Developer: Nintendo | Publisher: Nintendo | Released: 16th November 2007 | Price paid: £27.55 | Bought at: Tgrav.com

Let me just say right now that Super Mario Galaxy is an absolutely brilliant game, and I loved it. But there were times where I hated it. Times where I just couldn't help but wonder what the hell Nintendo were thinking. The game as a whole is amazing, yes, but when you're surrounded, absolutely drenched, in that much quality throughout the course of a game the little portions of annoyance stand out so much more. Like giant red flashing signs that say 'This is fucked up'.

Within the first few seconds of beginning Mario Galaxy you're likely to feel very out of place and confused. Why? Because as you're probably not expecting, it doesn't control exactly like Mario 64. The only way I can think to describe it is that Mario feels very loose in your hands. Gone is the incredibly precise analogue movement, replaced by a character who seems to practically be throwing himself around the levels as if he's had maybe a bit too much coffee or something. Now that's not necessarily to say that the controls are 'worse' than those of Mario 64, just different. You soon get used to the feel of the controls, and I'm sure that if I went back to Mario 64 now that would feel far more weird, but it was a bit unexpected.

To compensate for this the game gives you a nice introductory level around town to run around and get used to the controls, and then a small introductory planet where you'll be forced to catch some rabbits to advance. This is where you will be introduced to the spinning ability, and that is one of my major gripes with the game. The spinning is, simply put, very annoying. You make Mario spin by giving the Wiimote a little shake, which is pretty easy to get used to, and works most of the time. But that's the problem. Most of the time. There are few things I can think of in any game more annoying than running up near an enemy, shaking the controller a bit to make Mario spin and having him do absolutely nothing, only to be hurt when the enemy then walks into you. By about the half way point of the game you will probably have learnt to be incredibly violent with your Wiimote if you want to kill anything though, so it probably won't be much of an issue after your first thousand health-losses.

The only other problem with spinning is how often you have to do it. Want to kill any enemy? Spin. Want to pick up a shell? Spin. Want to undo a screw? Spin! Practically everything in the game can be done by either jumping, spinning or a combination of the two. I didn't even use the spin to kill enemies, I jumped on the heads of as many as I could, so I can't imagine how often you'd be spinning if you did... It's a real shame, because one of the greatest points of this game is the variety throughout the levels, and the constant use of spinning almost ruins it.

Now like I said the variety in levels is pretty damn good. The Hub in this game is some kind of giant observatory spaceship thing, which is dissappointingly small after the massive castle and relatively large Delfino Plaza in the last two Mario games. The levels or 'Galaxies' (despite not containing even one star, let alone milliond) are contained within Domes around the observatory, with several in each one (Including a boss level at the end). The first dome introduces you nicely with your standard grassy level, sorry, Galaxy, and a Beehive themed one, along with two mini-Galaxies which only contain one star and are a bit of a change from the normal running through of levels. These mini-Galaxies are pretty large in number, and there are quite a few located outside of the Domes, so they really help to add to the variety in the selection of levels.

There's all the kinds of things you can expect throughout the game, fiery Galaxies, icy Galaxies, watery Galaxies, and then a bunch more that you don't expect, like Beach-themed ones with loads of Penguins around (Why they're on the beach I have no idea...) and absolutely crazy ones that curve all over the place, or have the ground disappearing wherever you walk. Each of them sticks to its own style, with amazingly smooth spheres as far as the eye can see, and they all look stunning, especially the water and fire levels. And the grass ones. And the ice ones actually...

One problem is that, at times, the camera seems like it doesn't want you to see these things. You'll walk round a big spherical planet, and instead of following you around it, the camera will either just stay there, or move so that you're upside-down or can't see where you're going. So either you can't see where you are at all, or you're left pressing up to go down and down to go up, with no idea where you're actually going. Now it's not really my place to question the great design skills of Miyamoto and his team, but surely seeing where you've just been is less useful than seeing where you're trying to go? Call me crazy... Thankfully things like this are generally a brief annoyance, as most of the game acts quite sensibly, and you actually get used to these little disturbances in sanity quite quickly.

Of course while the variety in the type of levels is vast that doesn't necessarily mean that the things you're doing in them are equally vast. There is quite a bit of variation in the levels, but many of them will have you doing the same sort of thing, collecting shards of stars which will fire you to the next planet, feeding hungry stars or spinning at random things. The levels can feel a bit linear at times like this, as you're generally moving from planet-to-planet in a set path, but then each star in each Galaxy usually takes a different path through the level, often taking you to different planets altogether, and there are still the mini-planets to break it up, so it never feels like you're just running through the same level again.

Except, that is, when you're running through the same level again. In this game the number of stars per level has been lowered from 8 to 6 (Or 1 for the mini-Galaxies). This obviously helps the diversity in the levels, and the things you're doing to get the stars, but two of the stars on each Galaxy are always achieved by running through a previous area of the level with some kind of slight difference and can only be accessed when a 'Prankster Comet' is situated around the Galaxy. Each Galaxy has a different Prankster Comet assigned to it out of a total of 4 different ones, Speedy (Where you have to complete the level in a certain time), Daredevil (Where you have to complete a level with 1 health, so without getting hurt), Cosmic (Where you race a copy of yourself. It's exactly the same as being timed...) and Fast Foe (Which makes your enemies move faster).

At first this seems like a good idea, breaking up the pace a bit and adding a bit of extra challenge to a level, but the worst bit is that these things appearing is random. You can't access a 'Comet' level unless the Comet randomly appears at the right Galaxy (Unless you already have the Power Star from completing it) and this becomes incredibly annoying at the end of the game when you're trying to hunt down all 120 Stars. The worst bit is the one Comet which all levels have in common however. The Purple Comet. This scatters 100 or 150 Purple Coins around a level, and you have to collect 100 of them (All of them if there are only 100) to get the star. 8 Red Coins on each level? That wasn't too bad. But ONE HUNDRED? It's a completely stupid idea, since some of the coins are just as hard to find as the red coins used to be anyway. Why they didn't just leave it at 8 I have no idea. And to make it worse, you can't get to these levels without the Purple Comet being there either! So if it's not there, you just have to wait around. You can pay a strange purple Luma to move comets around, but this only works if there are already existing comets on the map.

That's another thing. You can't actually access the map screen without talking to a Luma who waits around in each of the Domes. See these are the kind of annoying things that I keep remembering when thinking about this game, and it seems insane that they're still in the game despite being such obvious flaws. What's even crazier is the fact that this game manages to be so amazing, so absolutely essential, despite all these incredibly annoying problems. It's as if the game is both the most Amazing thing in the Universe and not very amazing at the same time, in the same way that Twilight Princess lived up to all our expectations and was really disappointing at the same time, and the way Metroid Prime 3 was incredible and uncredible at the same time.

In fact, that's what Mario Galaxy is, a Paradox. A big crazy Paradox. The kind which will, inevitably, suck the entire universe into itself and destroy us all once and for all. Thanks a lot Nintendo.