We have all heard of this game. Super Mario Galaxy was the second Mario game to be released on the Wii after Super Paper Mario, much like Super Mario Sunshine, which was released second after Luigi’s Mansion. Anyway, people called it the best Mario game ever at the time, better than Mario RPG, Paper Mario 1, and Mario 64 which were considered to be the three best Mario games at that time. I was reluctant to get it at first but I got it Christmas 2007. Anyway, let’s get on with the review. Remember, I don’t own anything in the game, everything is owned by Nintendo, not me.
Story: 4/5
It starts off
pretty similarly to Paper Mario 1 and Mario 64. Peach sends Mario a letter
but Mario arrives to find Bowser arriving with a huge airship fleet and
kidnapping Peach (for like the 9,000th time), pulling her castle from the
ground and taking off into space. Mario ends up on another planet and finds
these star creatures called Lumas and their leader Rosalina (who is really
centuries old but looks like she’s in her 20s), who tells Mario that he
needs the power of the Grand Stars to fix the Comet Observatory and stop
Bowser and free his special one (Peach). It kinda ripped off Paper Mario
1 and Mario 64, but it’s still a good story.
Characters: 5/5
In this game you’ve
got Mario, Princess Peach, Bowser, Bowser Jr, and the Toads, but you also
have new faces like Rosalina, the Lumas, Gearmos, new space enemies, and
even Luigi! Luigi makes his first appearance in a 3D Mario game (not counting
the spinoff series or Mario 64 DS). It’s a whole new universe to explore,
so you have new space enemies, but classic Mario foes that we all know
and love return, like Goomba, Koopa Troopa, and all the other classic Mario
enemies. This game has a mix of new and classic characters, making for
a cast.
Gameplay: 5/5
This gameplay
is excellent! Galaxy uses the same concept as 64 and Sunshine did: go to
a world, progress through a mission, and collect the Power Star (or Shine
Sprite in Sunshine). There are 120 Power Stars to collect, and if you collect
them all… you get something cool. What separates this from 64 and Sunshine
is you get to explore tiny planets and fight unique enemies. You’ll explore
new and unique areas that are so colorful and fun, like you’ve never experienced
before in any game. The gameplay was simple and I caught on very quick
(like within the first 10 minutes of the game).The team really did a good
job and I just can’t find a flaw with the gameplay.
Controls: 5/5
The controls just
clicked like that for me. You still have the jump, summersault, and triple
jump. You also get the spin attack, which can serve as a double jump if
you’re jumping and has saved me many times in this game. In addition you
get the long jump and the backflip as well as the return of the famous
wall kick. Mario also gets new, cool power-ups, which I’ll get to in the
next section. You get a cursor that can get Star Bits for you, plus you
can have a second player do that for you. Mario still has the same swimming
abilities as he does in 64 and Sunshine, and he has a larger air meter
so he can stay underwater longer.
Power-ups: 5/5
Mario gets new
power-ups in this game. There’s the return of the Fire Flower as well as
the addition of the Ice Flower. Another cool addition is the Bee Suit,
which turns Mario into a bee and lets him jump on clouds and flowers. Mario
has a Boo power-up that turns him into a Boo. In that form he can turn
invisible and get through walls. Mario also has the Spring Mushroom, which
lets him jump to great heights. In addition, Mario has the spin attack,
which is basically a double jump. You don’t know how many times this has
saved me.
Graphics: 5/5
The graphics were
amazing! They looked so good I forgot I was playing a video game rather
than living in it. These are very well polished, realistic graphics, even
for a Wii game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the only game I can think of
that has better graphics. Mario looks very realistic, you can see every
layer of Peach’s dress, every scale on Bowser. When I first played the
game I was just blown away by how good the graphics are. If you think these
graphics are bad, you need your eyes checked. These were the best graphics
I’d ever seen in a video game until I played Brawl.
Galaxies: 5/5
I know I’m giving
perfect scores in every section, but they deserve it. Super Mario Galaxy
is one of the best games on the Wii aside from SSBB. Instead of worlds
like 64 and Sunshine, Galaxy, well, has new galaxies to explore. (Yeah,
the title of the game gave it away, didn’t it?) Like any 3D Mario game,
you have a hub world to goof off and access the galaxies. The Comet Observatory
fills that role; it’s actually a massive home to Rosalina and the Lumas.
It’s not very powerful when you first play the game, but the more Grand
Stars you collect, the more galaxies you’ll be able to explore. The galaxies
are massive areas of space with small planets and planetoids in them. All
of them are very creative areas for you to explore. My favorites were probably
the Good Egg Galaxy and the Toy Time Galaxy. There was so much unused potential
here that there was enough for a whole new game. Hence Super Mario Galaxy
2 was born, but we’ll get to that in another Review…
Music: 5/5
The music blew
me away. Nintendo must have wanted this to be the best Mario game yet because
they went and got an orchestra. Boy did they do a good job with that. There
probably wasn’t a song I didn’t like in the entire game, and there were
a lot of songs. Some were awesome, cool galaxy songs like Gusty Garden
or Good Egg Galaxies. Some were awesome remixes of older Mario theme songs,
like the airship theme or the road to Bowser theme from Mario 64. Some
were just epic, like the Bowser battle theme or the Battlerock Galaxy theme.
I could just go on and on about how great this soundtrack is.
Bosses: 4/5
The bosses were very good. The thing most people complained about in Sunshine and that I forgot to say in the Sunshine review was the amount of recycled bosses. As much as I liked Sunshine, the amount of recycled bosses was one of the few issues I had with the game. Galaxy isn’t like that, Miyamoto learned his lesson there. Galaxy doesn’t have any recycled bosses (except Bowser, which is to be expected). The most times you fight a single boss is three times against Bowser, like in 64, which was also good about its bosses. All of the bosses were very creative except for one. I thought Bouldergeist was a very good boss; the team took Bogmire from Luigi’s Mansion and made him into a rock monster.
The only boss
I didn’t like was Kamella. Basically I think Kamella is a copy of Kamek
from the Yoshi series and Kammy Koopa from the Paper Mario series. She
copies Kammy more than Kamek because of the fact she basically looks like
a 3D version of Kammy. Aside from that, her daredevil run is very annoying!
At this point in the game I think Nintendo was running out of ideas and
just grabbed Kamek and Kammy Koopa out of the recycle bin and made Kamella.
I didn’t take a point from Bouldergeist because, yes, he may be a copy
of Bogmire from Luigi’s Mansion, but Bogmire worked for King Boo, not Bowser,
and I take the bosses who are loyal to Bowser more seriously because they’re
supposed to be good (not that Luigi’s Mansion is a bad game, it’s just
Bogmire, Booloossus, and King Boo were the only bosses I really like in
that game). Plus Bouldergeist looks entirely new, unlike Kamella, who I
thought was Kammy Koopa at first because I was surprised she didn’t appear
in Super Paper Mario.
Difficulty: 5/5
Super Mario Galaxy
has a difficulty level for everyone. It has levels for beginners of the
series and levels for Mario veterans alike, and it’s for everyone. The
levels ranged from Easy to Medium to Hard to OH MY DAD SOMEBODY PLEASE
GET ME A CHEAT CODE!!! But don’t worry, only two levels are like the last
difficulty, and those are the only 2 Stars I’m missing. Getting all 120
Stars is possible, but two require really good platforming skills. The
difficulty is the best in the Mario series, ranging from beginning to expert
depending on the level and how good you are.
Fun Factor!: 5/5
It’s a game that
will add hours of fun to your day and that you will enjoy for a long, long
time. It’s challenging but fun at the same time. It’s a great experience
for those who haven’t played it, and it’s a classic.
Replayability: 5/5
It’s great to
replay, because if you get all 120 Stars you get to play through the entire
game again, not as Mario but someone else…
Overall: 38/40 (GET THIS GAME)
Super Mario Galaxy is an instant classic that any player would enjoy. It has everything: great characters, great gameplay, great controls, great graphics, great sound and music, awesome bosses, and spectacular replayability. If you don’t this game, GET IT! It got everything a platformer has dreamed of. I consider it to be the best in the 3D series, then Sunshine, then 64. It’s not just my favorite 3D Mario game, it’s my favorite Mario game period. This was an excellent game to open Mario’s run on the Wii.
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