Super Mario Galaxy - Retrospective

This game was a very mixed blessing. It starts off simple enough and never really gets ridiculously hard. You can easily obtain the minimum required 60 stars before the game hits the infamous "Stops being fun" wall. However, it suffers from numerous design choices that seem arbitrary and capricious. The first of which is the evil, satanic, posessed camera.

During the height of 2D gaming, the camera was a non-issue. You never even thought about it; the game showed what was on the screen and you could see it. The closest thing we had to the camera being an enemy was scrolling levels where you could get crushed behind walls, and leaps of faith where you can't see the landing. But with the onset of 3D games, the camera suddenly became a living entity. Super Mario 64 knew this and not only anthropomorphised the camera as the oft-underrated Lakitu, but gave the players full control over where it pointed. For some unknown reason, this control is missing from Super Mario Galaxy. Suddenly, full 360 degree control of the camera becomes the exception, rather than the rule.

The most frustrating aspect of this limitation is that it comes with no reason or logic behind its constraints. You will want desperately to turn the camera around in order to search for hidden ledges or line up a particularly difficult jump, only to be told "bernp!" by the sadistic little camera icon on the top right of the screen. Why? It's not like there's a tree or a wall in the way. It's just empty air! Other times, the camera will immediately swoop around to give you a different viewing angle when you're in the middle of crossing a narrow platform or trying to stick a landing. The player can usually use the C button to recenter the camera, but this too has a strange path of logic when it comes to where it believes "centered" to be. This can often mean looking up at the ground. Timed levels and Luigi's inherent lack of traction only magnify how frustrating the worst parts of the game can be.

Another issue present in this game started to develop in Super Mario 64, and continued in Sunshine and Galaxy. This is not a problem with the game itself, but the direction of the series in general. While it is not necessarily a bad thing, it is misleading. The problem comes from the concept of powerups. Super Mario Galaxy boasts numerous "powers" including Bee Mario, Boo Mario, and Spring Mario (One of the lamest powerups ever, by the way) as well as the Fire Flower, Ice Flower, and everyone's favorite, the invincibility star. While these powerups do change the way Mario moves and grants him new abilities, as well as new limitations, it's all simply a tease.

Look back in Mario's history, back to the original Super Mario Bros. How many ways were there to defeat Bowser at the end of World 1-4? If you were small, you could jump over him or run under him and grab the axe. If you were big, you could try to jump through his barage of hammers, or even simply run through the lizard directly. If you were Fire Mario, you could stand back and take him out with a few well-placed projectiles of your own. Or, if you were lucky enough to find a star near the end of the level, you could kill him that way. Super Mario Bros 3 took this idea and expanded on it even more, giving you frog suits, tanooki suits, hammer bros. suits, raccoon mario, fire mario, even super P-wing mario. The game simply gave you a goal, and didn't care how you got there.

Now look at Super Mario Galaxy. Almost every level has the exact same path through it. You solve the puzzles on one planet, or find your way through a maze or platform gauntlet in order to get to the fling star and jump to the next planet. Every powerup you recieve is only there to help you solve a puzzle. Every boss has a single correct method to defeating it, with one or two minor variations if you're lucky. Strangely enough, the flat world of Super Mario Bros. gave you more freedom than the free-roaming 3D environments of modern Mario games.

The next Mario game should get back to the series' roots like New Super Mario Bros. on the DS did. Give Mario a goal and let us find our own way to get him there.

Progress for March 30, 2008 - Super Mario Galaxy - COMPLETED

Mario and Luigi now both have all 121 stars. Now I never have to touch this game again.

But odds are I probably will. A few years down the line.

Progress for March 29, 2008 - Super Mario Galaxy

What the fuck is wrong with the camera in Super Mario Galaxy? Super Mario 64 was one of the oldest 3D platformers ever. 3D movement and visuals were still in their infancy, and we were still graced with better camera controls than in Galaxy. I blame the level designers. Level designers become so proud of their work; all of the time they've spent tweaking every little nuance and vertex to make the level look perfect forces them to make compromises when it comes to the gameplay. They care so much about their work, it would pain them to death to have a player look at it in any angle other than intended, even if that angle isn't one of the principal directions or a 45 degree derivative thereof. So you end up trying to hold the joystick at an arbitrary direction halfway between left and up-left. Then as soon as you go to make the jump, the camera swoops around to put you in a completely different viewing angle, just soon enough to see Mario go careening into the abyss.

FUCK YOU! Is it too much to ask for a game where the camera stays nicely put and out of the way so we can see exactly what we're doing, exactly where we're going, and exactly where we're going to land?

All	Galaxy	Stars	Earned Today
\|/	Good Egg Galaxy	******
	Honey Hive Galaxy	******	Cosmic Luigi Race
\|/	Space Junk Galaxy	******
\|/	Battlerock Galaxy	*******	Purple Coins on the Battlerock Battlerock's Garbage Dump Luigi Under the Saucer
\|/	Beach Bowl Galaxy	******
	Ghostly Galaxy	******
	Gusty Garden Galaxy	******
\|/	Freezeflame Galaxy	******
	Dusty Dune Galaxy	*******
	Gold Leaf Galaxy	******	The Bell on the Big Tree Cataquack to the skies When it rains it pours
	Sea Slide Galaxy	******
	Toy Time Galaxy	******
	Deep Dark Galaxy	******	The Underground Ghost Ship Bubble Blastoff
	Dreadnought Galaxy	******	Revenge of the Topman Tribe
\|/	Melty Molten Galaxy	******
\|/	Gateway Galaxy	**
\|/	Bowser Jr's Robot Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser's Star Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser Jr's Airship Armada	*
\|/	Bowser's Dark Matter Plant	*
\|/	Bowser Jr's Lava Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser's Galaxy Reactor	*
	Loopdeeloop Galaxy	*
\|/	Flipswitch Galaxy	*
\|/	Rolling Green Galaxy	*	Rolling in the Clouds
\|/	Hurry-Scurry Galaxy	*
\|/	Bubble Breeze Galaxy	*
\|/	Sweet Sweet Galaxy	*
\|/	Sling Pod Galaxy	*
\|/	Buoy Base Galaxy	**
\|/	Drip Drop Galaxy	*
\|/	Honey Climb Galaxy	*
	Bonefin Galaxy	*
\|/	Sand Spiral Galaxy	*
\|/	Matter Splatter Galaxy	*
	Bigmouth Galaxy	*

Progress for March 24, 2008 - Super Mario Galaxy

It's weird going to bed at 8:30 PM. You wake up at 4 AM with nothing else to do but face the day. And play Super Mario Galaxy. I'm not sure why exactly it is, but I really enjoy the Purple Comet levels, as long as they're untimed. Just the idea of exploration and collection I find really appealing.

All	Galaxy	Stars	Earned Today
\|/	Good Egg Galaxy	******
	Honey Hive Galaxy	******	The Honeyhive's Purple Coins
\|/	Space Junk Galaxy	******
	Battlerock Galaxy	*******
\|/	Beach Bowl Galaxy	******	Beachcombing for Purple Coins
	Ghostly Galaxy	******	Purple Coins in the Bone Pen
	Gusty Garden Galaxy	******	The Dirty Tricks of Major Burrows The Golden Chomp Gusty Garden Gravity Scramble
\|/	Freezeflame Galaxy	******	Freezeflame's Blistering Core Hot and Cold Collide Purple Coins on the Summit Frosty Cosmic Luigi Race
	Dusty Dune Galaxy	*******	Blasting Through the Sand Purple Coins in the Desert Bullet Bill in your Back Sunbaked Sand Castle
	Gold Leaf Galaxy	******
	Sea Slide Galaxy	******
	Toy Time Galaxy	******
	Deep Dark Galaxy	******
	Deadnought Galaxy	******
\|/	Melty Molten Galaxy	******
\|/	Gateway Galaxy	**
\|/	Bowser Jr's Robot Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser's Star Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser Jr's Airship Armada	*
\|/	Bowser's Dark Matter Plant	*
\|/	Bowser Jr's Lava Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser's Galaxy Reactor	*
	Loopdeeloop Galaxy	*
\|/	Flipswitch Galaxy	*
	Rolling Green Galaxy	*
\|/	Hurry-Scurry Galaxy	*
\|/	Bubble Breeze Galaxy	*
\|/	Sweet Sweet Galaxy	*
\|/	Sling Pod Galaxy	*
\|/	Buoy Base Galaxy	**
\|/	Drip Drop Galaxy	*
\|/	Honey Climb Galaxy	*	Scaling the Sticky Wall
	Bonefin Galaxy	*
\|/	Sand Spiral Galaxy	*
\|/	Matter Splatter Galaxy	*
	Bigmouth Galaxy	*

Progress for March 22, 2008 - Super Mario Galaxy

I already got 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy with Mario, and I beat it with Luigi a few months ago after being inspired by the Mario Marathon to keep playing the game. I completed all 60 necessary stars over the course of a single night, so now I'm going to finish it all up.

All	Galaxy	Stars	Earned Today
\|/	Good Egg Galaxy	******	Purple Coin Omelet
	Honey Hive Galaxy	******
\|/	Space Junk Galaxy	******	Purple Coin Spacewalk
	Battlerock Galaxy	*******
	Beach Bowl Galaxy	******
	Ghostly Galaxy	******
	Gusty Garden Galaxy	******
	Freezeflame Galaxy	******
	Dusty Dune Galaxy	*******
	Gold Leaf Galaxy	******
	Sea Slide Galaxy	******
	Toy Time Galaxy	******
	Deep Dark Galaxy	******
	Deadnought Galaxy	******	Dreadnought's Colossal Cannons
	Melty Molten Galaxy	******	Burning Tide, The Sinking Lava Spire, Through the Meteor Storm, Lava Spire Daredevil Run, Fiery Dino Piranha, Red-Hot Purple Coins
\|/	Gateway Galaxy	**
\|/	Bowser Jr's Robot Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser's Star Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser Jr's Airship Armada	*
\|/	Bowser's Dark Matter Plant	*
\|/	Bowser Jr's Lava Reactor	*
\|/	Bowser's Galaxy Reactor	*
	Loopdeeloop Galaxy	*
\|/	Flipswitch Galaxy	*
	Rolling Green Galaxy	*
\|/	Hurry-Scurry Galaxy	*
\|/	Bubble Breeze Galaxy	*
\|/	Sweet Sweet Galaxy	*
\|/	Sling Pod Galaxy	*
\|/	Buoy Base Galaxy	**
\|/	Drip Drop Galaxy	*
	Honey Climb Galaxy	*
	Bonefin Galaxy	*
\|/	Sand Spiral Galaxy	*
\|/	Matter Splatter Galaxy	*
	Bigmouth Galaxy	*

Chrono Trigger on Hiatus

I know I've been neglecting 53Games for a while; I haven't been playing much of anything really recently. After a nasty fall, my DS is having trouble functioning at full capacity. The L button doesn't work right, and the hinge is cracked. Chrono Trigger will have to be on hiatus for a while. I'll probably start playing something else soon; either on emulator or console.