We had a chance to get hands on with Super Mario Galaxy last Friday.
And it's really fun!
If you've been unhappy with recent Mario offerings from Nintendo this game looks like it's going to repair the love between you guys.
Probably the first thing we really picked up on while playing it is this game is fast, like Super Mario 64 fast. We found our selves running around environments, stomping enemies and flying through space at speed which most games seem to shy away from nowadays. And the best part is that while it may look absolutely high paced and bizarre while watching watching, it makes so much sense when your playing it. To quote a certain Apple Computer CEO, 'it just works'
And it's beautiful.
The section of the game we played involved what we've all seen in the trailers, running across micro-planet landscapes, bending the rules of gravity (wait, deep space...), and flying through the cosmos.
We started out in what seemed to be a level select area, similar to the castle from Mario 64. From there we used our Wii remote to target what could be called a portal star and selected our level. The attendant was very insistent on which one we had to play, but regardless of what else was available, it was a good choice.
Straight off the bat we found ourselves stomping Gombas on what we can only call micro planets, bits of level laid out on a sphere. Our goal at each of these was to unlock the next jump star to blast off to the next section. What was great was all of these little sections were varied, on one end of the scale we had a tropical island floating through space where as a couple of sections later we were running around on what seemed like a grassy battle fortress. Along with that we had couple of interior areas accessed through warp pipe which were small, laws of physics breaking sections. For example one of the areas we had to get to a warp pipe mounted way up on wall. How did we do it? Well we just followed a series of ramps which allowed us to run up walls and roofs, I mean duh!
From there on in we battled away across space pirate ships (pirate ships in space...) and finally up to the boss for the section, a lava creature bursting up from the core of a micro planet. Every section of the level was different, it required us to stop and go 'okay, now what' and then suddenly we remembered that gravity has very little meaning in the game, and the solution was before us. It was really rewarding and we got a real buzz out of it.
There's something really enjoyable about having little sections of game level that uses the whole environment as the solution rather than wide open levels. Part of it is it's a lot more fun working out the puzzle to move on. The other part is just, well, it's cool! We've seen a few other games recently that play with gravity, like Prey for example, but these all use traditional ways of playing with it, whether it be pull lever type mechanics or special walkable surfaces. When you have it in a game as complete free form way of moving around an environment, it really does change the way you look at a 3D environment.
I hate using this phrase in writing, but it's hard to explain without playing it. We're used to typical 3D games which use cliche game mechanics like switch and gate puzzles, pulling of long jumps and so on. In our short play of Super Mario Galaxy, it seems most of those cliches are non existent, in a lot of ways it calls back to the term 'platformer', it's all about getting around the environments.
It's like trying to explain time as another dimension that you can move through, your brain goes a bit funny trying to put it into words as you've got no point of reference to understand it. Super Mario Galaxy is just that unique.
All in all, Super Mario Galaxy is going to be a real winner this November. While it's physics breaking game play isn't something that you could apply to say, a realistic wartime first person shooter, in a game like Super Mario Galaxy, it works.
And it's great!
We'll have the full review for you soon.
19/11/2007
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