Dancing is Forbidden's Profile

Super Mario Galaxy

Published: Mon 4 Aug, 2008 | On:

You've all read about what is great about Super Mario Galaxy. The graphics are nice, the level design is innovative, it 'feels right', and so on. So I won't bother going in to all of that. Stay tuned, instead, for a review focusing on all of the things which bugged me about the game. (Warning, this review contains spoilers.)

The main problem I had was that it was too easy. Not that there weren't very challenging parts - much of the combat and other movement requires speed and precision reminiscent of earlier Mario games. It's just that what would otherwise be an actually difficult level was made far to easy by the abundance of health and lives.

Firstly; health. You start the game with 3 'hitpoints', and each time you get hit, you lose one point. So it would seem like there's not too much room for error. Of course, there are ways to regain lost hitpoints - picking up a coin gives you one hitpoint back. The problem here is that coins are as prevalent in Galaxy as they are in other Mario games. More-so, in fact, because every time you jump on an enemy they drop a coin. This means that there's always healing available, and so there's much more room for error. It doesn't matter if you get hit by an enemy while trying to kill it, and 'hard' bosses just require you to get more coins while fighting them. It also makes platforms over lava a bit of a joke, since you can often just jump across by landing on the lava, and then heal again when you get to the other side.

Fear not, however, it is still possible to die - there are many spots where a misplaced jump will send you plummeting to your doom. This is where the lives come in. In most other games (including other Mario games), getting a '1UP' or extra life is a noteworthy occasion, and it is usually worth searching for secrets in order to find them. Not so in Galaxy, where lives are almost as common as coins. You start the game with (effectively) 10 lives, and there are 3 or 4 to collect each time you go back to your home base - if you can be bothered that is. You also get one life for every 50 'star bits' you collect. But there are so many star bits that you can't help but collect atleast one or two lives before dying, even if you are playing recklessly. You can see how this makes the game much too easy, but it also has the effect of 'devaluing' the 1UP mushroom. This is a problem because they still treat this mushroom like it is special. It's the 'reward' at the end of particularly difficult or time consuming secrets, but instead of leaving you with a feeling of accomplishment, it leaves you wondering why you wasted your time getting to the secret in the first place. It also ruins the concept of the 'luma shop' where you can choose between buying an extra life, and a red mushroom (temporary extra max HP) - obviously you never choose the life. Coupled with the fact that your lives aren't saved when you quit the game, this means that lives really don't have any value at all - an infinite continue-from-last-checkpoint system would have had the same effect.

For those of you who aren't content with infinite health and lives making the game easy, you can also play with a second player which makes jumping and fighting easier too. "Oooh, a second player - does that mean you can play as Luigi or Toad or something; like Tails in Sonic 2?" I hear you ask. The answer is NO. This second player doesn't add much fun to the game, it's only marginally more fun than watching someone else play. It just adds some extra abilities, like giving mario a higher jump, or stopping enemies in their tracks. I think it's good that the option is there for people who do want an easier game, but it annoys me that they claim it is a 'second player' when they aren't really playing.

The rest of the problems I have are mostly aesthetic ones; but for a game like Galaxy the aesthetics are very important, and it's a bit of a shame when they don't get it all right. (Warning, from here on the spoilers get worse.) The story-line in particular bugs me, because it is exactly the same as Paper Mario. Before you say 'but all Mario games have the same storyline', I'm not talking about the general 'Bowser captures Princess Peach and Mario has to rescue her while Luigi does nothing' fare, the similarities are much more specific. First off, Mario is invited to a party at Princess Peaches' castle. He's no match for Bowser, though, and Bowser is able to abscond with Princess Peach by lifting her castle in to the sky. Mario soon finds out that Bowser has also kidnapped a bunch of stars, and is using their power for evil. So it's up to Mario (with the help of a little baby star, of course) to rescue the stars, so he can then use their power to defeat Bowser. Anyone who has played Paper Mario will recognise this setup!

There are also some more minor aesthetic issues. For example, you have to spend a few minutes near the start of the game learning how to feed lumas. However, feeding ordinary Lumas never actually does anything, and when you have to feed 'hungry lumas', the interface is different from the one you learned. Why bother teaching it to us then? Also, there are some awesome costumes which Mario can wear that give him different powers - but when you go behind an obstacle in one of these, your shadow is just the same as normal Mario's. I know these aren't big things, but they diminish from the otherwise polished feel of the game. Also, the (could have been very awesome) reward you get the first time you finish the game 100% seems like it was implemented in a bit of a rush; it should have been done much better. And of course, Galaxy commits the ultimate Mario faux pas - red mushrooms don't make you giant!

Don't get me wrong, it really is a very good game (the fact that I actually bothered completing it 100% (once) and writing a review about the things I didn't like should attest to this!), but no game is perfect, and Super Mario Galaxy is certainly no exception.