Super Mario Galaxy

I’ve been a bit naughty and bought a Nintendo Wii to have some gaming fun with the highlights reel for the Wii. First on the list has been Super Mario Galaxy, and I’ve got some very really impressions.

It’s strange how few good ‘proper’ platformers are out there – the FPS genre seems to be taking over consoles now that they have dual analog sticks on the pads. Anyway II digress, for me the Ratchet and Clank series and Conker are what I consider perfect platformers. Well, Conker is a bit brutal in the difficulty department – especially since once you run out of lives you have to start again. However, both sets of games offer plenty of humour and great variety in gameplay and environments. Ratchet & Clank in particular has immense production quality.

Anyway, let’s start talking about Super Mario Galaxy. For me the graphics are about right for the game they’re trying to create – they don’t blow me away like R&C on the PS3 but they’re certainly not poor. The character design is very fun, a staple of any good platformer.

Level design is to a very high standard, albeit sometimes a little confusing due to heavy use of 3D – this isn’t your garden variety platformer! If you’ve played Prey you’ll know what it’s like walking on a mini planet with 1G gravity. R&C: Crack in Time has largely ripped off this puzzle format for the little puzzle moons you can play. Levels are nicely varied and very pleasurable to play, they have that certain something the best platformers have.

In fact the whole game is great except for one drawback. It feels very sterile, almost greyscale. The NPCs are fun, the environments fun & varied. But the character you play is utterly boring, like a plate of cheddar cheese. There’s absolutely no humour, no fun, nothing. R&C has great personality in all characters. Conker, well, Conker is Conker and let’s leave it at that. Quite often the game feels like it’s using Mario simply as a sales tool: ‘it’s Mario, you’ll love it!’. It’s like design choices are there to try and skirt around the issue that your character is bereft of any sort substance. Quite frankly when the character dies I just don’t care.

It’s a very enjoyable game, I would liken it to an ‘experience’. But I’m not immersed, I don’t get an emotional response like I do from games with real characters that draw you in. I’m always aware I’m playing a game with a controller – I’m not inside the game.