Mario Galaxy

Since I am taking the Games pathway in multimedia this year I thought I should actually write something in here games related.  It wasnt until I bought Mario Galaxy today however that I have actually felt inspired to write much about games.

I wouldn't call myself a hard core gamer, but I have always been interested in computer games, mainly the ones which do something different and keep you excited.  For this reason, I think, I never really got into the whole playstation craze.  I owned a PS2 quite late on in its life (I got one a couple of christmas's ago, with a load of games second hand) and I enjoyed the games enough, but nothing really struck me like 'wow this is cool'.

That said, neither did anything on the Game Cube particually, which was the first games console I owned after the Megadrive.  However there were a lot of games on there I did really enjoy.

It wasnt until I started hearing about the Wii that I started getting excited about games again.  This sounded something completely new and different, and it was from Nintendo, who I wanted to do well, since they dared to try new things instead of coming out with the same type of games over and over.

The first thing I played on the Wii was Sonic: Secret rings or whatever its called.  I've hardly picked it up again since and I was sort of disapointed with it, but interested at the same time.  I like the controls and see how it would be fun, but it didn't really do it for me.  However, for some reason, I usually always buy the latest sonic game, hoping for it to be more like the games I played when I was younger, but each time the games seem to steer further and further away, and draw me in less and less each time.

Mario was something I did not grow up playing.  The SNES was the lesser console as far as I was concerned.  All my friends had Megadrives, and SNES's always looked uncool and tacky.  Mario looked boring compared to Sonic, so I never played it and it wasn't until Mario 64 that I was reintroduced to Mario, but only breifly.

I played a demo of mario 64 in a toys R us store and thought it was great, controling this character in 3D, which was pretty new at the time.  I thought it looked great, and it seemed exciting, and I did plan on getting a nintendo 64 for a while.  For some reason I didn't bother though and ended up just playing games on the PC for the gap between when they stopped making megadrive games and until the Game Cube was released.

I enjoyed Mario Sunshine, though it was probably not the best Mario game to be properly reintroduced to.  I was taken in by the graphics I think mainly, which made the game more interesting to me.  However, playing Mario Galaxy today has completely over shadowed Mario Sunshine which seems like a pathetic game in comparison.  

I'm not going to review the game as I really can't be bothered going through everything thats in the game.  I have only got 10 stars so far, but for me to sit down and play a game for more than an hour or so at a time requires a LOT from the game to keep me interested.  Galaxy definetly did this for me.  At every step there seemed to be something innovative but with a familiar mario style.  My favourite part so far is the wreckage in space where there are bits of rockets and other junk floating around.  Two parts of this level reminded me of the classic sonic games.

The first bit is the part where platforms appear slightly ahead of you while you walk, like in Marble Hill Zone in the first Sonic the Hedgehog game.  The cool thing in Galaxy though is the speed they drop down in and how they disapear again as you move away from them.

The second thing which reminded me of the Sonic games a boss on the level. It is a big robot which it bigger than the planet/moon which it is stood on.  This reminded me of one of robotnik's huge robots found at the end of Sonic 2/3/Sonic & Knuckles.

There is loads of other cool stuff in the game, most noticably the physics of the gravity as mario walks around different planets and flies off between them.  Using the Wii remote to collect the stars and firing them at enemies also feels a bit different, and yet easy to pick up and rewarding at the same time.

The game is the first game on the Wii which has actually lived up to if not been better than I had expected, possibly with exception to Wii Tennis on Wii Sports.  But even with Wii Tennis there are times where it feels unfair slightly disapointing.  Zelda Twilight Princess, although very enjoyable, and works well with the Wii controls, doesn't make as much use of the Wii Remote for sword fighting as I had hoped for.  Then again, Twilight Priness was of course a Game Cube game with added Wii control support, and not made specificly with the Wii in mind.  Mario galaxy is the first game I have played for the Wii that seems to work perfectly, and is the most exciting game I have played in a long time.