Hopefully this game lives up to the reviews I've been reading. I only had time to collect 4 or 5 stars before I had to hit the sack.
The kids got to play it more than I did last night. I haven't gotten too far into the game yet. The water looks great too, as well as the mother bee, referred to in Ben's review. Overall, though, the enviroments are pretty to look at and extremely original. The colors are bright and crisp but most of the landscape textures and the characters (including Mario himself) are disappointingly low-res. They make SMG look like the equivalent of Kameo or Viva Pinata and it just isn't even close. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely FAR superior, graphically, to every other Wii game I've played. I was expecting more, after all the amazing screenshots I saw, as well as all the "OMG TEH GRAPHICS IS AWESOME!" reviews. I was a bit disappointed by the graphics. They still LOOK sort of small but, as you walk around most of them, they are much bigger than they first appear. I was wondering how they were going to fit any interesting battles or puzzles on planets the size of SUVs. The screenshots made the planets seem much smaller than they acually are. I really thought I was going to hate the 3D, spherical, mini planet gameplay, after seeing screen shots, but I completely take back any bad thoughts I initially may have had about it. It makes it easier for the kids to learn. Really no need to use the reticle pointer all the time. In fact, if you really wanted to, you could play most of this game using only the joystick and the A button, which is exactly what my 3 and 4 year old did. They usually seem forced or needless, but SMG seems to use the point & shake controls to perfection. I'm not a huge fan of most implementations of the Wii's waggle controls.
It's got a solid, easy control scheme that old-school mario fans and young newcomers alike can pick up and enjoy, right out of the gate. That being said, Super Mario Galaxy is pretty fuckin awesome. SMG was the game I've been waiting on to change my mind about the console. I do think that the wagglicious mini-game infested system may be sort of a novelty. I think I was leaning more towards SMG anyway "for the kids" (see: "for ME").Īnyone who's read my previous Wii related threads and posts in these forums knows that I'm far from the biggest Wii fan. There was 1 copy of Mario left and AC was sold out for the 360 so my decision was made for me. I walked into Gamestop and stepped up to the counter, still not knowing which one I wanted. After much deliberation, I decided that I didn't know what to decide. It was between this and Assassin's Creed.