Month of Mario: Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)

After completing the phenomenal 3D platformer Super Mario Galaxy, the development team at Nintendo EAD Tokyo found themselves with a beautiful problem when they got to work on a follow-up. While initially conceived as more of an expansion on the original game’s worlds to further explore the potential of the unique gravity-based level designs, the team found themselves bristling with so much creativity that it became smarter just to make a full on sequel. Super Mario Galaxy 2 undoubtedly hits a lot of the same marks that made the original game so amazing, superb orchestrated music, fascinating level concepts, and excellent movement controls all present to ensure this game is guaranteed to be great, but thanks to pursuing their overflowing imagination, the creators of Super Mario Galaxy 2 made sure that having even more of a good thing remains a good thing in this excellent follow-up.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about Super Mario Galaxy 2 though is it almost seems to ignore the first game’s existence in how it frames its story. In the Mushroom Kingdom, the Star Festival has lead to harmless shooting stars falling all around, the plucky hero Mario getting an invite from Princess Peach to watch this phenomenon together. As he arrives at her castle though, he finds the Koopa King Bowser on a tear, the villain absolutely massive and snatching the princess away as he aims to use the energy in Power Stars to conquer the universe. Mario must explore the various galaxies to claim the Power Stars hidden within, the hero able to use them as well to power a spaceship that helps him reach new worlds. Strangely enough, this spaceship is almost more of a planet, one fashioned to look like Mario’s face as a sign of appreciation from the ship’s owner, a chubby star named Lubba. From there, it’s an interstellar adventure to all sorts of strange new places, although sometimes you will get little check-ins back on Starship Mario where you find some helpful character from the place you just visited has dropped in, the ship coming to life a little bit as you get closer and closer to saving the universe.

Once you gain control of Mario, even before you start interacting with the bevvy of gravity mechanics at play in Super Mario Galaxy 2, you’ll find his movement is already responsive and open to quite a good amount of clever use. His simple jump can be made into a higher one by stringing three together, you can crouch and backflip for a simpler large leap upwards, you can hurl yourself further with a long jump, Mario can propel himself off of flat walls, and with a flick of the Wii Remote, you can do a midair spin that serves as both a double jump and a way to shift your midair momentum. You can point at the screen to collect Star Bits that can be fired at foes to incapacitate them briefly, but these are often best saved for their use in unlocking extra galaxies. While that minimizes their practical use (and the game’s weak 2 player mode involves one player basically working as an enemy stunner and item collector), collecting bits also gives you something to do during transitional moments such as flying between planets. Most galaxies in Super Mario Galaxy 2 are levels with a clear forward path to take, but even as you travel through these dedicated spaces, there are often opportunities to use your range of jumping options to speed up your movement, get around danger in unexpected ways, or overcome an obstacle in your preferred way. There are sometimes a few cheeky ways to get around trouble by using your jump skills well, but even if you play how the game expects, you’re still going to be heading through a range of interesting and challenging stage designs because of how gravity plays a factor in area design. Many galaxies are made up of small planetoids where you can run all about their surface, be it a simple orb, a discus, or more unusual shapes, these spaces open up new platforming challenges while the game also features areas with flatter simpler designs so you’re not always running around upside down. Even when the game introduces 2D side-scrolling sections though, you can find the gravity inverting periodically or even have the gravity at your control based on what switches you hit, Super Mario Galaxy 2 certainly playful in thinking of how a space can be designed to be altered or what puzzles can be placed in an area with many different angles you can view it from.

In the nearly 50 galaxies on offer, each stage has a few Power Star goals that tie to their unique challenges and shape. Galaxies made of floating food, areas that mix fire and ice, a giant slide made out of a carved out tree, levels where the platforms available shift to the beat of a song or whenever you do your spin jump, there are definitely a good range of concepts that put your standard platforming tools to work. However, many galaxies are defined by unique powers granted to you by pick-ups or your dinosaur friend Yoshi. When on the back of the friendly green creature, you already get his long tongue to help you out, it able to be used to latch onto objects or eat enemies with ease. However, there are also special fruits that can make him blow up like a blimp, run along at incredible speeds, or even reveal hidden ground by making Yoshi glow. Level sections are often built around gradually upping how much control and skill is necessary in handling mechanics like these various fruits, entire galaxies playing into the opportunities a new set of skills can open up.

Mario himself can acquire power-ups too from special mushrooms and flowers or even just items he picks up. Drills allow him to burrow through dirt, a perfect mix for levels where you can travel all around a planetoid’s surface but now can open new paths or find hidden hollow spaces within. The Rock Mushroom power-up turns you into a powerful rolling boulder capable of smashing its way through areas, but the Bee and Boo power-up are for more measured leisurely flying about. The Fire Flower lets you burn up things in your path for as long as it lasts, but perhaps the most interesting new power-up is the Cloud Flower. When you grab one, Mario gains three clouds he can place in midair by spinning. Much like his regular jumping, clever use of this can lead to some incredible maneuverability options, but it also presents a challenge at times as you need to know when to place one and like most power-ups, it can have unique effects. Clouds can be pushed along by the wind so you can make rides, the Bee power lets you cling to honey or stand on delicate platforms without trouble, and the drill can do a number on enemies you can’t otherwise touch, these expansion to Mario’s abilities making for interesting new tools that are often complemented wonderfully by the environment. If not for the unfortunate return of the hard to control Spring form and some motion control segments that are a bit rough to wrangle like guiding a bird or rolling atop a ball, Super Mario Galaxy 2’s shakeups and gimmicks would have been an absolute success in expanding your abilities without overcomplicating them.

Many galaxies will technically host entirely different goals across their different stars, whether they be something hidden like minigame score challenges or an entire shift in the level design. Melty Monster Galaxy for example is at first about avoiding lava monsters by pulling yourself through antigravity, then dodging lava waves, and finally trying to find safe ground when crossing a planet that is practically made of magma monsters. However, its alternate star turns the place into a series of bowling bins for your rolling rock power-up, Super Mario Galaxy 2 brimming with unique area designs that it doesn’t wear down through overuse. Enormous boss battles put your movement to the test just as much as sprawling stages as you climb to find weak spots or work your way around the arena to avoid danger, but Prankster Comets do introduce an interesting twist to familiar stages when they crop up. Every level has a hidden comet medal in its first Power Star goal, grabbing it leading to a comet appearing later on that will give you another star should you clear its challenge. These can ask you to do things like clear the level before time runs out, do it without getting hurt at all, and do it while pursued by shadowy copies who mirror your every move, the exact challenge picked to suit the level’s design and even draw new difficulty from it. An area where you could wait out the movement of hazards like rising spikes or recover after a missed jump becomes much harder when you’re being tailed by enemies, and even though you might not struggle with a boss when you have at least three hits going in and recovery options, they can be much tougher when you have to take them a bit more seriously. Clearing the game does unlock a bit of a scavenger hunt in every galaxy that isn’t quite as cleanly or intelligently implemented though, the new hidden items sometimes not hidden too smartly while others will ask for some of the most creative movement you’ll ever be asked to perform. It isn’t the cleanest way to expand the play time for people looking to do more after they’ve cleared the main galaxies and story, but it does also ask you to view things in a new way, sometimes utilizing gravity mechanics or other gimmicks in ways you wouldn’t have thought to consider before.

While the term “galaxy” may be a bit grandiose for levels that amount to a string of gravity-defying platforming gauntlets, the game does make a good use of theming and music to make places feel like more than just junk suspended in air. In more cosmic stages the music can be more relaxing and ethereal, a curious tune to match you entering the unknown. However, when you head to the home turf of Bowser and his son Bowser Jr., the music is far more boisterous to underline the everpresent danger before becoming outright epic when you tussle with the main bad guy himself. More playful tunes underscore segments with lower pressure objectives. Puzzle Plank Galaxy will hit you with a folksy fiddle as you smash wood blocks in place and dodge saws that cut the level apart, but over on the relatively open Starshine Beach Galaxy the background track would perfectly match an island getaway. Even a level like Chompworks Galaxy where you need to carefully manage the paths giant rolling balls take match the music to the task, it a steady thinking beat with an almost cartoony twist to a factory rhythm. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is definitely more playful than its epic predecessor right down to the galaxies being arranged into a world map rather than places you launch to from a cosmic hub, but it pursues its fun ideas well and sprinkles in a good deal of truly difficult challenges to follow-up its more whimsical pursuits of what a platforming level can be when you can twist and turn it whatever ways you please.

THE VERDICT: A spectacular expansion on the concepts featured in the original Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is consistently inventive despite carrying on a good amount of elements from its predecessor. New power-ups and Yoshi’s own range of tricks are given a spread of galaxies to plumb their potential and your excellent movement options give you room to explore while being put to the test as gravity pulls you in all sorts of directions. The post-game scavenger hunt isn’t quite as captivating as the rest, but a wealth of creative stage layouts makes for a memorable return trip to outer space for Mario and friends.

And so, I give Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Nintendo Wii…

A FANTASTIC rating. Even when Super Mario Galaxy 2 dips into a less clean idea like the Spring power-up, even when you get the rare moment where the shifting gravity might lead to you running in a circle for a bit, the game can’t help but shine because of the variety and craftsmanship woven throughout this interstellar adventure. Galaxies are able to host a range of challenges that rarely feel alike, and when they are deliberate twists on the familiar like Prankster Comets, they ask you to approach the familiar location in a new manner. Mario’s movement is excellent for giving you a range of options and some cushions, the midair spin for example able to save you from a poorly judged leap, but at other times it can let you climb into a special spot to make your own path to a star. The constant shifts in how levels approach gravity helps the idea keep its novelty too, the player never knowing if they’ll be on a traditional forward adventure, leaping between strings of small planetoids, exploring an interior 2D space, or contending with gravity that keeps shifting how it impacts you. Surprises keep cropping up as you get deeper in the game, the game never feeling like it’s simply throwing a galaxy together to fill space, and it even trimmed away some of the elements from the original like blowing bubbles you’re trapped in around while being able to lightly dabble in ported over concepts like the Boo Mushroom without feeling it had to justify its existence through frequent reappearances. Super Mario Galaxy 2 has refined its ideas to provide exciting challenges throughout, so many of its galaxies memorable because of their unique approaches and how well they’re pulled off.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a more streamlined experience than the original Super Mario Galaxy and that ends up suiting it phenomenally, the excellent cavalcade of galaxy concepts exploring such an incredible range of concepts both weird and wonderful without ever shattering the clean movement options that allow Mario to feel like a dream to control. The gravity mechanics of the Super Mario Galaxy series are such fertile ground for platforming challenges that could never be pulled off in a more traditional adventure, this return visit to the ideas stretching them even further and doing so with such skill that it feels like a culmination of years of experimentation rather than just the second time at bat utilizing them. If only we could see what the development team could do had they continued to workshop even more ways to expand on this wonderfully effective formula, but without a doubt, Super Mario Galaxy 2 provides an excellent cosmic journey for Mario and one that in many departments shines even brighter than the original stellar adventure.