In Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, you chiefly guide a tiny plumber from the left side of the world to the right, always moving forward and never backwards! In Super Mario Galaxy, you move a tiny plumber all over the cosmos. It is a little more ambitious.
In Galaxy, the illusion of flat surface is finally splayed out: what is life like on planets no bigger than large houses? The answer becomes clear as Mario bounds around orbs as though an athletic extra-terrestrial creature. Every quest you must complete transpires as you travel from planet to planet in search of your little stars, sixty of which will earn you the right to fight the final boss (and the whole 120 of which will offer you a seriously compelling reason to play through the game again).
And moving this tiny plumber feels right, more right than most other third-person 3D platforming games, thanks to the surprisingly simplistic controls: most of your feats are performed using only the nunchuk's analog stick and Z-button, and the Wii remote's A button. Despite the simplicity, the array of acrobatic maneuvers at Mario's disposal is almost without compare. You can double- and triple-jump, U-turn jump, long jump, backflip, ground pound, and even spin around to hit enemies, float on flowers, or scale vines by simply just shaking the remote. This is to say nothing of the ability to fire "star bits" at on-screen enemies like a glorified shooting gallery (which a second player can do in the game's surprisingly neat co-op mode) or the "secret" mechanics like the homing ground pound and the boost start on cosmic races which aren't mentioned in the manual but are incredibly rewarding to discover.
The mechanics wouldn't be of any particular note if they weren't specifically useful throughout the quest, and fortunately for Galaxy, they are. The variety of surfaces and settings that you travel through are at their weakest just imaginative, and at their best almost revelations (one particular level that ends with you scaling a giant toy robot in search of star is a non-denominational religious experience). There's just something about most of the level design and gameplay concepts in Galaxy that doesn't exist in other games. In a way some of the levels even feel wasteful, like the ideas they introduce could easily be stretched out into more and more goals and an almost obscenely long game but instead are used for only the six or so stars per level. All of this serves to create a game that is so consistently fresh you'll hardly believe it's already your sixtieth star and time to go fight that final boss, one that there's really no devastatingly compelling reason to go after except to experience the final level—a combination of brutal platforming and world-warping and gravity puzzles at times so confusing you will be in awe of the moves you are pulling off without even realizing it.
To speak of the game mechanics and inventive level design primarily is to do a grave disservice to the "magic" of this game, an element it possesses moreso than any title in recent memory. I mentioned in my preview of the game back in July that Miyamoto was once quoted as asking, paraphrased from my own memory, "wouldn't it be fun to have a world of playgrounds at your fingertips?" Galaxy is the embodiment of this question, with life and color and that certain something coursing through every tiny star and squeaky noise in every cohesively planned galaxy.
I would be remiss not to mention the music here, which finally exists as we've been dreaming forever—almost total orchestration and a main theme (present in most trailers and one of the first galaxies) that is so perfect for the game that it will send chills down your arms the first time you hear it while Mario soars from one planetoid to another. The Bowser theme is even better, a more crunchy remix of Super Mario 64's Bowser level music that only gets sweeter once the operatic chanting kicks in. It just feels right, like it's been there all along but it's finally coming out of the speakers instead of just playing out in your imagination.
Galaxy is epic in a way that none of the other Mario games have ever been—playfully tongue-in-cheek if you're looking at it like that, but somehow actually epic at the same time—what other story in recent memory deals with a a somewhat pudgy plumber from Brooklyn who finds himself launched into outer space to rescue a princess in a pink dress from a giant reptile who shoots fire out of his mouth and has stolen the royal castle by attaching it to a spaceship?
The fact that this should seem completely insane but doesn't is the only piece of evidence anyone should ever need that Super Mario Galaxy works as though some carefully crafted machine—all components contribute to the beautiful, cohesive whole: a virtually flawless, colorful, imaginative re-invention and refinement of every platforming mechanic you've ever seen in a video game before. And you're living them out as a plumber in outer space.
In Galaxy, the illusion of flat surface is finally splayed out: what is life like on planets no bigger than large houses? The answer becomes clear as Mario bounds around orbs as though an athletic extra-terrestrial creature. Every quest you must complete transpires as you travel from planet to planet in search of your little stars, sixty of which will earn you the right to fight the final boss (and the whole 120 of which will offer you a seriously compelling reason to play through the game again).
And moving this tiny plumber feels right, more right than most other third-person 3D platforming games, thanks to the surprisingly simplistic controls: most of your feats are performed using only the nunchuk's analog stick and Z-button, and the Wii remote's A button. Despite the simplicity, the array of acrobatic maneuvers at Mario's disposal is almost without compare. You can double- and triple-jump, U-turn jump, long jump, backflip, ground pound, and even spin around to hit enemies, float on flowers, or scale vines by simply just shaking the remote. This is to say nothing of the ability to fire "star bits" at on-screen enemies like a glorified shooting gallery (which a second player can do in the game's surprisingly neat co-op mode) or the "secret" mechanics like the homing ground pound and the boost start on cosmic races which aren't mentioned in the manual but are incredibly rewarding to discover.
The mechanics wouldn't be of any particular note if they weren't specifically useful throughout the quest, and fortunately for Galaxy, they are. The variety of surfaces and settings that you travel through are at their weakest just imaginative, and at their best almost revelations (one particular level that ends with you scaling a giant toy robot in search of star is a non-denominational religious experience). There's just something about most of the level design and gameplay concepts in Galaxy that doesn't exist in other games. In a way some of the levels even feel wasteful, like the ideas they introduce could easily be stretched out into more and more goals and an almost obscenely long game but instead are used for only the six or so stars per level. All of this serves to create a game that is so consistently fresh you'll hardly believe it's already your sixtieth star and time to go fight that final boss, one that there's really no devastatingly compelling reason to go after except to experience the final level—a combination of brutal platforming and world-warping and gravity puzzles at times so confusing you will be in awe of the moves you are pulling off without even realizing it.
To speak of the game mechanics and inventive level design primarily is to do a grave disservice to the "magic" of this game, an element it possesses moreso than any title in recent memory. I mentioned in my preview of the game back in July that Miyamoto was once quoted as asking, paraphrased from my own memory, "wouldn't it be fun to have a world of playgrounds at your fingertips?" Galaxy is the embodiment of this question, with life and color and that certain something coursing through every tiny star and squeaky noise in every cohesively planned galaxy.
I would be remiss not to mention the music here, which finally exists as we've been dreaming forever—almost total orchestration and a main theme (present in most trailers and one of the first galaxies) that is so perfect for the game that it will send chills down your arms the first time you hear it while Mario soars from one planetoid to another. The Bowser theme is even better, a more crunchy remix of Super Mario 64's Bowser level music that only gets sweeter once the operatic chanting kicks in. It just feels right, like it's been there all along but it's finally coming out of the speakers instead of just playing out in your imagination.
Galaxy is epic in a way that none of the other Mario games have ever been—playfully tongue-in-cheek if you're looking at it like that, but somehow actually epic at the same time—what other story in recent memory deals with a a somewhat pudgy plumber from Brooklyn who finds himself launched into outer space to rescue a princess in a pink dress from a giant reptile who shoots fire out of his mouth and has stolen the royal castle by attaching it to a spaceship?
The fact that this should seem completely insane but doesn't is the only piece of evidence anyone should ever need that Super Mario Galaxy works as though some carefully crafted machine—all components contribute to the beautiful, cohesive whole: a virtually flawless, colorful, imaginative re-invention and refinement of every platforming mechanic you've ever seen in a video game before. And you're living them out as a plumber in outer space.