5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of Super Mario Galaxy.

5/5 It’s a masterpiece; that’s the entire review Thanks for reading it… No, but in all seriousness, what else really needs to be said about this game? It’s Mario Galaxy. It’s amazing; everybody knows it Your mom knows it, your dad knows it, your grandma and grandpa know it, your goldfish knows it, and your sketchy-ass cousin Ernesto, who used to be involved in the cartel until his best friend Emilio got executed for ratting people out to La Policia, knows it too Again, everybody just knows that this game is a masterpiece The level design, the music, the gameplay, the progression Damn-near everything in this game just works perfectly Each galaxy is precisely designed to give you 8 million new platforming ideas and challenges within that said level that always ramp up in difficulty with every progressing star that you get Take Freezeflame Galaxy, for example In the first star of the level, you're scaling an ice mountain to fight a boss fight that's a ball of ice with a crown on it at the top of the mountain. Then for the second star, you’re in a lava area, and you have to light up multiple torches with the fire flower in order to get the star. Then in another star you have to precisely platform while ice skating, and then also in a hidden star you climb to the top of another mountain and destroy snowmen with a fire flower And that was just one level that I described; almost every single level in the game is like this They all just contain so much variety and so many ideas that it is just an absolute joy to experience every single level and every single star from start to finish Except for maybe the comet stars Because these stars just consist of you having to retread old levels with some sort of exception Like for one comet you might have to beat a level with 1 health, or in another one you might have to race a cosmic bitch-ass version of Mario And then, the absolute worst of them all is the purple coin comets, which have you collect 100 purple coins in damn near every level And these stars are not very fun at all to get I mean, they’re not terrible, and they are the most challenging stars in the game, but, again, they just aren’t that fun overall My favorite comets honestly were probably the “Fast-Foe Comets,” which speed up enemies in certain levels in the game and make them go fucking nuts I particularly really like the one in Beach Bowl Galaxy that makes you play through that annoying ass section with the thwomps and those moving blocks with faces That one is really good and challenging Another thing that’s really good too, that everyone knows is incredible, is the music Every single song in the game is a masterpiece The choice to give this game an orchestral soundtrack is one of the top 10 decisions of all time Right next to my city, deciding to put an IHOP and a Red Robin 1 minute down the road from each other That combination will feed families for generations But yeah, the music is absolutely incredible and gives this game the most grand and epic feeling of any Mario game ever made When you play the final level in this game for the first time to defeat Bowser, you feel like you’re about to slay a fucking god The music in this game just blasts your eardrums with instruments and symphonies that legitimately make your ears orgasm It’s that good And so is the progression in this game as well The comet observatory is one of the finest hub worlds in any video game ever made It’s so peaceful and beautiful to look at, and it’s always thriving with life and things to explore I mean, there actually really isn’t that much to explore. It’s really not that big of a hub world But still, just walking around the hub world is such a relaxing and enjoyable experience, and even though there isn’t a lot to explore, They do still reward your exploration by giving you some hidden 1-Ups to find Back to progression, though, you progress by beating the Bowser level of each world until you unlock a new room in the comet observatory that gives you a brand new set of levels It’s very simple but also very gratifying to unlock these said rooms and be rewarded with more incredible levels to play And it’s such a great experience, having not played this game in a while, to go into a new room and to see a galaxy that I remembered loving when I played this game as a kid There were so many galaxies that I completely forgot about, and then when I played this game again recently, the memories of all these galaxies came flooding back to me, and the nostalgia hit me like a fucking freight train And that, again, just added to my experience so much and made me enjoy the game even more Now I want to talk about the controls and gameplay, though And while they definitely are good, they could still be better Overall, the gameplay in Mario Galaxy just feels kind of slow and maybe not as precise as the other 3D Mario games Which, the part about it being kind of slow is fine for me This is a game that wants to explore each galaxy, look around, take in the scenery, collect starbits, and all that bullshit, so overall, again, it's fine But then the imprecision comes from the overall platforming and also how Mario’s spin move feels very delayed Whenever I did the spin with Mario, there was always this cooldown after being able to use it again, which makes sense obviously, but it just didn't feel natural, because if I’m forced to swing my Wii remote around like a jackass in order to perform the spin, then I expect to always be able to do the spin whenever I swing the dumbass Wii remote; that's just how my brain works I don’t know, though; it wasn't insufferable, but the spin definitely did piss me off at some points As for the platforming, the imprecision I think, again, just comes from the game overall feeling slow in comparison to the other 3D Mario games, so it just felt kind of jarring sometimes to control this game Once I got used to it again, though, it wasn’t really a problem But now, before wrapping up this review, I just want to acknowledge and talk about 2 more things that I like about this game The power-ups and the boss fights The power-ups in this game introduce some of the finest you’ll see in the entire Mario series I mean, you’ve got the bumblebee power-up, the spring, the ice flower, the boo power-up, the flying power-up… Actually, not that one; that one is kind of ass But the rest are great and are extremely fun and satisfying to use in-game And oftentimes there are multiple levels and stars centered around these certain power-ups and using the abilities that you gain from them to progress It’s amazing And then the boss fights in this game are great as well They’re all so unique and varied, and most of them are almost entirely new enemies that have never even been in the series before I mean, one of the bosses is a fucking haunted rock, there’s this giant-ass mole who gets extremely angry, and then there’s also this octopus boss named “King Kaliente,” which is one of the coolest names I’ve ever heard in my life Nintendo was just in their absolute bag when they were making this game; there’s just no other way to put it Artistically, creatively, technically, everything They just brought their A game in every single department And it’s crazy to think that they didn’t even get to fit all their ideas that they had into this one game They had so many more ideas and directions to go with this game that they just made an entire fucking sequel Which is just as good as this game, if not even better This game is just insane It knocks it out of the park in damn-near every regard And it gives you one of the most memorable video game experiences of all time Right next to Tigger’s Honey Hunt for the PS1 So, I’m giving this game an easy 5/5.