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Friday 25 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY
After playing the game for a second time I began to appreciate the expanse of the game as the story began to unfold. I found that, even after beating galaxies, you can still go back and do various challenges to obtain new stars. For example, when a comet is present in a galaxy, I was allowed to do a timed race through a planet. Also, many levels have "hungry stars" that require an arbitrary amount of star bits in order to become a planet. I thought this greatly added to the overall replay value of the game, making it even harder to put down.
In addition to this, I was also amazed by the level design of some of the planets. What I found particularly impressive was how the planets explored the 3D aspects of the environments to solve puzzles and progress. Many of the levels forced me to "think outside the box" in order to move on, and in ways that I haven't had to think in previous games. One level in particular caught my attention. It was a space junk level that required me to use all the junk surrounding me as platforms to move around. I thought this aspect was very unique and was something that I haven't seen in any other game I have played.
DESIGN
One design aspect that I found intriguing was the use of the Wii controllers (both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck). At first it was troublesome trying to move Mario with essentially two hands, but the simplicity of the first planets you play on really helped me to get used to it and give me a taste of the moves I would have to be doing in the future (for example you learn how to wall jump early on which I ended up using on almost every level later in the game.
In addition, I felt the controls helped to make me feel even more immersed in the game. I had to pay attention all the time (which I didn't mind doing) and eventually the controls became very natural and intuitive. Many levels required that I point the Wiimote at the screen to pull Mario around (like the blue stars that acted as intergalactic monkey bars), which I found to add to the overall difficulty of the game.
The controls helped me enjoy the game more especially in relation to the various boss battles. I found that all the boss battles require that I use a combination of various moves that I had learned through the the galaxy that the boss pertains to. (For example, later Mario becomes "spring Mario" and, in that galaxy, the boss requires you battle in that form of Mario). I thought that this allowed for a very smooth learning curve, and the bosses never seemed too difficult, (though they were often not very easy either).
The one drawback I found was that often the camera angles were frustrating and difficult to control. And though this didn't greatly detract from the overall game play, I found that it sometimes got annoying and was hard to adjust. Even though the camera angles were adjustable (using the D-Pad) I found that the situations when I needed to change the angles were too intense to deter my concentration enough to use the D-pad.
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