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Super Mario Galaxy Game Review

Super Mario Galaxy is a 2007 platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii. It is the third 3D entry in the series and one of the best games of all time.

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“I’m famished!“

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Back when this game was released, it was among the most respected of Wii games. Nowadays, the critical reception of it remains just as strong. In fact, it’s regularly cited to belong among the best games of all time and certainly one of Mario’s greatest adventures. I agree with all of these assessments and in my opinion this is the best Mario game of all time along with the very first entry.

First and foremost, if there is one area where Galaxy clearly triumphs over any other Mario game in existence, it has to be the plot. Not only does this entry have a storyline, but it’s a genuinely strong one, which very rarely happens in platformers. Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach and Mario must rescue her by first collecting all the Power Stars and restoring the power to the observatory and then going to the center of the universe to defeat him.

By taking the story to a cosmic setting, the game differentiates itself successfully from every other entry in the franchise. There is also surprisingly rich lore to explore here, from all the Lumas (so incredibly cute) to the interesting new character in the form of Rosalina to the various planets, all having a unique gravitational pull of its own. My only issue is that the bulk of the story happens only in the beginning and the end with the huge middle devoted almost solely to gameplay, but still I loved the writing across the board.

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What was particularly impressive, though, was that ending. The conclusion to the story was not just epic in scope, but it was also unbelievably dark for what is supposed to be a family game. Basically, the Lumas sacrifice themselves and become new stars while the whole universe explodes and a new one is born from its ashes. What they did here was basically their take on the Big Bang, which was super clever and it firmly established this entry as a SF game. I was at awe watching this ending. It was truly brilliant.

Super Mario Galaxy features some of the most authentic gameplay mechanics in the history of platformers. It is so original, in fact, that it plays almost like a different game altogether while still retaining some of the core designs and enemies from the Mario lore. It’s a perfect mixture that made this experience highly enjoyable to play. Set in outer space, you have to travel through different galaxies, each containing a set number of levels, each level containing a Power Star (I will talk about those later).

These levels are set on planetoids that are so distinctly different from each other and uniquely designed both visually and in gameplay mechanics. This is one of the most diverse games when it comes to the level design as the game continually took my breath away with a newly introduced mechanic or two even very late in the game’s run.

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Each planetoid has a unique gravitational force of its own, making you go either up, down, left, right and pulling you in or out depending on the vicinity to the force. This play on physics and gravity is so authentic that I was at first both puzzled and blown away by it, but when I got used to it, it became a blast to play. The accommodation to these mechanics is quicker than usual due to the game’s intuitive controls and the control response that is extremely polished.

There are 42 available galaxies spread throughout domes, which are accessed through the game’s main hub, which is the Comet Observatory. Yes, I missed the maps from the 2D Mario games, but when it comes to hubs, this is another iconic one alongside the excellent castle from ‘Super Mario 64’ and an island plaza in ‘Super Mario Sunshine’. The cosmic setting was gorgeously utilized here. Exploring the hub world while listening to that astonishing, soothing orchestral score was a joy to behold.

Each dome ends with a boss level where you fight either Bowser or Bowser Jr. The kid being brought back was great and the two were very memorable and well used in this story. When you finish him off, you get a Grand Star, which unlocks the next dome. It was a great system that really worked and the game being split in half between the important and the side levels was also ingenious as both casual fans and completionists can get a kick out of it.

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The power-ups are a mix between old favorites and new additions. This is the clumsiest mechanic in the game. It mostly works, but a couple of these power-ups were a bit too difficult to use. There are nine power-ups in total. The Fire Flower is back allowing you to throw fireballs at enemies, but an added purpose of melting ice is also deftly incorporated here. The Ice Flower was also phenomenal as it lets you create these icy platforms to safely walk on dangerous water. These two were easily the best.

The Bee Mushroom is way too difficult to use. It gives you the ability to fly, but it’s so frustrating to control and it depletes too quickly, leading to those levels being among the hardest. The Spring Mushroom is even worse as it lets you spring from one platform to another higher one. It was necessary, but again getting the right point to spring forward was frustratingly hard. The Boo Mushroom allows Mario to behave like a floating ghost, which was well used in those scarce haunted levels. The Rainbow Star gives you invincibility while you can get the Life Mushroom to add three additional health bars to the two main ones.

The controls are for the most part good. Playing a Wii game on a Dolphin emulator did present a couple of difficulties for me, the foremost being the special levels that required a different set of controls altogether. And I simply did not care for those special levels that consisted of surfing and ball rolling. They were well designed, but very difficult to control. Thankfully, they came few and far in-between.

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The Star Pointer is used to collect Star Bits and to use Pull Stars. It was a very odd system at first, but eventually I got used to it and it really worked. It made the game a bit more complex, which I really appreciated. The Pull Star levels were by far the hardest as controlling them was highly demanding, but eventually I could even beat them, though they took me a lot of time. This was annoying at first, but I did appreciate the demanding difficulty curve at the end of the day.

The movements are excellent and very varied, including the jump mechanics. There are the usual wall jumps and long jumps, but also the added spin attack that is used to break objects, stun enemies or climb vines, use Sling Stars for transport and so on and so forth. This is by far the most useful move in the game.

Galaxy always gives you enough lives, which was refreshing. The life meter was excellent with three bars being just enough in terms of difficulty curve with the coins acting as health replenishments also being a welcome addition. The Star Bits can be used to unlock additional levels and to do that you need to feed these Lumas. They are always starving and feeding them provided some of the funniest and cutest animations in the game that is overall surprisingly fun and funny in its visuals. It reminded me of a funny cartoon in a way, which being a huge animation fan I just loved.

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Speaking of the visuals, Super Mario Galaxy looks just incredible. This is such a polished, colorful Wii game that made the console a huge success and is still beautiful to behold even playing it today on an emulator. That animated feel has never been stronger in a previous Mario game as not only are the cutscenes superbly crafted plotwise, but they also look epic and truly like an animated movie in and of itself. The character designs are uniformly amazing, the backgrounds are detailed and the color palette is suitably colorful, but with darker hues, thus fitting the cosmic setting beautifully. It has aged like fine wine for sure.

But one of the lasting legacies of Galaxy along with the gameplay has to be the soundtrack. There has never been a better score in a Mario game. There have been amazing themes, but this one not only has a strong cosmic theme, but so many other iconic pieces of music that whenever I hear them will transport my mind back to playing this game. This is how nostalgic and enchanting the score is.

It mixes some Latin American instruments along with the space theme and the orchestral music, the latter being by far the game’s best secret weapon. The highlights include the following tracks: the instantly memorable, just beautiful Egg Planet, the gorgeous, timeless Gusty Garden and the breathtaking waltz that is Comer Observatory 3. These three are the most brilliant pieces of music, but throughout the game is beautifully composed altogether. They did not have to go this hard, but they did and the results are truly iconic.

The sound is fantastic and very evocative while the level design is consistently inventive and varied. The world building is staggering with the levels ranging from ice, water, volcanic, garden to everything else imaginable, but all are fueled by this cosmic twist. The voice acting is phenomenal and very cute with the characters only mumbling instead of speaking being the right choice.

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The game also has no bugs to speak of, the menus are very intuitive and it’s surprisingly playable on an emulator, admirably so given the many demands of the Wii. Galaxy is also very long due to its side quests and collectible nature, but I wanted an even bigger length due to how much I was enjoying it.

The difficulty curve to me was just right. The Pull Stars were too demanding, but everything else was either charmingly easy or just hard enough to finish with the right levels of anxiety induced. It’s rare to find a game that is neither too hard nor too easy and for the most part Galaxy is that game. I just wish that the bosses were better. Once again Mario’s bosses are an afterthought with Bowser posing some threat, but for the majority of time the bosses and the enemies are rather easy to dispose of as they contain a pretty minor amount of moves that are too easily predicted. I found the boss battles fun for sure, but I would hardly call them exciting.

Super Mario Galaxy is particularly fun in its side quests. I just loved playing through all of this game in its entirety. I 100 percent completed it with so much joy as finding these additional stars was highly entertaining. Only half of the 120 stars are mandatory while the rest are optional and those optional stars were the best ones. Green Stars were interesting, Luigi Power Stars had you helping Luigi and those were so endearing, Hidden Stars are, well, very well hidden in the additional paths within already beaten levels.

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The highlights are the Prankster Comet Power Stars. Some require you to race a quicker version of yourself in a great mechanic taken from ‘Sunshine’, others limit your health to just one segment while the fast comets make everything much faster. The speedy ones were the most difficult as I find timed missions to be the hardest in any game while the Purple Comets were by far the most interesting ones. I am a collector in nature and these levels where you had to find 100 Purple Coins scattered throughout the levels in very smart hidden passages was wildly enjoyable to me.