Super Mario Galaxy 2 Impressions

Best Nintendo game ever? I'm not ready to make that assessment but I ultimately believe once I complete the game it will rank up there as one of the best, for me anyways. I picked up the game on early Sunday morning and had a couple of hours throughout the day to play. I estimate that I've complete about 16% of the game thus far. Here are some early observations:

• Graphically a solid effort and as pretty as the first game in the series. It's hard to say the Wii can't compete graphically with the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 when a game looks this good.


• Controls are super responsive, again. Mario has all his trademark moves and new ones via the help of new suits. For me, control while riding Yoshi is a bit trickier. For some reason I kept forgetting to aim the wand at targets for Yoshi to eat, expecting him to do this functionality by just facing an enemy or object.


• It seems to me that the difficulty has been kicked up a notch. I've probably died more times in this game than I did in my entire effort with Super Mario Galaxy. All too often Nintendo published games try to appeal to everyone and, while great games, the difficulty can suffer. Nintendo games recently have incorporated a play feature where the gamer can let the system play certain areas for them in an effort to help the less seasoned gamer move forward in the level. Perhaps this feature will enable Nintendo to produce more challenging games or levels.


• Once again the music is fully orchestrated, combining a mix of old school Mario music we all know with new tunes.


• My favorite level so far, the Puzzle Plank Galaxy. The music is also interesting.


• The goofy storyline from the first game has been removed. The current game is stripped down to mainly just Mario going from world to world and level to level. This is a welcome change. Less time with story and roaming a hub world means more time with some crazy platforming.

I probably won't ever get around to writing a review for this game as I'm sure it will be weeks before I've completed the game in it's entirety. I'll just say this, if you like Mario games, especially Super Mario Galaxy, then there is no way that you'll be disappointed in Super Mario Galaxy 2. Great graphics, controls, and level design in conjunction with many new suits, Yoshi, and a streamlined level system will probably make this one of the best Mario platformers on any Nintendo system. Buy this game. If you don't own a Wii, buy one and then buy this game!