> I got Galaxy in the bundle I bought to get my wii. I've put a few hours into it
> and wasn't all that impressed with what it had to offer. My main complaint is
> that the worlds just feel far too small and linear. You never get that open
> ended sense of exploration like you did with Mario 64.

Mario 64 played like the same thing over and over, Mario Galaxy has a lot of branching paths so you never do the same thing twice. Galaxy also had a few large areas, although you pretty much only had one thing to do. It's not as often as Mario 64 that you could go after another star in the level. But there were a lot of cool hidden stars that took you into new locations as well.

I think Mario 64 was a lot more tedious and repetitive, and Galaxy is always new and fresh and fun. The game is as hard as you make it because a lot of stuff is optional, and there are some pretty fucked up things you have to do if you want to get everything. Playing as Luigi is also adds more challenge because of the way he controls, so I guess you could count it as a 'hard' version of the game.

> The wiimote waggling feels tacked on at best. I haven't seen a single part of
> the game yet where it was essential to shoot the star bits at something and the
> spin attack could just as easily be done by hitting a button.

You don't have to shoot the star bits at something, but at least 2 or 3 times in playing the entire game you'll be glad you had the option, because an enemy was right on the ledge you wanted to jump to but couldn't jump ON that enemy, or whatever reason. There are also other times where you can trigger something by shooting at it and it provides interesting gameplay options.

As for the spin attack, yeah it could have been a button but there's nothing really bad about it being a waggle either, you don't even have to waggle it, just shake your hand a bit. I find that since you do something a lot more physical to perform the action, it made me feel like it was easier to get the timing down on certain things. Maybe it's because you don't have to reach over to another button for it, it's just another thing you can do. Also after you do it for a while, it becomes like a natural reaction that you do when you see something, and it's probably more natural to associate an action than a button press. You can use your spin to gain more height in a jump, and I found no problems with timing that at the right moment to do certain things. I never found myself cursing at the game for it.

> The manta ray
> racing controls feel poor, swinging between being too responsive or not
> responsive enough.

The controls are based on momentum, so no matter what you're doing you have to take into account the inertia and the degree of your turn. It would feel shitty with any controller.

> I only collected about 11 or 12 stars so far, but I'm not wowed with the game.
> It isn't bad, but it feels dumbed down for the masses. Maybe it gets better
> further in?

I'll say. Although I was wowed from the start pretty much, the game constantly exceeded my expectations. Personally I don't see how any Mario fan can't think this is the greatest game ever.

But I don't know, I hated Mario 64 and wasn't a huge fan of Sunshine either. I think this is the only true 3D Mario game that could really follow up to SMB3 and SMW.

Mario 64 was kind of a joke. I'm not seeing all the love for it. The enemies often looked bland and nonsensical, a lot like some of the enemies in Super Paper Mario. It's like someone pulled out a really shitty default example from a poor 3D rendering program. Some enemies were just marbles with lines coming out of them. A stupid walking thwomp that looks like someone's first 3D project. Some weird music that didn't seem to go with any Mario game, although Mario 64 did have some really great pieces of music in it too. The camera was probably the best at the time but I still couldn't stand it. The gameplay was probably innovative but I really fought with it a lot of the time, sometimes Mario wouldn't even turn around without walking around in a circle and you would die from it because you fell off or hit the wrong thing. The missions where you had to collect out of reach coins were fucking stupid and tedious and monotonous. A lot of the time it seemed like some of the goals were just an excuse to use the same level again. When I first saw the world map from that game I wondered if there were going to be more castles or something. I went from playing Super Mario World and SMB3 where every single level was unique, to a game with only one ghost house, very few different boss levels, and probably only one or two levels for every type of typical area (water, fire, underground, ice, grass, etc). The problem isn't that the levels were bad, I liked them enough but just not enough to play them 8 times each or more. A lot of the time you were also forced to do annoying stars because you wanted to unlock other levels to keep from being bored.

If anything, Galaxy has a lot better pacing with a max of 5 stars (each star usually a branching path) for big levels and 1 or 2 stars each for small levels, so there's a lot of different varied one-time levels that help mix things up. Each star really has you doing something unique, and it's almost always core Mario gameplay. The only non-Mario parts would have to be certain levels where you're in a bubble floating around or where you're flinging Mario around on slingshots, but those don't last very long and there are very few instances. Even then those are fun to do. I like the bosses and enemies better than those in Mario 64. Finally you can stomp koopas and fling their shells around in 3D. Really the only criticism I would have for Mario Galaxy in any way is that sometimes it's difficult to get oriented when you're swimming, and it's kind of annoying to figure out at first. However it's something you can get over.

In the end, Mario Galaxy is classic Mario in 3D the way it was meant to be. Mario 64 and Sunshine are like crude tech demos in comparison. Galaxy is a true follow up to SMB3 and SMW.

I actually like Mario 64 and Sunshine but it took me a while to accept that it was how Mario was going to be in 3D. I can appreciate the good gameplay they have after you get good at the way Mario 64 controls, and the amount of trickery you can do to get to hard to reach places and that kind of advanced Mario gameplay it provides. But the environment you do it in is not that much fun. After playing Galaxy I don't really want to play 64 or Sunshine again.

I only fucking pray that we see another Mario game sometime soon and it's not just one Mario game per console generation.