Introduction
I love Mario games. Mario is probably my all time favorite hero, next to Ryo from Shenmue. I've played and finished probably all mainstream Mario titles. Frankly, I'm always a bit ticked off that Nintendo focuses more on Zelda than Mario. It always seems like they barely get one Mario title out the door with each console. The new releases of Mario, New Super Mario Bros. & Super Mario Galaxy, were disappointing in the level of challenge they presented compared to previous games.
I've finished the game with 96 stars. What's left are some of the purple comet levels, some hidden stars, including a green one. I was borrowing the Wii from my brother and I had to return it and I have more games to play that need to finish during my vacation. I feel like I have finished that game though and what's left is extras that, if I wanted to play, would have fun doing so.
Story
While the Mushroom kingdom is in celebration, Bowser shows up in Airships, taken from Super Mario Bros. 3, and starts bombing the ground. Then a flying saucer lifts the castle into space with Mario still on it. When they get into space, a Magikoopa knocks Mario off and he falls on a small planet orbiting outside of Earth, or whichever planet the Mushroom Kingdom belongs to. It is there that you are given the power to spin by Rosalina, which is your main attack and will allow you to travel through space via Launch Stars. Wind them up and they boost you to a predestined location. When you find your first Grand Star, it takes you to a space station called the Comet Observatory and you speak again with Rosalina, the keeper of the observatory.
The story's main focus is on Rosalina, the newborn stars that populate her observatory called Lumas, and how her Comet Observatory came to be. It is told to you in chapters when Rosalina reads the story to the Lumas in the library room. New chapters become available after a certain amount of stars are collected. The usual Mario story still applies, but there is significantly more focus on explaining who all these new characters are.
Mario Galaxy is different from other Mario games in that it seems to be more mature. The soundtrack sounds less goofy. There is a story attached to it that tries to provoke emotion. Even the ending seems to give some deep insight. Also, when you die, it's kind of graphic: Mario looks like he's reaching for the win with his last bit of energy. This feels almost too different at times, but it does give a new dimension to Mario games and makes me wonder how far they'll take it in the next Mario.
Sometimes, it's just way overdramatic. When Mario gets a grand star, he does all these special flips in the air and flies around with the star as if he's in flirting with it. It looks stupid and stands out from the rest of the image the game presents. Speaking of things that are overdone, Mario Galaxy also has too many menus when you want to enter a galaxy. You have to be pulled by a Pull Star, then you have to choose a galaxy, then you start flying to it, then you choose a star, then the star spins, and finally you fly to the galaxy. Why can't I just enter the room, select a galaxy and a star in the same screen, and then fly to the galaxy? At least there are no loading times.
Gameplay
Mario Galaxy is played using the Wiimote. Flicking your wrist makes Mario spin. The other major use the Wiimote provides is as a pointer to collect Star Bits and to make Mario navigate through Pull Stars, which you can use to pull Mario across space. The Wiimote doesn't contribute anything exceptional to Mario Galaxy.
It looks like they were trying to experiment with new ways to play with the Wiimote as well. You'll see this in very rare occasions. Nintendo forces us to use the Wiimote in a non-intuitive way. And it's frustrating when I kept dying, because I knew I could do it with the analog stick, which is generally used to move Mario, but it just sits there doing nothing.
Controlling the camera is very limited, which I guess isn't too bad because I have to readjust my hand to reach the camera controls anyway. But it sometimes makes controlling Mario difficult. I think a lot of the difficulty of the game stems from the weird camera angles that make it difficult to judge exactly how you're supposed to move.
Just like every new Mario game, there are new power-ups. This time there is: Bee Mario, which allows you to fly like a Bee for limited amount of time; Rainbow Mario, a limited time power-up that functions like the star in other Mario games; Boo Mario, which turns him into a ghost allowing him to go through certain walls; Ice Mario, which lets Mario turn any water he touches into a platform of ice; Fire Mario, which allows Mario to throw fireballs (a little awkward with the Wiimote); Spring Mario, which allows him to jump really high, and it looks cute. And there is also a secret power-up that isn't mentioned in the book. But I think you can only use it in two areas of the game, which is a shame.
Instead of a castle as in Mario 64, Galaxy takes place in the Comet Observatory, which is made up of a number of small observatories, each with a theme. Each observatory has five galaxies associated with it, each with a sub-theme. Each galaxy has a certain number of planets in it depending on its design. Basically, each Galaxy is a level. Inside each galaxy there could be a bunch of small planets or there could be one big planet and it may have a few small planets around it. Most galaxies start out with three stars to collect, although the count will increase later as you complete it.
While some people think that these sphere levels are revolutionary, I don't. It's been done before, creates camera and control issues, and makes it difficult to see where you've been and where you're going because you can only see a portion of the level at a time.
Galaxy never got boring from beginning to end as there were always new things to see and do. But it did start out slow for me and I wasn't impressed. It was too easy and jumping from tiny planet to tiny planet was just unfulfilling. It was very linear and hardly required any exploring. After about 20 stars or so the game introduced much more challenging level deigns and more exploring was needed and it became more fun, but never surpassed the fun in Mario 64.
Other Thoughts
The in-game graphics, generally, met my expectations and sometimes surpassed them with how much attention to detail was. For instance, when Mario is underwater, he looks like he's holding his breath. I don't remember more examples, but did notice more of these that made Galaxy seem more like a living breathing universe.
The only way they could improve the in-game graphics is to have higher resolution rendering, implement some much needed Anti-aliasing to smooth out those edges everywhere, and clear up some color banding that appears in some levels. They could also improve the (Full Motion Videos) FMVs. They try to look like in-game cut-scenes, but seem foggy, looking almost as bad as the FMVs in Super Mario Sunshine. And the beach levels have too much bloom, giving them an unnatural look.
Conclusion
Super Mario Galaxy is the successor to Super Mario Sunshine, but touted as the true successor of Super Mario 64. While it did return to the formula of Mario 64, I must say that I enjoyed Super Mario Sunshine more. And I don't mean that in the capacity that Mario Sunshine didn't score very high, so Galaxy must be a bad game. My personal taste was that Mario Sunshine was a good game and so is Super Mario Galaxy. It just feels like there something missing from Galaxy, yet I don't know what it is. What I do know is that I'm not fully satisfied with Galaxy as a Mario game. But Galaxy is still a good game that can last you for hours of fun.
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