Guest Review: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Today, WordsFinest opens its doors to Ryan, our newest contributor, and his review of Super Mario Galaxy 2.  What does he have to say on the matter? More after the jump!

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is one of the few Nintendo games I can remember that tries to flirt with a boundary of quality and ease of development by copying content directly from its predecessor. On the surface barely anything has changed. The character models are identical (at least at the 480p resolution that the Wii can output), the story line is similar old friends and enemies make repeat appearances, and the soundtrack is mostly the same. But lets go through what is new and what is used.

The objective of the first and second game can be summed up as such. Bowser is the archetypal evil character that steals Princess Peach and creates a vast yet poorly equipped military machine to take over the known universe. Mario, the ever dutiful plumber, chases after Bowser in order to get the princess back and finally force her to pay for all the work he has done over the decades. To do this, he must collect power stars from different galaxies in order to provide the necessary fuel for his spaceship to make it out to the princess' location. If you were ever hoping for a decent story from Mario, you would have to go back to Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo; nothing is new here.

Those who had the privilege of playing through the first galactic adventure will be at home playing with the gravity mechanic in the game as Mario bounces from planet to planet. The design is not new, but it is still as much fun as the first time around. One of my friends played the game with me, although the last Mario game he played was Super Mario Sunshine. He was constantly exclaiming how this part or that interface was very innovative. And it was a major jump at the time, but old timers to the series might be a little discouraged that you do not also get to control time, or something else that might break the platforming mold.

In the early stretches of the game, the developers attempt to make up for this by introducing a large number of new features. There are two new power up mushrooms plus an power tool, Yoshi makes an appearance with three of his own power ups, new mini games challenge Mario, and new enemies require novel thinking to beat the level. The number of well designed and exciting changes in the first few hours of the game took me by surprise, and I was having to rethink how I might use Mario's abilities in many sections. For those who have not picked up the first game, the number of game mechanics introduced combined with the novelty of gravity could cause aggravation since no one strategy will achieve the desired effect, and the game constantly changes its demands on the player.

There are also two new control schemes introduced. One is similar to the sting ray racing scheme presented in the first game, with the added bonus of z axis control by pointing the Wiimote up and down. For those who have not played the first game, the control scheme is similar to when you stick your hand out of a car; tilting left or right causes Mario to steer in the respective direction, while slanting up or down causes Mario to slow and stabilize his altitude or perform a nose dive, respectively. If you don't know what I mean, drive down the highway and stick you hand out of your window and report back the results (yay physics!).

The second control scheme is much simpler, consisting of a fast moving Mario or Mario plus Yoshi combination that is controlled with most often just a tap to the left or right on the nunchuck's analog stick. I found most of these levels to be maddening, mostly because the controller hardware is not very precise. A small nudge would send Mario off into a black hole or cause him to avoid all of the objects that he had been tasked with collecting. While milage will clearly vary, I found these sections to be more infuriating that enjoyable.

Ride, Ride into oblivion, you reptilian cocksucker!

Similarly, the game simplifies the comet idea by causing passing comet stars to request only one action from the player: speed. Almost all of the comets stars required collecting coins in a certain amount of time, completing a level in a certain amount of time, killing a boss in a certain amount of time, or giving players time markers that had to be picked up while trying to complete an objective. These parts added more stress that entertainment, since the comets usually do not provide a new experience, just an old one in a time limit. There were certain cases where this time limit was imposed upon the speedier Mario sections that I accomplished mostly through luck.

The game attempts to bring more entertainment to the platform by reinventing some of its level designs from the first game, altering between two and three dimensions frequently even while performing the same action. There are several times within the game where Mario sits on the top of a planet and drills into it, causing the perspective to shift to the faithful two dimensional representation until he manages to drill his way back out. Sometimes this shift is explicitly marked with a camera change and a fewer control options. At other points the game just gives the player much less space to run on without falling off a ledge.

I'ma falling into the abyss.  WHEEEEEE!!!!

However, the new designs were also paired with some blatant copies from the original. Late in the game one of the galaxies is a near replica of one of the galaxies in the first game. There is one boss fight where the developers took one of the bosses from the first game and put him in a wheel chair. The fights with Bowser only slightly change each time the player has to fight his archnemesis. Many of the galaxies have the very similar features such as a beltway of moving sand that makes me question why this game was not released as an expansion pack.

This reccurring copy and paste problem is a good way to describe how I would rate the game. If you have never played a Wii Mario game, then you can expect a fantastic adventure that is a blast to play, with a few annoyances related to the comet stars. Those that have played the first might become bored after the game shifts from offering new ideas upfront and then sizzling out on the innovation a dozen galaxies in. I played this after work as an attempt to relax, but too often I felt like I was just going through the motions in order to collect stars instead of playing because I was being entertained.

-Ryan Orendorff