Available on - Nintendo Wii
Score between 7 and 10 - 10(Must Play!)
You may like Super Mario Galaxy if you like - Any of the other Mario games, Rocket Knight Adventure, Sonic, Jak and Daxter or any other platformer.
Game Concept - Do I really need to explain Mario to you? Ok, if I do! Well you play as a fat plumber named Mario out to stop the evil Dinosaur looking thing Bowser from destroying the world/princess peach for about the 30th time. This time Bowser has managed to steal a lot of stars a long with Princess Peach. In order to reach her you must take back said stars and smash Bowser and Bowser Jr several times a long the way. The game will largly be concentrated around precise running, jumping, swimming and other basic video game mechanics.
Pros
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The Music is amazing - Honestly I would not have expected a Mario game to have music of this caliber. Mario games have always had catchy music, but this game has tunes that are not only catchy but also epic enough to fit its space theme and touching at the same time. Even my wife commented before playing the game how great the music was when she heard me playing.
Multiple Costumes and power ups to play around with - Past Mario games may have had fire flowers or the rare addition like the Tanooki suit, but this Mario REALLY ramped it up. Mario can find costumes that turn him into a bee that can fly for a few moments, a spring(yes as in a mechanic spring)with the ability to coil and jump extremely high, ice Mario with the ability to freeze water and several others. Each is used less to make Mario extremely powerful like in the 2D games and instead more to let you play in new ways and challenge your abilities. For example with Bee Mario you can fly, but only for a very limited few seconds at which point you will plummet. This means when you have the bee suit instead of being challenged to do direct jumps you will be challenged much more on your timing. Meanwhile spring Mario may be able to jump high, but he can not jump very far nor does he have the same tight controls...so it becomes more about precision jumps. All in all these suits do a good jump at breaking up the standard run and jump game play and are a lot of fun to play with!
The stages are diverse and creative! - The fact that Mario travels from galaxy to galaxy and planet to planet allowed the developers to create many different types of stages. You may visit some typical stages such as the water or lava based worlds, but you will also visit some out there ones such as the Toy and cake galaxies where you will find yourself platforming up the side of a giant robot using your spin attack to unscrew his bolts.
The Bosses are really fun to fight - Each boss has its own unique challenge and strategy. One boss may require you to trick them into jumping into lava while the next hides from you and you have to butt stomp at the right time to even show their weakness.
Platforming at its best - The controls, even the wii waggle that gives you an extra boost to your jump is extremely precise! The only game that even compares to SMG in just how precise the controls are that I can think of is the Sly Cooper series.
120 Stars to collect - Super Mario Galaxy definitely has some long legs thanks to the fact that there are 120 stars total to collect. You will get a lot of hours out of this game, and the replay value is definitely high!
Cons
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Motion controls - If the waggle used to make Mario jump would not have been as precise as possible this game would have been instantly broken, so thankfully that works! Sad thing is the rest of the waggle in the game I really did not enjoy as much. The jerking motions to make Mario swim fast and worse the mini games that required you to hold the control in some goofy way to balance or steer....I just can not freaking stand motion controls like this! While I found myself blowing through the rest of the game there was one or two waggle missions that took me several tries and I could not help but feel like if I had standard controls I would have beat it right off the bat!
Running back and forth between levels can get annoying - Much like Super Mario 64 and the paintings you will have to do a little backtracking! There are about 8 central hubs you have to visit to get to the galaxies, in the galaxy then there are several smaller worlds and several stars in each. Once you reach a terrace you can stay there for awhile and clear out all the stars, so this complaint is pretty minor....but it was still annoying each time I booted up the game that I would have to spend a minute and a half running back to the terrace I had been working on.
Some worlds have gravity effects that can leave you ill/confused - Many of the stages have parts where the gravity of the planet shifts and you find yourself upside down, side ways or having to platform at some other odd angle. I rarely found myself effected by this, but my wife and little brother can not play this game thanks to it. My wife feels nauseous even watching me play these segments, and my little brother just can not wrap his mind around the controls when the angle switches to these positions. I would imagine most hardcore gamers like myself will get past this if it effects them, but I still felt it should be mentioned.
Water stages are not that fun - Water stages are rarely a games strong point, especially a 3D games strong point. With Mario Galaxy while I found myself still having fun with the water stages, they were not on par with non water stages. Add in the fact that many of the water worlds were those that had the most missions requiring waggle and you have a recipe for meh.
Closing Comments - After how average/meh Super Mario Sunshine was it makes me happy to say Super Mario Galaxy is amazing. Even the low moments are more entertaining then your average game. SMG is easily not just one of my fav games of this generation but one of my fav games ever. I do not think its possible to give it much higher praise then that. To sum up, it's Mario, it's great, if you have a Wii get it!
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