Single-player
Super Mario Galaxy is a God on a disc! It contains one of the best single-player experiences you will ever play. Whilst there isn't much of a story, it does have more depth than previous Mario games. Basically, it's the annual Toad festival and Bowser comes in with a fleet of flying ships and rips the castle out of the ground with Princess Peach inside and takes it into deep space. Then, as usual, the big-nose, chubby body, blue and red plumber gets to work in attempting to rescue the kidnapped Princess. The story boasts some of the best, most genius level designs and whilst you technically complete the game after 60 of these well crafted levels, you can participate in another 60 levels bringing the total up to 120, not including an extra secret level at the end! The story should take you between 30-45 hours and will take you through a variety of stages including Lava, Ice, Green lands, Space, Underwater and many more zones. You will also battle a variety of bosses of which I will not speak as not to spoil the game for you. However, the main difference this Mario has compared to it's previous games is the innovative, fresh idea of gravity. Every land mass, space object and mini-planet in this game has its own gravitational properties allowing for some interesting level structures and unique puzzles. Going through this game is truely a blast with many clever puzzles, fun to use power-ups such as bee-mario and fire-mario, challenging boss-battles, top-notch level design and a ton of variety.
Multi-player
Super Mario Galaxy has no real multi-player mode to speak of, but it does allow for a second player to grab a remote and control the cursor to collect and shoot star-bits, which are the sort of currency used in the game. But, worry not, Super Mario Galaxy is a great game despite it's lack of multi-player.
Prensentation
Graphically, Super Mario Galaxy is stunning. It's attention to detail is simply eye pleasing and it uses some of the best water, lighting and grass effects on the system. It also has an incredible colour palette and is one of the most colourful games I've seen. It plays to the Wii's strength's trading realism and high-resolution textures for art style and colour variety and I must say, it deleviers and shows off some of the best graphics currently on Wii.
Controls & Extras
The controls in Super Mario Galaxy are for the most part good. They are not great and don't boast much customizability, but Nintendo did a descent job at finding a control scheme that works for the majority of players and whilst it is not perfect, it does grow comfortable very quickly and can be used with ease. The controls are mostly smooth and are as responsive as they come. Whilst there are no real extra modes, you do have the ability to replay any level that you have completed in an attempt to beat you high scores of collected coins and star bits and you are given the ability to view all these records and send them to the Wii message board.
Verdict
Final comment: 'A God on a disc, truly one of the best games on Wii. Unmissable!'
Cultured Vultures: Put on your freshest dungarees and chow down on the ripest mushroom as we reel off the best Mario games ever made to celebrate Mar10 Day.
My top 3 are Mario 3, Mario World and Mario 64. Mario Odyssey is also excellent, and I enjoyed Sunshine but didn't care for the Galaxy series.
Cultured Vultures: Put on your freshest dungarees and chow down on the ripest mushroom as we reel off the best Mario games ever made.
The Nintendo Entertainment Podcast is here, and it's the host's birthday! But don't worry, they'll talk news and Super Mario Galaxy too!
