Super Mario Galaxy

[Double]

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Intro: So I was out earlier with some money and had a choice I could get some bitching chicken or rent a video game. I decided, I might as well rent this shit and finish off the 3d Mario trilogy, so is it as bad as Sunshine? No, of course not. But then again Sunshine was complete and utter shit, so comparing it to that game isn't at all a fair basis to judge this one, a more fair test would be comparing it to Mario 64, which I will do a little bit of. Think of it this way, if a student did consistently well getting A's all the time and then one day got a D, you wouldn't grade his new shit in respect to the last paper, you'd just cough that up to the student going through a rough period (in this case it would be Nintendo doing drugs).

Gameplay: OH HEY REMEMBER THAT LISTING SHIT IN A LEVEL THING?:

-3 regular stars
-1 comet star
-1 purple comet star
-1 secret star
-100 purple coins

Yeah, a lot less than 64 or Sunshine, the game makes up for this by having more linear areas with one star in them (GASP LIKE WHAT A GAME IN 3D SHOULD BE LIKE INSTEAD OF MINDLESS ITEM COLLECTION!) and by having more areas in the game.

This raises the question of what comets and purple comets are, comets are special stars that effect one of the major areas and do one of 4 things:

-Make you race against that clone loser from Sunshine.
-Make you do another star you already did under a time limit.
-Make you do another star you already did with one hit point.
-Make you do another star you already did with the enemies and obstacles moving faster.

Now, if you read above you'll notice a good deal of these make you REPEAT SHIT YOU ALREADY DID. This is actually worse than the squid boss from Sunshine as the game does this more frequently AND it reuses many of the bosses throughout the game AND combines it with the comets to make you fight these bosses as much as the squid from Sunshine! Normally I'd put this type of shit in the rehash factor but the games overuse of these actually makes it a gameplay issue! I've never seen this type of shit in such a major game before. It'd be like if you played MegaMan 2 and 4 of the bosses were Metal Man.

Enough of comets let us talk about... purple comets... Remember how in Mario 64 you had the 100 coin star in each major level? This works on the same principal you go to a level and you have to collect 100 purple coins, occasionally under a time limit. With the exception of a few (Luigi's Purple Coins and the one in the bonepen) these are all very easy to do. But the game is retarded and you can't do these until you've beaten the game first... because for some reason they don't want you unlocking everything in one go. In fact the game actually then tells you to get the rest of the stars so you can go back and fight the final boss again and suffer through the ending again so you can unlock another character and play through the whole fucking thing again to unlock a special stage at the end, to which the game can kiss my ass.

The basic gameplay is the same, you run around do tasks for stars, go to new levels to do more tasks for more stars. Of course this is the Wii so we must SHAKE THE CONTROLLER to attack, because we can't use buttons for that obviously. Now if this was an attack that actually was influenced by the way you swung the controller I may be more lenient to the game, but no it doesn't matter how you swing everything results in Mario doing his spinning attack, no matter what motion you make. Oh on that subject, spinning is pretty much Mario's only attack as he still can't remember how to do punches from 64, he did however take the time to relearn most of his jumping abilities. The game does use the pointer so you can collect these star thingies so you can use them to stun enemies or enter certain levels, because you obviously can't make a game where you only use ONE kind of MacGuffin based level restriction. The only other times the Wiimote is really used are for a couple of stars where you roll around a ball and have to keep the wiimote vertical and use it like a joystick (which is just a delight with some with a condition where they have shaky hands), use the pointer to move a bubble around and surf on a manta ray like a retard.

After being noticeably absent from Sunshine transformations return including the return of the fire flower... which is timed for some retarded reason. The others include an Ice Mario which can walk on water, a Bee Mario that can fly and can climb up honeycombs and a spring Mario than can... bounce around like a retard with absolutely awful controls only serving to artificially increase the difficulty.

The games camera is a complete and utter bitch, you can rarely control it, and in the instances you can your control of it is quite limited. The game likes to take advantage of the whole IN SPACE aspect of it by having Mario appear upside down (because this wasn't done more than a decade earlier in MegaMan 5, I'm sure), which in its own right isn't bad... but this in 3d which creates some weird platforming segments the most notable being a descending sand tower section in the obligatory desert level.

The game is no doubt an improvement over Sunshine, but Sunshine was crap, and compared to 64 this game just sacrificed a lot to cut corners or try new things, that frankly just didn't work as well as they could.
13 out of 20

Music: I have very little problems with this games soundtrack, I mean it has a war march version of the airship theme from Mario 3, you do that and you've pretty much got a good soundtrack in my opinion. Sure there are some themes that aren't as good but it's a fuck ton better than the tropical shit Sunshine was shitting out... but as I've said I wish to avoid Sunshine comparisons, and in that regard it's ok compared to Mario 64, so I'll give it the same score. I will say though the final boss music is not nearly as awesome as the one from Mario 64.
13 out of 15

Translation: People have been pointing out lately this section pretty much gives free points to games that actually have a decent translation team, to them I say: Fuck you go back to playing your shitty games from Japan.
10 out of 10

Length: As mentioned in the gameplay section I find the length of this game a bit artificial with the inclusions of comets and the second play through, and as such I will only consider the length to Bowser, in which case the game is quite short.
9 out of 15

Rehash Factor: In addition to your normal Mario themes, a few others return namely two from Mario 3 and 1 from Mario 64. While some elements of the basic gameplay from Mario 64 the game does a fairly decent job of having its own new content. However as mentioned in the gameplay section the comets actually made me dock a few points from the game REHASHING FROM ITSELF.

If the comets weren't enough this game has the pièce de résistance of a game rehashing from itself, one ENTIRE LEVEL is literally a mirrored version of a level from earlier in the game! No really! At least the levels have different stars in them but still this is fucking absurd!
10 out of 15

Plot: THE PRINCESS HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY KOOPAS AND TAKEN INTO SPACE. Really the game is basically Mario... IN SPACE... which isn't that new as he already visited the moon in Super Mario Land (and AGAIN in Paper Mario 2), and wherever  the fuck Star Road and the Special World in Mario World were. This isn't even the first time the castle has been stolen it was in Paper Mario as well.

Ok that's not totally fair, there is some bullshit side story about Rosalina but it's so horrible Nintendo even lets you skip it. Let me reiterate: The side story is so horrible you can choose NOT EVEN SEE IT by not going into the library.
0 out of 10

Difficulty: With the exception of a few of the comet things (especially that bullshit volcano 1 hit point one, seriously what the fuck is that bullshit), the game is fairly easy. The bosses pretty much die if sneeze on them, with one notable exception the boulder boss , that one actually requires you to be awake.
7 out of 15

Total: 62/100 = 62 %

Mario Galaxy is ok but not great, it's average. There are still some design flaws left, namely comets and purple coins, but even then it's a step in the right direction compared to Sunshine and perhaps even Mario 64. The game however also greatly underutilizes the system it is on, but then most games do. While I find them to be a huge fucking cop-out I would still take the comets over the MOTHER FUCKING BLUE COINS from Sunshine. At least Mario is doing a lot better than his adversary from the nineties Mario better watch himself though, with space done there ain't much left for him to go...

However I still should have spent this money on the chicken.

Positive:

Also I'm apparently not the only one who hated Blue Coins in Sunshine, as there isn't even a SINGLE ONE in the whole fucking game which alone makes this game much better.

Negative: Ok, we have airships in SPACE...  you know who should be piloting those airships? Not that lameass Bowser Jr., the mother fucking Koopa Kids that's their shtick.

[MC2]

with space done there ain't much left for him to go...

What came after Leprechaun in space?

Go look it up and tell me that wouldn't make for a kickass Mario game.

[UHMEEEEBA]

Some of us are too lazy to look it up, you could just tell us you know.

[Jesuszilla]

Super Mario Hood ft. the Koopa Kids.



It would be good except for the fact that the Koopa Kids would rap.

[Tyrannosaurus Reich]

Super Mario Hood ft. the Koopa Kids.



It would be good except for the fact that the Koopa Kids would rap.

how is that bad

[UHMEEEEBA]

Well they already were all named after musicians so...

[Jesuszilla]

Well it could be funny as long as Wendy is the stereotypical fat black woman.

[MC2]

Knowing Nintendo they wouldn't be in it at all :O

[UHMEEEEBA]

Get the people who did the first Mario and Luigi on it.