Ah yes, the wait is over. After a major dry spell of games worth mentioning for the Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is upon us. The first Super Mario Galaxy game was released in 2007 and took the Super Mario Bros franchise to the next level. Super Mario Galaxy came off the “love it or hate it” Super Mario Sunshine and launched Mario into outer space. Rather than standard environments with solid ground throughout, Nintendo was able to experiment with new platformer elements in outer space. With Galaxy 2, Nintendo has built upon the success of the previous game with additional characters, power ups and overall game fixes. But is it enough to warrant all the perfect scores and calls for Game of the Year?
Let’s take a look at the new things that have been added to Galaxy 2. First and foremost, right smack in the middle of the cover art is Mario’s dinosaur pal Yoshi. This was a great addition to take advantage of Yoshi’s different traits and gameplay elements in this gravity-based platformer. Yoshi and his ability to float and eat just about anything has opened a lot of new doors for new levels to wrap your brain around. Yoshi has also been given his own set of power-ups to diversify the gameplay even more. Hot peppers cause him to have a short burst of speed while balloons fill him with air to float around like a blimp. The Ghost House Lamp is by far my favorite; eating a golden lamp causes the floor to light up in a circle which moves and follows underneath the player. The tricky part is that it runs out like grains of sand around the edges and you will find yourself having to start these levels over again if you don’t find another lamp in time. Nintendo threw in a nice bit of nostalgia from the SNES here by having Yoshi change to Red, Blue and Yellow; the colors of the bonus Yoshis in Super Mario World.
Mario wasn’t left out when it comes to new power-ups. You will still find your old favorites like the Fire Flower (which still has a stupid timer on it) and Star Power (which has a timer on it, as it should). Mario can now turn in to a rock and roll around to crush Goombas and Koopa Troopas. It also allows him to plow through rocks and other destructible objects. The Ghost/Boo suit is one of the only things being panned from this game as being pretty close to worthless. The new Cloud suit more than makes up for the short-comings of the Boo suit. One waggle of the WiiMote will create a cloud right under Mario’s feet; it is limited to only 3 clouds at a time before you need to power up again, which forces you to use them wisely.
Then there are several updates to the overall presentation of the game that were desperately needed. In the original Super Mario Galaxy, you had to navigate through a ridiculous home world to get to the different levels in the game. The jumping puzzles and unlocking of the new levels was fun for a while, but it got really old really fast, especially when the bonus levels called “Comets” opened up. The Comet levels would open and then close as soon as you completed a different level, causing you to have to constantly navigate through the home world, back and forth. This has been fixed by taking it back to basics. While there is still a home world (a planet shaped like Mario’s head), it has been simplified for Galaxy 2. You now use this home world planet to move through a Super Mario Bros 3-style level system. The comet levels now also stay open at all times, so you don’t have to go and complete them right away after you unlock them.
Some of the complaints that I have for the game besides the previously mentioned Ghost/Boo suit is the design queues that were taken from the recent New Super Mario Bros Wii and DS games. The cameras in these levels do not feel as free and open as they should for a Galaxy game. There are a lot more levels that lock you into side-scrolling, which takes away some of the immersion from trying to wrap your brain around the 3D world and its crazy gravity. It’s not all bad, as some of the side-scrolling is pretty fun but sometimes feels like filler or an after thought. I would have liked to see some more levels or added goals to the existing levels rather than some of the locked-in side-scrolling.
The one thing you need to know about Galaxy 2 is that you are getting more of the same and that’s not a bad thing. You want a story? We don’t need no stinking story. The Princess gets captured by Bowser and it’s up to you to save her. If you need more story than that, keep on moving along. This is a video game, not an interactive movie that many of today’s games have become, and it makes no apologies for it. The controls remain mostly the same from the original Galaxy game and that’s OK with me. They were good enough for the first game, no need to mess with what isn’t broken. However, there isn’t anything wrong with updating and putting some polish on some other classic elements. Nintendo went all out on the nostalgia when it came to the music for this game. You will find updated tracks from all of the classic Mario Bros games. These tracks are very well done and trust me, you will remember it when you hear it.
This is a very worthy entry into the Super Mario Bros franchise. It adds unique gameplay and control styles to make it a Galaxy game, and at the end of the day it’s Super Mario Bros and you know what you can expect. This is definitely a must-have for any Wii owner and a good enough title to purchase a Wii if you don’t have one just to play this game. The difficulty is balanced very well. Newcomers to the series will be able to pick it up and veterans can expect a solid challenge if they want to get all 120 stars. I cannot agree with ALL of the perfect scores that are being handled out, but this is a very good game. Game of the Year? Maybe. Let’s wait until December to find that out. I think I will have a better idea after I play Red Dead Redemption.