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Super Mario Galaxy 2

Started by Johnny Textface, May 19, 2010, 01:15:20 PM

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Johnny Textface

Its out next week. I'm probably gonna buy it even though I thought the first one was a bit overrated. Anyone else dying for it / couldn't give a flying cock etc?

pk1yen

Next week?! Crikey I thought it wasn't out until July.

I'll definitely be getting it - played the first one to death, and Edge gave this new one a 10/10, which can't be a bad thing.
Plus - Yoshi!


EDIT - Actually, June 11th it's out here. Damn you for getting me excited and then making me crush myself with facts!

I adore the first game and I'm really looking forward to more of the same. This seems like one of the first instances where Nintendo have actually 'cashed in' with a AAA title, usually limiting themselves to one installment per generation. I don't expect it to convert anyone who doesn't enjoy platform games but I have total faith that it will satisfy the devoted. If there's one thing Nintendo do, it's level design. That's why I play their games. The emotion they generate is separate from interactive cinematics, it's more in touch with discovering the expanding boundaries of a new experience.

Entropy Balsmalch

I cannot wait.

SMG for me was a triumph of everything Nintendo do best.

While SM64 was great at the time, there was a frustrating amount of repetition and some clunky and glitchy level design.

SMG was just incredible in its variety and depth of play. It was the first game in a long time which willed me to finish it completely despite the fact there was so much of it.

I doubt it'll be a massive leap from the last one - as it's so soon after and on the same platform, but more of the same will be jsut as good for me.

alan nagsworth

Super Mario Galaxy triumphed in perfecting the camera angles and fun playability that makes Nintendo so massively great. I'm seriously looking forward to this!

I didn't realise the US/Jap releases were so far ahead of ours, I could have been playing it a fortnight ago! :( Anyway, I got it today, played it for an hour just now, it's wonderful. Basically, whereas in the first game, almost every level had one brilliant design idea, this has got two. They've cut out the hub - which did get repetitive after a while - and the redundant story stuff and just thrown everything at level design and off-hand touches of genius. The camera, which I thought was great, is so much tighter and more responsive now. Obviously, the pure novelty of gravity-manipulating jumps isn't there but there's so much new stuff - even with the gravity - you'll be giggling again and again. A fucking delight.

I'm going to get up at 6 so I can hopefully finish my work by bedtime tomorrow and stay up all night playing this.

29 years old, I was.

alan nagsworth

OH! I forgot all about this! That's another thing I need to seriously penny-pinch in order to afford, then. Fuck. It sounds brilliant, too.

pk1yen

Got mine this morning - it really is like being a child again, it's awesome!

More detailed review with fewer giggles later on.

madhair60

Proof Nintendo can still do it best when they try.

buntyman

Really excited about this, Tesco posted my copy out yesterday so hopefully I'll have it at the weekend at the latest. I fired through Red Dead Redemption probably more quickly than it deserved to free up my schedule for this so it'll have my undivided attention outside of World Cup hours. Loved the first one which I played through on my sister's Wii and I bought my own Wii pretty much solely in preparation for this game.

About half way through World One, I suddenly realised this is World One! XD

Giggles so far:

Spoiler alert
The 4-way gravity loop at the end of that early 2D level.
The intense minimalism of the drill-bit boss.
Inverting gravity and making a spiky baddy soft and vulnerable.
Falling off a high vertical plane all the way down to the horizontal plane while the camera tracks you perfectly.
Super long jump leaps into nowhere with the Cloud Suit.
In fact, I could list something from almost every level.
[close]

Still Not George

On a vaguely related note, I'm officially a registered Wii developer again as of today. I feel kinda dirty.

eluc55

Out of curiosity, SNG, I know you don't like the wii as a console, but don't you even like the core nintendo games like Mario and Zelda? Just curious like. 

Still Not George

Quote from: eluc55 on June 11, 2010, 03:47:42 PM
Out of curiosity, SNG, I know you don't like the wii as a console, but don't you even like the core nintendo games like Mario and Zelda? Just curious like.
I get this question a lot, y'know...

SMG's a good'un, and not only because it's a whole letter away from my CaB username. It's definitely overrated, but in the sense of "damn fine game hyped to seem like the second coming of Christ Jesus and all his angels" rather than "medicore game treated as excellent", if you see what I mean. I'll probably pick up SMG2 sometime soonish (after ME2 and about 8 million other Xbox titles I've not been able to justify purchasing recently). I really enjoyed one of the recent Paper Mario installments too (not sure which it was, sorry).

Zelda, though... where do I start? I haven't liked a single Zelda game since A Link To The Past. Something about the N64 and later versions of the series just turns me right off. I just find them intolerably boring and formulaic, while simultaneously not being able to give a shit about the storyline, which is a bit of a problem in an RPG.

Likewise Smash Brothers just seems like pointless, skill-less button mashing to me and always has, and Mario Kart Wii is possibly the biggest insult to a classic game imaginable. And Metroid Prime does nothing for me.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I wonder what it is about the Mario series of games that makes me so completely dulled and uninterested. It's not as if I even enjoyed them as a kid. I'm a bit like this with platformers but especially Mario. I don't enjoy any of the levels, I don't find any sort of satisfaction from completing it, I don't find any of it gripping or diverting. The one thing I expect a computer game to be is involving enough to not be sitting there engulfed by the idea I'm draining away my life on nothing.

Sold your soul to Milhouse? No other explanation.

For me, the big thing - and always has been - is that the controls, especially after-touch on jumps, are absolutely perfectly responsive. I could and do just play around jumping off stuff, running and flipping and sliding and diving around. Compared to something 'acrobatic' like Tomb Raider or whatever other game is supposed to feel good, well, there is no comparison. So, given that I find the basic game mechanic/physics/feel enjoyable, by then testing your ability to gradually tighten up and perform increasingly difficult feats of co-ordination, timing and experimental puzzle-solving, it can't really lose. On top of that, it's Nintendo, they've been at it longer than most and they evidently employ some of the sharpest, most creative designers in the world. I also think that their level construction is actually getting better and better. After 10% of this game, they'd already reinvented, reapplied and remastered the most complex and entertaining elements of the original and it's only warming up. I'm now about 20% in and I'm looking forward to replaying the whole thing with my girlfriend in a couple of weeks. I want to take breaks, to soak in every detail but the levels just flow. I mean, this is without even mentioning the music, which is the best I've heard in any game.

Now, obviously, if the aesthetics put you off or if you don't like platformers much or if you find the hype taints it a bit, yeah, there's not much point either of us worrying about that. I'd say even objectively, though, it's hard to discredit the controls and level design.

I know there's not that much to discuss about a game like this without just saying 'I like/I don't like X' but having reached World 4, I can safely say that if you never give yourself an opportunity to play this, you're missing out on the best platform game of all time. The actual 'Galaxy' bit is nowhere near as literal as in the first game, the whole 'running round orbs' is almost nowhere to be found - though I did love the secret star on the
Spoiler alert
blooming planetoid :D
[close]
. They've basically just taken the original's experimental attitude towards environmental conditions and not looked back.

I gave the original another go as well, for comparison, and the camera and controls are definitely much tighter. There's another secret star which involves swings & wall jumps that I don't think would have quite been possible in the original game. In fact, on that note, the 2D elements here are so much better - and even moreso than NSMB Wii. It's not just the seamless transitions between dimensions, they're actually reinventing the 2D genre along the way. Besides that, the levels in the original, which surpassed 64 by a long way, actually seem repetitive compared to SMG2. When you go back into a galaxy, you're barely covering any of the same ground on your way to another star. It's just one fresh idea after another. Fucking hell lads, even the flying/sliding/racing levels are great not shite!

It's honestly such a joy to play, I couldn't spoil it even if I tried. So here goes:

Chompworks!!!
Bulb Berry
Cloud suit/windmills
Flipville
Blip-Beep Galaxy (or whatever it is!)
Drum trampolines
Snowballs across lava
...I could go on.

mikeyg27

Something that has really impressed me so far is how well Yoshi controls - they've managed to transition him into a 3d environment perfectly. Even simple things like grabbing with his tongue and shooting work really well. I also love the slight callbacks to the older games, like the drumbeat when you jump on his back, and the flutter jump.

Unfortunately, I managed to slice a chunk off my thumb in a cooking accident on the SAME DAY I bought the game, and now every time I play for more than five minutes I open up the wound. This means I can't binge on the game, which is a shame because so far it's been immaculate.

hoverdonkey

Yeah, it's lovely, and very toddler-friendly. Thomas happy to watch me play for half an hour, which is otherwise unheard of. I managed to convince him Yoshi is actually Rex from Toy Story