Super Mario Galaxy combines brilliant level design and perfect controls to create a quintessential platformer.
Super Mario Galaxy takes every idea or concept you have about a platformer, smashes them to pieces, puts them back together, and presents to you an entirely new formula to not only a Mario game but the genre as a whole. Coupled with the epic setting of outer space and numerous upon numerous galaxies for you to explore and salivate over, Super Mario Galaxy does what few other games in the genre have accomplished: perfection.
To fully grasp the magnitude of Super Mario Galaxy's perfection, one must look at the core concept of the premise presented in the game: gravity. You'll soon notice the difference in Mario's speed, jumping, and overall maneuverability once you set foot on your first planetoid and begin to experiment the boundaries of Mario's movements with the Wii controller. The game hits you with a brick and at first you feel like you are controlling a tank and/or feeling nauseous from the inertia and constantly changing angle of the automatic camera. After gathering yourself, you feel like a moron and realize that Mario moves with finesse, elegance, and grace. It's truly amazing to find yourself wasting time in particular galaxies by just playing around with gravity and seeing what you accomplish and fulfill in the process. It's just one of those many moments in Super Mario Galaxy where you realize you are playing a present day masterpiece.
Also new to the title is the motion control abilities granted to the Wii remote. Your most basic and pivotal motion gesture is a simple spin attack that completes just about everything the game throws at you, the least of which includes sending Mario into orbit with Launch Stars, rebounding projectiles at your foes, flipping switches, adding distance to your jump, etc. Only the tip of the iceberg, motion gestures come into play when you are granted power ups. As a sort of homage to Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario can don multiple suits that take advantage of the Wii remote's motion sensing capability. In an attempt to not spoil all of the various suits to you, I will only name one in particular for the sake of this review. The Fire Flower has returned to the Mario platformer for the first time in 3D and once granted the abilities of Fire Mario, you can launch fireballs at your foes with a simple flick of the Wii remote. It doesn't get in the way of actual gameplay, feels totally satisfying, and serves as an extension of your hand to Mario's.
Having already mentioned the use of suits, I'll go into small detail about the other elements of gameplay. Your primary objective is to collect Powers Stars in an effort to save Princess Peach and thwart Bowser's evil plot once again, and in the vain of other Mario games, there are a grand total of 120 stars to collect and call your own. New to the formula is the presence of an on screen cursor in the same vain as that of the fairy cursor seen in the Wii version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. In Mario, the cursor is shaped as a blue star and grants you a genre breaking skill: collecting important items from a distance. You'll use the cursor to pick up the many Star Bits lying lazily around the galaxy, beckoning you to collect them all. And you should so rightfully attempt to do so in order to feed the many hungry Lumas placed around the game. Feeding them the correct amount of star bits makes them transform into Launch Stars and creating new, exciting galaxies for you to explore. There are other uses of the cursor used for actual gameplay instead of collecting, such as Sling Pods and Pull Stars, but I'll grant you the liberty of discovering those for yourself.
Super Mario Galaxy also exudes high production values and a superb presentation. In an attempt to cover all my bases, I'll begin with the visual elements of the game. To start off, I'll be blunt and straightforward: This game is gorgeous. The art direction used in Super Mario Galaxy not only makes it the best looking Wii game on the platform but it also stacks up high to the prowess of the competing systems Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. I swear upon my personal honor that I am not exaggerating this statement and you'll believe me when you see it. The small touches, most notably the use of motion blur when the camera pans to a new angle, contribute to the beauty that has been crafted in Super Mario Galaxy. Not only that, been a number of visual gags paying homage to previous Mario games are present and deployed in full force, such as Goombas wearing Pumpkins over themselves (a reference to the end of Super Mario World). The final visual touch and definitely the coolest aspect of Super Mario Galaxy's presentation is the animation of the Launch Stars. Throughout the game, your jaw will constantly be hitting the floor as you watch these. The mastery of velocity, cinematography, and art direction commanded by the developers show just how talented and experienced Nintendo truly is, and further proves and exemplifies the magic and bliss they still withhold dear in their design philosophy.
The final aspect of Super Mario Galaxy I want to touch upon is the music present in the tile. Simply put, this is easily the grandest and pleasant sounding Mario track ever composed in the series twenty five year history. The original score by Koji Kondo matches the epic scale and sheer diversity of the galaxies present in the title. Your inner child will also grin with glee when you hear updated and remixed music of Mario titles yore, creating the ever sweet indulgence of nostalgia and invigorating the memories of the first time you manipulated Mario in his previous endeavors.
In closing, what is there to say about Super Mario Galaxy I haven't said to death about in this analysis? I won't simply repeat what I've already communicated to you. Rather, I'll end on the following note. Super Mario Galaxy does for Mario what should have been done many years ago and performed in the then second party tile, Banjo-Kazooie. Super Mario Galaxy takes the essence of what makes a platformer great, innovates all of those concepts, and does the most important item of all: sets Mario's adventure on an epic scale. Truly, this is the greatest Mario title crafted to date.