Story: 8

The storyline isn’t all that new. Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach while the toad Todyguards do nothing, and Mario has to save her. Then when Mario is on the verge of getting to Peach, a Magikoopa blasts him off of Peach’s castle and into space. Then he awakes on a distant planet, meets Rosalina, learns what he has to do, and starts getting Stars. However, there is a twist this time. Instead of simply kidnapping Peach and trying to escape, Bowser is now trying to create his own galactic empire at the center of the universe with Peach and his little brat of a son at his side. Also, once you get to a certain point in the game, you get to have a storytime thing where you get to learn about Princess Rosalina’s past. This is not incredibly interesting, but I’d say it is worth listening to if you are one of those people who are interested in the storyline. It’s a good storyline and I like it much better than Super Mario Sunshine’s.
 

Gameplay: 9

The game is very fun to play. There is a lot of flying around, and like Super Mario 64 and Sunshine, if you get stuck on a Star, you can simply go to another world (or galaxy in this case) and try one of the Stars there. What I find very interesting is that there are 2D parts in the game. While the graphics make it look very 3D, those parts are obviously 2D because you can’t go forward, only left/right and up/down. There is not much to say here that I will not say in later sections, but the reason it is not a 10 is mainly because the game is overall too easy. Don’t get me wrong though, it definitely has its challenging parts.
 

Graphics: 10

The graphics are phenomenal all throughout the game. You definitely can’t miss the incredible amount of detail put into the high-resolution videos. In the low-resolution gameplay that 98% of the game is, there still is great detail. The colors are bright and vivid. There is simply nothing that I can find wrong with the graphics on this game.
 

Sound: 9

The sound is done better than you would think for a game like this. There is music that matches the scenarios, and the music for the worlds is nicely played. Now this may be in other games as well, but during all of the Bowser battles, the music is more dramatic and sounds nicer than you would expect. It inspires you to play harder and want to win more. Also, when you BEAT Bowser for the final time, there is this peaceful, dramatic, sad music that plays. The music is not the best I’ve ever heard and there are not any incredible songs in the game, but the way certain songs are placed in certain clips and worlds makes the whole game seem better by far.
 

Difficulty: 7-8

The difficulty is quite disappointing once you finish the game and look back on how easy it was
to get all of those Stars. The reason for the rating of 7-8 is because it depends what your goal is. If you are that gamer who gets a game, beats it, and are done with it, first of all you are not a real gamer, and second this will not offer a good enough challenge. The amount of work put into getting only half of the Stars compared to getting all 120 is a big difference. There are Stars that are very hard and there are some that require a good amount of patience, too (the patience ones being the hardest for me). As in many games, it starts out easy and gets progressively harder. At the beginning, all of the Stars are very easy to get, but at the end, while an experienced gamer would still find them easy, they are undoubtedly harder.

Something that might be good for some of you but annoying to others is the fact that it is way too easy to get lives. A mail Toad gives you 5 lives every time you get on, there is a total of 5 lives around the space station that reappear every time you come back, and you get a life for every 50 Starbits you get in a stage. For those of you who never played the game but saw gameplay, the health circle with only 3 health does NOT make the game harder. Unlike in 64 and Sunshine, everything that can damage you does either one damage or kills you in a single shot. Also, a yellow coin gives back one health out of three, while before it was one out of eight. The game compensates for this by including far fewer coins in the game.

Unlike in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, you can use what you collect. While coins are still solely for getting health back, Starbits have two roles: shooting them at enemies or saving them to feed them to hungry Lumas and watch them turn into another planet or a whole galaxy so you can get an extra Star. (I congratulate anyone who was willing to read this entire section without getting bored.)
 

Moves/Controls: 10

For those of you who haven’t read my Super Mario 64 Review, I combine moves and controls because one affects the other and vice-versa. Anyway, the controls are flawless. There were moves in Super Mario 64 that were great and have been brought back, and the spin that can be done with the Wii-mote helps tremendously. There is nothing to say about the controls really because they run very smooth and are flawless. I know that there are many people who think that the Wii cannot possibly keep up with some player movements; those people would be surprised by how smooth this game, along with every other Wii game, handles.
 

Worlds: 10

There are way too many worlds to describe in the game, but the way in which the Stars are spread throughout the worlds are great. There are the basic kind of worlds (known as galaxies), which have 5-7 Stars in them. The average is 5 before you beat the final boss, and it turns into 6 after you beat him because of the Purple Comets, which make you collect 100 purple coins. (Sound familiar?) The galaxies with 7 Stars are the ones that have a Green Star. There are only 2 of these galaxies in the game. The other kinds of galaxies have only one Star because they are not big enough to change for another Star. The only exception is one that has 2 including a Green Star..
 

Other: No Rating

(I list the things that make no or little sense here.) The only thing that bugs me is that it refers to galaxies in the game as being a little cluster of a few planets that are only as big as a house. Even the bigger galaxies are freakishly small compared to what a real galaxy is. The planets in the game are by far too small to hold Mario down with gravity. Even though Mario is flying through the universe at breakneck speeds, this game makes much more sense than Super Mario Sunshine did, for sure.
 

Recommendation: 10

This game is a must have for any Mario game player. The whole game is fun, despite it being a little too easy, but its difficulty is too small of a factor to make the recommendation any less than a perfect ten.
 

Overall: 9

It has great controls, beautiful graphics and sound, a nice storyline, and has a difficulty suitable for anyone with a few seconds of patience (which unfortunately some people don’t have). However, I don’t feel that this game can be given a perfect 10 as an overall grade. There are definitely parts that can get you frustrated in the game, and if you have a bad temper, may make you stop playing it for a while. Some of the purple coin Stars are really tedious, and may not grab your attention enough to finish the game. Even so, Nintendo has outdone itself with another spectacular game for the Nintendo Wii.

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