Mario uses the new Spin Drill power-up to smash through this earthy planet, skewering the giant Koopa Troopas in the stomach. Now that's fighting dirty.
Even if you've played every bit of Super Mario Galaxy, you'll find its sequel packed full of surprises.
It's rare for Nintendo to create a straightforward follow-up like this. In fact, the Sunday release of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the first time in over 20 years that the company has launched two traditional Mario games on the same home console. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto said he greenlit the project because the team "hadn't run out of ideas."
And boy, was he not just whistling Dixie. Galaxy 2 is a veritable creativity bomb, a megaton explosion of new ideas. With the original 2007 game, the Mario team had its hands full polishing the game's central play mechanics and coming up with levels that worked well with the radical design change – instead of exploring the standard 3-D action game worlds, Mario leapt and flew across a universe of tiny planetoids. The levels played and riffed on the concept of shifting gravity – arrays of spheroids would give way to topsy-turvy Escher-like constructions.
With the basic structure already in place, Super Mario Galaxy 2 gave this talented team a chance to let their imaginations run wild.
Every level in Galaxy 2 is different from the last. There are level concepts here that are only used once that could be made into full games on their own. One minute you're eating glowing fruits that create an illuminated floor underneath you, and you've got to eat another one before it disappears. The next minute, you're jumping across platforms that appear and disappear – to the beat of the level's musical track. The second you finish one level, you're off to another one that feels completely different and asks you to master something new.
Galaxy 2 does all this without introducing too many new power-ups, although Mario can do a few new things this time around.
The Spin Drill is the most prominent – with it, he can tear a hole through a planet and come up on the other side. As with all new ideas in Galaxy 2, it starts off with a light introductory level that teaches you how to use it. Soon after, you start using it in ways you wouldn't expect – drilling every which way through a complex mountain of dirt to reach every side of it, for example. And by the end of the game you're asked to prove your mastery of the tool by using it in complex ways.
Pick up a fluffy cloud-shaped dandelion and you're Cloud Mario, able to create your own platforms to stand on while you're jumping through the air. You can play it conservatively, jumping and laying platforms under your feet every few steps. Or you can take daring risks, throwing together massive long jumps and throwing down platforms at the last second to see if there's a secret hidden out at the very edge of the world.
And of course, there always is. Like all good Mario games, there's always a bonus, a reward for poking at the edges of the levels. While it's possible for a player to see the ending of the game by playing straight through each level, layers upon layers of hidden challenges await the players who look for them.
Each world has a Comet Medal somewhere inside it, and collecting these open up master-class versions of the levels that tweak and rework the things you've already experienced. That music-based level, for example, plays twice as fast once you've found the comet, transforming a clever playful romp into an exquisitely taxing challenge.
The original Super Mario Galaxy didn't sell nearly as well as last year's more traditional New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Perhaps for that reason, Galaxy 2 has been a bit streamlined.
The most obvious example is that the levels are linked together by a straightforward linear map, rather than a big, open, nonlinear hub. Although this will probably help casual gamers understand what they need to do to progress in the game, I don't like it as much; it feels cheaper, smaller.
There's also a greater use of 2-D gameplay in Galaxy 2's levels – points at which the camera snaps to the side of Mario and he can only move on a fixed plane. This was the direction that Galaxy was moving anyway – the use of tiny planetoids was a similar move away from massive sprawling playgrounds, aimed at letting users more easily understand the challenges that are being placed in front of them. I like this, personally; wandering around wondering what to do isn't what I'm looking for out of a Mario game.
One bit of streamlining I don't think was necessary was removing nearly all the story elements. Galaxy showed that the Mario team has some genuinely solid storytelling ability, and they implemented it in a way that didn't distract from the gameplay. Even this was apparently too much for Miyamoto, who told the team to strip the narrative down to the absolute bare minimum for this installment. Again, this was done with the intent of keeping things laser-focused on the gameplay. But in this case it feels like a waste of talent.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 is thus simultaneously more and less than its predecessor. It expands and elaborates on the gameplay in unpredictable ways, but the last one felt like a bigger, more complete adventure. That said, better core gameplay with less window dressing is infinitely preferable to the reverse.
WIRED A new surprising gameplay twist every few minutes, great nostalgic moments, deep challenges if you want them.
TIRED Thinner presentation occasionally feels like Mario Galaxy 1.5.
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