A familiar face in gaming (From Swindon Advertiser)

A familiar face in gaming

4:41pm Friday 1st October 2010 in Gaming

Flying through the voids of space comes another Mario platform, this time storming to the Wii with twice the marketing force of the first.

Already recognised as one of the best games ever created, the Mario Galaxy franchise has delivered another smash hit title in Super Mario Galaxy 2 that’s as engaging and entertaining as the first.

Once again, Bowser has stolen the delightfully useless Princess Peach and as Mario you have to blast off into the cosmos to save her, solving challenges trials and defeating bosses to obtain the much needed power stars you need on your quest.

The concept is simple, the controls are simple, the interface is simple and it all helps to leave the player to concentrate on the marvellous level design and all the glitz and glamour that it holds. Once again Mario pushes the hardware to the limit, with graphics that seem to go far beyond the Wii’s processing power, running at a perfectly smooth rate.

The aim of the game is fun, and Mario Galaxy 2 delivers it in spades. The feel of the level design is consistently fluent, even when using interesting platforming aspects like the push and pull of gravity. One of the biggest draws to the game for a lot of players was the inclusion of Yoshi, Mario’s dinosaur companion, to the game.

But although the Yoshi segments are welcome and mix up the already varied game mechanics nicely, it is also rather stagnant of Nintendo to rely on a 20-year-old character who appears in most Mario titles to bring in extra sales.

Also, the power of the second game is halved if you have played the original, with several of the bosses copied and pasted straight onto the sequel. I found immensely frustrating that a company of that magnitude when it comes to innovation and resources would need to use the same battles twice.

Each time I fought Bowser I experienced a familiar feeling of deja vu, which only served to decrease the drama of the battle.

The game does make a variety of other welcome additions as well. A simplified hub world and map screen mean that the game has a linear progression that feels very akin to the Mario franchise, if not a little bit dated. Mario has a host of new power-ups, which is very expected and necessary to keep the levels from feeling stale.

The sound is also of top notch quality, featuring the same brand of exquisite orchestrated tracks that we heard in Mario’s first Wii outing. The sound effects never outstay their welcome either, providing those ecstatic sounds that Mario fans have been used to for years.

Although I applaud the fact that the game has much more to do compared to its predecessor, I still have to bring up the same complaint I had about the first game: it was just too easy to complete. Not that the game doesn’t have challenges, but I certainly didn’t feel any of the difficulty that was evident in Mario Sunshine or even as far back as Mario 64.

It seems that 3D Mario has replaced genuine challenge with presentation and innovation, which may be a bit frustrating for experienced players who have been investing in Mario games for over 20 years.

Mario Galaxy 2 is impressive, incredibly fun and always filled with creativity. But it’s not perfect, and it’s lost the impact that the original had by being overly similar. 9.5/10

By Sam Kearns, 19, Southampton University, formerly Greendown School