Blast off into space in Mario's latest and greatest adventure.

Super Mario Galaxy is the game that Wii owners have been waiting for: it delivers on all fronts and has been worth the wait. This is quite simply one of the best games Mario has been in - 2D or 3D - and given his impressive resume, this is no light statement. This is a game anyone can pick up and play and if you've been on the fence about Nintendo's waggle machine, it's as good of a reason to pick up a Wii as you are going to get in the near future.



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The purity of something is most often measured in physical and quantitative terms. Say, for example, the number of carats in a diamond and the percentage of fat in milk. These are real, concrete objects that are easily compared to other similar objects of varying purity. But how then does one measure the purity of the abstract and metaphysical? Only by comparing the feelings and memories of emotions can we assign values to concepts like love and hate. Pure love may be reserved for that special someone; pure hate, that school administrator who seemed bent on making your life a living hell. These opposites can be measured against one another to form some kind of personal, pseudo-numeric value.

Fun is another one of those vague, almost existentialist concepts. Logically, fun can be examined against its opposite, boredom. The purest of fun experiences then, is one devoid of boredom. Normally, a fun experience is restrained to the layered abyss of memory in your brain, there to reside until it is called upon in a melancholy time of need. Your least bored memory could therefore be the one of purest fun.

Er, well, that's how it used to be anyway. The purity of fun has a new benchmark - and its name is Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario Galaxy sees Mario return to top form in the three-dimensional realm. As can be immediately concluded from the title, this game has Mario soaring in the cosmos attempting to - what else - save Princess Peach from the clutches of Bowser. Along the way he'll defy gravity with the help of a seemingly Peach replacement space "princess" named Rosalina. Rosalina and her gaggle of star people called Lumas inhabit the hub world that Mario will use to explore the galaxies that make up the gameplay of Super Mario Galaxy.

The core gameplay within Galaxy has not changed since Mario 64. If you have any previous experience with the Nintendo 64 title or its sequel, Super Mario Sunshine you will be able to pick up the Wii Remote and Nunchuck and jump, triple jump, and wall jump like it was old hat. Stomping on Goombas and Koopa Troopas is as visceral as ever thanks the to tight, responsive controls.

The genius of the game, however, is in how effortlessly it challenges your expectations of the familiar. This comes in the form of the game's main "gimmick": the planetoid structure. Most galaxies are made up of a myriad of planetoids. Some of these spherical (or not-so-spherical) wonders are so small you can jump clear around them; others so large they constitute an area parallel to the size of the worlds present in Super Mario 64. With a waggle of the Wii Remote, Mario can launch himself from planetoid to planetoid in the race for stars. For some individual stars, you can realistically tread on nearly a dozen planetoids, each with their own bite-sized objectives to complete before moving onto the next. And to make something perfectly clear: just seeing Mario flying through space from one planetoid to the other is satisfying and fun in and of itself. Not only does it showcase the scale and scope of the levels, it also often centers on one of the subtle ways in which Nintendo has utilized the Wii Remote in the game by using the Remote as a pointer to collect Star Bits, little candy-like items that serve as both currency and ammunition. Whether flying through space or even on a planetoid, subtle touches like the collecting of Star Bits gives Galaxy that extra bit of polish that separates it from its ilk.

But that's not to say the entire game is composed exclusively of planet-hopping; the game displays a staggering variety of ways to collect stars. Familiar underwater stages are present along with new ones such as the beehive-themed galaxy. Speaking of bees, variety abounds in Mario's multitude of powers such as the new Bee Suit or the classic Fire Flower. You will never collect a star in exactly the same way as the other. That is, with the exception of the awful Purple Coin stars, where you have to hunt down 100 purple coins in order to collect your celestial prize. These kinds of item collecting quests are by and large absent in Galaxy and for good reason - their slow pacing and repetitive nature are, well, boring. Thankfully, you can avoid the Purple Coin quests if you just want to beat the game normally.

Mario Galaxy has enough guts to visually impress, despite being on the "underpowered" Wii. As Mario flies from one planetoid to the other he dives under spewing lava or by giant toy robots. Despite the aesthetic variety, this game is so stylistically coherent that you won't notice it doesn't have the pure polygons of an Xbox 360 or PS3 title. Some subtle light bloom completes the game's soft, rounded look. The game also runs at a constant 60 fps with no slowdown. Audio is no slouch either; some of the game's music is orchestrated, but all of it sounds either majestic if not uncharacteriscally epic for a Mario game. Some classic themes can also be heard as well. Touches of fanservice abound in Galaxy - musical cues are just one example.
Super Mario Galaxy is quite frankly the best 3D Mario platformer yet - and by extension, one of the best ever crafted. It is so easily accessible and so varied that the fun you get out of it will have as varied a definition as the planetoids you'll traverse along the way. Mario himself has a history of establishing genre standards, paving the way for imitators but the utter uniqueness of Super Mario Galaxy's structure is one reason why this is one polished diamond that's sure not to lose its purity any time soon.

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release: Nov 12, 2007
MSRP: $49.99
Everyone
Winner of GameBump's Best Adventure Game of 2007

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