First I was pissed off, I was agonized. Kept thinking how much fun you were, but at 97 stars I died. But I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong, and I grew strong. I learned how to carry on. And now you’re back from outer space. I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face. I should have changed that stupid lock. I should have made you leave your key. If I’d known for just one second you’d be back here with Yoshi.

Super Mario Galaxy, and really 3D Mario in general, is one of those weird games for me. While I’ve been a big Mario fan from my scrappy youth, Super Mario 64 just didn’t gel with me. It was fun, but awkward. And for every one thing about it I came to like, there was something else that wanted to prevent me from fully enjoying the game.

Apparently, Nintendo seems to feel there are a lot of people like me out there since, with Super Mario Galaxy, they’ve strived to pull in their Wii Sports and New Super Mario Bros.-loving expanded audience. They’ve done this by throwing in 2D oriented stage segments, by making spherical levels that are hard to get lost on, by making the camera better, and by making the controls simpler.

And that brings us to Super Mario Galaxy 2, Nintendo’s latest 3D Mario installment, and the first direct sequel to a 3D Mario released on the same system. To make a long story short, the game is very good, great even, and I have no need to convince Nintendo’s core gamers to go buy it.

But what if you’re part of Nintendo’s expanded audience? You guys should feel special, because Nintendo is really trying to reach out to you this time. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be running to pick up Galaxy 2.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 reaches out a great deal to the expanded audience, but this also makes the game rather schizophrenic. For example, the game boasts many more 2D stage segments, but is this supposed to be a 2D game or a 3D game? If they really want to push 2D, it’d be better for them to just make New Super Mario Bros. Wii 2.

They’ve also relegated selecting stages to a simple stage map instead of having players navigate a large hub area. Yet they still felt the need to include the Starship Mario hub anyway. One or the other, you guys. Other features to help out include hint videos and the Cosmic Guide, which you can let play a stage for you that you’re missing too frequently.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 also boasts a load of new content and abilities, the most notable of which is Yoshi, who can eat up most enemies with a simple point and click of the remote. He can also hover a short distance, and gain new abilities by eating special berries, such as turning into a balloon or shining light to reveal hidden platforms.

Mario also has his own new power-ups. With the rock power-up, Mario can turn into a madly spinning boulder that’s a little hard to steer, but can smash through crowds of enemies and other objects. The cloud power-up, one of the most prevalent new abilities in the game, lets Mario create cloud platforms beneath him to reach new areas. Additionally, all the power-ups from the original Galaxy return too, except for the Ice Flower.

But as the game is roughly the same length as the original Galaxy, this content is spread rather thinly. See, the game has loads of stuff from the original Galaxy, but loads of new stuff on top. This means you won’t be seeing the new stuff very often. Many power-ups don’t appear in more than two or three stages. And what’s really unfortunate is that they’re always there as a means of completing the stage, and not so much to let you play around. I would have loved if they would let you take any power-up or Yoshi into any stage just to have fun and see what you can do.

For the dedicated completionist, there are 48 total unique stages, an improvement over the number the original Galaxy offered, and 120 total stars to get (though only 70 are necessary to beat the game). But it won’t end there, as collecting all 120 stars opens up more challenges in the available stages. So the game does give you a lot to do, even though it tends to bottleneck the means of letting you do it.

For the first time in a 3D Mario game, I pushed myself to get all the stars. And as fun as the game is in a lot of parts, I didn’t feel joyful at the end of it all, but relieved; like I’d taken care of an awful chore, and I just don’t like when games leave me that way. Fortunately, getting all of the stars isn’t a prerequisite to clearing the game, and I doubt I’ll ever try it again!

For you core Mario fans, you’re not even reading this review; you’re playing Galaxy 2 still right now. And to you expanded audience types, hey, feel appreciated that Nintendo loves you so much. Nevertheless, this game is still no 2D Mario, even when it tries to be. Just keep that in mind.

Tags: 3D Platformer, Mario, Mario Galaxy, Nintendo, platformer, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Wii

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.