Last week I was in Gamestop to pick up Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations when I decided to ask about the release date for Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. After he told me, he succeeded in convincing me to preorder it, something I wasn’t planning on at all. In fact, at the time, I wasn’t even 100% sure that I was going to get the game. Well a couple days ago I went and picked it up, and I can safely say I don’t regret it.

I’m absolutely amazed at how fun the game is. And I don’t really know why I had my doubts, but they’re all gone. It’s hard to describe, really. But the idea of Mario flying through space, hopping from small planet to planet, is really enjoyable. The layout of the game is simultaneously unique and familiar. I never played Mario Sunshine (mainly because it never interested me) but the structure resembles that of Mario 64. Instead of Peach’s Castle, you’re in the “Comet Observatory,” which acts as the overworld and central hub of the game. Making up the Comet Observatory are Domes, which resemble igloos. These are basically the main levels or chapters of the game, like the different floors of Peach’s Castle. At the start of the game, you only have access to one dome. From each dome, you have access to specific Galaxies. Each Galaxy is nothing more than a stage, which could be a collection of floating platforms and spheres or miniature planets. Just like in Mario 64, each Galaxy has numerous Stars to collect, each given for individual missions on that Galaxy - each time you visit it, you have a different goal, and a new Star to collect. Each Galaxy requires a certain amount of Stars for it to become “visible” from its Dome, meaning you can access it - just like the doors in Peach’s castle.

The controls handle surprisingly well. I was curious to see how it would play as I watched videos of people jumping from planet to planet, with Mario going upside down and sideways and floating in all directions. The platforming experience has been taken to a whole new level. Difficulty-wise, it’s pretty much what you should come to expect from a Mario game. Overall most enemies and puzzles are simple, but when a challenge comes along, expect to die. Repeatedly. Lives gained while playing are lost when you quit the game, so each time you start it up you’re back to 5.

If you’ve got a Wii, you have to get this game. And if you don’t have a Wii, shame on you! Get one just for Mario Galaxy. Don’t take my word for it - just ask anybody. No really, anybody. At last count, there’s roughly 42 billion gaming review sites on the Internet - IGN, Gamespot, etc. This doesn’t include whats in print - Gamepro, Gameinformer, EGM, etc. They all give their reviews of games, and they all tend to have their own credibility, and their own grading scale. Fortunately, there is Gamerankings.com, which collects results from all of the leading review sources and averages these scores together to give a more accurate view of how well a game is doing. Since the site’s creation (if I’m interpreting the copywright information at the bottom of their page, it started in 1999) , The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has been the all-time highest-rated game across on consoles on that site with an average score of 97.6%. But yesterday, Super Mario Galaxy became the first game to successfully pass OoT with a score of 97.8%. This is practically video game history, folks.

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