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Wednesday 20 February, 2008
Gamelog Entry #4 (1st session)
Summary
Super Mario Galaxy is an extraordinary platformer for the Wii console and the most recent sequel in the series. In SMG (Super Mario Galaxy), you play as Mario and your goal is to save the princess from the evil clutches of Bowser. The setting for this game, though, takes place in space and you must explore many colorful galaxies and planets in search of power stars that will take you to further galaxies to explore.
Gameplay
This was quite an amazing play through of SMG and I am thoroughly impressed with what I experienced. The story starts off with the same plot, though (but hey, I guessed they just used what worked). You start off in a festival of some sort, which ends up with the princess being nabbed by the evil Bowser and you soon find yourself on some strange planet in space chasing bunnies. But this is where the real game starts.
The colorful shades used on each planet in the varied galaxies gives it a sense of overwhelming fun and the musical score attached to it only makes it that much more fun. The character models this time around are much more colorful and though there is very little dialogue (very little), the characters do have great facial expressions, which gives them a more life-like appearance. One of the things I find a little annoying though, is that there isn’t much of a story to this game, as it follows the whole save the princess theme. The game does give you a little background in the form of chapters in a book that can be accessed at any time by going to the library (in the game, not in real life).
SMG makes excellent use of the Wii control, mostly in the form of mini games that you’ll encounter in the game. These range from twisting the Wii remote to control the direction when you surf or holding it upright and tilting to roll a ball along a dangerous obstacle course. All of these make the game even more fun to play, though it does take some time to get used to. The Wii motion sensing function also serves as the main attack function for Mario, as a quick wag of the remote makes him spin adding extra fun to the game as you must also use this function to traverse the many planets in each galaxy.
What really caught my eye was the fact that this game could be played co-op, in a sense. When an extra Wii remote is plugged in, a second player appears as the form of an extra star on the screen (you already have a star for single player, but more on that in the second log). While player 2 can’t control the direction of Mario, they can force him to jump and even spin, which can help inadequate players or, if you have a jerk for player 2, they can really mess you up. But other than that, player 2 also has the function to collect star bits and stop enemies in there path, which is tremendously helpful when player 1 is distracted with the actions at hand. This makes interaction with people around you even greater as you must communicate with your comrade on collecting items and strategies for getting through levels. And every minute of it is a rip roaring good time.
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