Super Mario Galaxy

If I had to describe Super Mario Galaxy in just two words, I’d have to call it “whimsy incarnate.” When Mario takes flight for distant galaxies and missing stars, a tremendous feeling of freedom and happiness suffuses your play experience. It has never felt better to don the plumber outfit and go hunting for the special kind of spacial antics that Nintendo seems to be making their specialty.

First Impressionsby Tanx - Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

In this game Mario is tasked with helping a little star princess get her space station working again... I suppose that since star energy appears to be transmitted through pipes, this roughly falls within Mario’s job description. You have to give it to him, not many plumbers dabble in electronics, repairs, monkeys (by the way, if you feel like a stroll down Mario memory lane, check out the documentary “the King of Kong.”) Mario is a Renaissance kind of guy, and his continuing journey into self-improvement has done wonders. Gamers’ favorite Italian plumber has never looked so cute and cartoony... gone are the glory days of the Super Mario Bros afternoon TV show with Mario played by a greasy fat man with a lot of excess facial hair.

While Mario has donned white Disney gloves and gained near “plushie” status, I was happy to see good old Bowser taking a few steps away from cartoony laughing stock and actually looking a little intimidating again. Portrayed as a cross between Gamera, Godzilla and a schoolyard bully, Bowser has taken to stomping around small spherical planetoids that he probably stole after eating the Little Prince.

Which brings us to the primary invention of the game, variable gravity fields. Most levels consist of a series of oddly-shaped planets, often not more than 20 meters in diameter. Gravity points towards the center of each body of mass, allowing Mario to run around like a constantly moving normal vector on a smooth differentiable manifold. Okay, for those not up on Differential Topology, this means that Mario generally sticks to the surface of each planet, regardless of whether he is under it, above it, on the side or what have you.

There are occasional exceptions, often when the planet has sharp edges to mark sides you will fall from (thus the insistence on differentiability above.) If Mario gets too far from a gravitic surface he generally plunges into an always conveniently nearby black hole, no doubt being crushed, stretched and suspended in torment until the end of time... probably makes Mario miss the good old days when death consisted of being stubbed in the toe by a walking mushroom.

Mario is aided in his quest to collect star bits and restore power to the space station by other valuable Nintendo property assets. You have Luigi showing up on occasion, as well as the entertaining Mushroom Brigade, a team of people from Princess Peach’s kingdom who fly around in a mushroom spaceship and generally need rescuing wherever they show up. You also speak to a lot of penguins, which the universe is full of for some reason.

You might not learn much about Astronomy in this game. Observatories on the space station view different solar systems, but each planet in a solar system is referred to as a “galaxy.” I’m not certain why things were named this way, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Japanese version has things sorted in the correct nomenclature. After all, if there actually were multiple galaxies in the game it really should be called Super Mario Local Cluster.

While the camera can sometimes be a bit finicky and controls reversing direction when Mario runs onto the underside of a planetoid can cause confusion, in general the gameplay is very smooth and well done. With few tedious cutscenes and quick access to levels, Galaxy provides challenging variable fun with minimal interruption. There is a great variety to both nature and difficulty of the tasks, and while you can fight the final boss after completing around half the game, I found it impossible to put down until I found every last secret and met every challenge.

Even the notorious purple coin levels were irresistible, probably the hardest extra challenge I’ve bothered to master in the last three years that didn’t give me an Xbox 360 achievement.

As a final note, I have to give kudos to Nintendo for establishing such light-hearted fun without excess mush. Mario laughs and leaps in the air as you jump along, spinning with glee and satisfying himself with perfect landings every time he travels between galaxies. Little glowing critters cavort in the air, dancing and playing, and penguins all live in tropical paradises. After so many games of doom and gloom, I have to admit that vacationing in the Marioverse has never been more refreshing.

Played For: about 50 hours

Will I play it more: I THINK MY FIANCEE MIGHT PLAY AS LUIGI...