Super Mario Galaxy is the Wii’s top rated game, and for good reason!
With my primary 360 broken and in for repair, I decided to start off at the top of the Wii best rated list: Super Mario Galaxy. I am loving it. This is actually a game that was designed very well with incorporating both the motion controller and regular controls, unlike other Wii games that I’ve played. There’s just enough there that makes use of the motion controller without feeling overly tacked on. It made think, “Wow, I didn’t know Wii owners had access to such a stellar game!”
Mario Galaxy is just phenomenal and makes me forget about HD gaming altogether. It takes a little while to get used to though: walking around small level “planets” and worrying about gravity, but the gameplay is unbelievably sound and charming. I love the music and how several of them are remixed tunes of the classic series. It’s a game that’s not overly complicated, but deep enough that you can enjoy it without getting frustrated figuring out how to beat something. It also is very commitment-free – there’s not some huge adventure world that you have to keep track of your progress in all the time. You can put this down for weeks and come back and not have to remember what happened earlier in order to progress forward. It’s so intuitive and perhaps the best example of a game I can think of where on the surface it seems harmless and family friendly but its gameplay is so deep and elegant that if any gamer were to try it, I can’t see how they wouldn’t enjoy it. I’m even more inclined to start playing Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts now, hoping that its family friendly presentation hides amazing gameplay underneath.
I do have one minor issue with the game, and that is with it very infrequently going out of its way to force you to play with Motion Controller mechanics. The general gameplay aspects of the motion controller are enjoyable – pointing the remote at the screen to pick up stars that land so you can shoot them at enemies to stun them or shaking the remote to spin-punch an enemy. But there are extra levels where you’re playing Super Monkey Ball with the Wii-mote, and so far there’s been one level that I played that had me extremely frustrated. On this level you would basically fling Mario with slingshot like devices that could be aimed 360 degrees using your Wii-mote. But if you were off by about 5 degrees or so, Mario would miss his next target and fall to his doom. And you had to do this through moving objects that would block your path, etc. Not fun at all, considering how little room for error there was. But I finally made my way through it and can continue enjoying the rest of the game.
If you’re a Wii owner and haven’t played this yet – this game should be your number one priority. I can’t wait for the sequel.
