Review: Super Mario Galaxy

The Xbox 360 is boasting games like Mass Effect and the Halo 3 juggernaut, and Metal Gear Solid 4 is looming around the corner for Sony's beleaguered PS3. It seemed the Wii was in desperate need for its own, more conventional, AAA title if it were to hang on to its nebulous lead in this generation of the console wars.

Enter Shigeru Miyamoto, the godfather of modern gaming, and a mustachioed plumber that just happens to be the single most recognizable videogame icon in the world.

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That's one thing that bothered me the most about Super Mario Sunshine.

They gave you these huge, playground-esque levels like Super Mario 64, but they were COMPLETELY linear. You could go anywhere and explore if you wanted to, but there was no point outside of collecting blue coins. It felt wasteful and it was frustrating to me, because half the fun I had in Super Mario 64 was just goofing around and accidentally discovering a Power Star - a different one than the one I came in to the level to get. It was that sense of wonderment and discovery that was, for the longest time, a hallmark of a Miyamoto game - and Sunshine removed it.

That probably explains why the original Jak & Daxter on the PS2 always seemed so enticing to me (I just finally bought it last month).

Galaxy is probably the first game I'll buy should I ever end up getting a Wii, but it's really disheartening to hear that it's linear, like Super Mario Sunshine. It's a bit odd that your review was the first one to really mention it, too. Guess most people aren't as bothered by it as I was.

Great review man. Its not perfect, it's still imaginative(unlike a LOT of games nowadays). I do love your graphics over gameplay remark on the beginning of page two

Well, like I said, the linearity is frustrating especially given the great level design. There ARE hidden stars in some of the selected courses, but they're usually obvious (with a hungry Luma asking for a certain number of Star Bits, if you feed it then it transforms to give you an alternate pathway). Of course, there are exceptions, and sometimes I accidentally got a completely different star--these DO exist.

I can't help but feel like it would have been a nigh-perfect solution to put the free-flight powerup in all the worlds once you collected all 120 stars--you'd have obviously beaten the game as intended once, and it'd be a nice little exploratory reward.

But hey, the original Mario sidescrollers were extremely linear, just tremendously fun. While it's hard not to feel a bit disappointed in the lack of exploration options (like I mentioned in the review and you said just now) it's extremely FUN linearity, so I can't fault them TOO much for it.

A word of advisory: Super Mario Galaxy is eight zillion times more fun (figure approximate) when you have a P2.

Two-player is fun and certainly a different experience that's worth checking out, but it really doesn't change the fundamentals of the game much :P