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Mario Galaxy 2: 5/23/10

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BoberFett said:
I really should pick up the first Mario Galaxy some time, I just already have such a backlog of things to play. Kids, this is why you don't stop gaming for a few years, you just end up having to go back and play everything you missed anyway.
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hahah yeah.

i have a stack of games on systems for the PS1-3,ds and computer i want to play but haven't got around it yet. i see one i want and grab it..
 
Nice surprise was waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday ... my wife had picked the game up for me 🙂 Taught my 4 year old how to be P2 to pick up the star-bits, and played for a few hours last night. 21 stars in ... and let me just stick my middle finger up at the first Chimp Race. UGH. Took me a long time to beat it, but I managed it at last.

Brilliant game. And I don't say that lightly.
 
I unabashedly love this game. Played a few of the comet levels last night, and DAMN ... takes some skill to beat a few of them.

This game took SMG and bumped it up a notch ... not revolutionary changes, but many incremental gameplay additions that work so well.

Probably about 1/3 of the way there, and 10/10 is my score.
 
Patt said:
I unabashedly love this game. Played a few of the comet levels last night, and DAMN ... takes some skill to beat a few of them.

This game took SMG and bumped it up a notch ... not revolutionary changes, but many incremental gameplay additions that work so well.

Probably about 1/3 of the way there, and 10/10 is my score.
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Yeah it plays very smoothly and feels more polished than the first game. Agreed on some of the comet levels being difficult. Nothing to bat yet though. I've got 40 stars so far, on world 3. Some of the more difficult levels are the time trial comet ones. Also the purple coin tree slide took a while.
 
69 stars now in world 4. Loving it so far. I'm a completionist so I'm going for all stars. So far it's about as difficult / easy as the first. Nothing so far as hard so the junk yard stars in the first though.
 
80 some odd stars now. Now I'm starting to see some harder levels. There is a box breaking one very similar to the junk yard star in the first game but not quite as bad. There is a whack a mole like race where you have to get 600 points in world 4 that's tough. Also there is a prankster comet level where you have to do the switch flip level and the blocks switch in about 1 1/2 seconds.
 
Patt said:
I unabashedly love this game. Played a few of the comet levels last night, and DAMN ... takes some skill to beat a few of them.

This game took SMG and bumped it up a notch ... not revolutionary changes, but many incremental gameplay additions that work so well.

Probably about 1/3 of the way there, and 10/10 is my score.
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yeah SMG2 is harder then 1 was. my son (4 next month) is having a hard time where in 1 he did fine.

the comet stars are hard. but im having a lot of fun. though yoshi is kinda cool to play with. i like how he poops/farts out the bits. my son laughs at that..heh gotta love little boys humor.
 
This game is epically awesome. Its a slight notch harder than the original which is good. And the amount of content for the completionist is astounding.
 
I'm at about 64 stars now ... and I'm trying to complete everything as I go along. Man do I hate the purple coin speed runs 🙂 Locutus ... that purple coin slide was a good challenge for me too ... took me much too long, but felt so good when I was done.

Finally got my wife to play yesterday, and I watched for a bit, playing P2 ... man, I can make it so easy on her. Stopping enemies, collecting stuff, even killing some enemies. To the point where I think it was too easy for her, so I stopped.

Best video game money spent in some time.
 
SMG1 and 2 don't come close to super mario 64. Only got to the second world so far, but not intrigued by the levels so far.
 
Started this up the other day. Love the curve on the game - the difficulty ramps up a bit faster than on SMG1. A rock solid-to-excellent platformer. I would expect no less.
 
102 stars. Getting in to some much more challenging levels now. Some of the monkey's challenge stars and the World 5 Fluzzard stars are tough.
 
waggy said:
yeah SMG2 is harder then 1 was. my son (4 next month) is having a hard time where in 1 he did fine.

the comet stars are hard. but im having a lot of fun. though yoshi is kinda cool to play with. i like how he poops/farts out the bits. my son laughs at that..heh gotta love little boys humor.
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Ha ... my almost-four-year-old daughter has never played a video game, and I let her run Mario around on the StarShip ... she's still getting a hang of moving about, but she lets out a torrent of giggles every time she splashes through the water 😀

I guess I'll have to start getting her to try a bit more if your almost-4-year-old is rocking some of the levels 😱

That said, she wants to watch all the time ... she's waiting for me to rescue the princess, and has thus far shown great patience since I'm about 70 stars in.
 
Locut0s said:
102 stars. Getting in to some much more challenging levels now. Some of the monkey's challenge stars and the World 5 Fluzzard stars are tough.
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Fluzzard blows ... but I finally got those last night. Took my wife helping to find the second gate 🙂 Only played for about 30 minutes last night though ... hopefully tonight will be more productive.
 
Just got the game over the weekend...finally, a reason to turn the Wii back on again. I used to play the Wii all the time. MW2 ruined that...time to take a small break from it...damn map pack comes out this week. Guess it will be an extremely small break.
 
Patt said:
Ha ... my almost-four-year-old daughter has never played a video game, and I let her run Mario around on the StarShip ... she's still getting a hang of moving about, but she lets out a torrent of giggles every time she splashes through the water 😀

I guess I'll have to start getting her to try a bit more if your almost-4-year-old is rocking some of the levels 😱

That said, she wants to watch all the time ... she's waiting for me to rescue the princess, and has thus far shown great patience since I'm about 70 stars in.
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he can only do the first few zones. but he loves going after the first boss. the bit baby plant. he laughs his ass off when he beats it. he love spanking it and yelling at it.
 
Dumac said:
Nice nostalgia goggles
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Actually, I prefer SM64 on a certain level too. IMO, SMG1 & 2 have overall superior platforming, but the games feel less cohesive and more tedious than SM64.

My biggest gripe is probably the overall level design. Yes, there are some very creative levels in SMG, but they are very linear. In Mario 64 there were a lot more "open world" type levels. When you entered a world you were given a hint like you are in SMG, but in many cases you could actually collect any star in that level. If you happened across another star while going after the hint star you could collect it. In SMG this is largely untrue because the levels are altered, often dramatically, to funnel you to the hinted star. There are exceptions (e.g. some hidden stars), but overall this is true.

Also, and maybe related, I'm not a huge fan of these levels with random chunks of the level floating everywhere. Maybe the linearity and these random floating chunks of land is what gives them more flexibility in the level design, but the levels just don't feel much like actual worlds... if that makes sense? Every level, and thus the entire game, sort of feels like a hodgepodge of arena-like challenges rather than cohesive worlds. Sort of like if SM64 had had some DLC challenge levels you might end up with crazy nonsense like in the SMG games.

I also HATE the star bits. Hate them. Collecting that crap is tedious and doesn't fit the game at all IMO. Not only do I hate collecting them, why can I, the user, shoot star bits out of the sky like I'm the hand of God? I know Mario games are crazy and pretty much make no sense at all, but this really bugs me for some reason. It really creates a clear separation between Mario the on-screen character and me as the player. I'm sure most people won't care, but it bugs me.

I also hated the hub world in SMG1. There was something somewhat fascinating about getting to explore the castle in SM64, but that didn't apply to SMG1. SMG1's hub was boring, tedious, and just flat out annoying. Thankfully, Starship Mario and the map access to levels fixes that problem in SMG2.

Those are my main complaints about the SMG games. The camera can become less than ideal at times, but that's a problem they've all had since going 3D... including SM64. Overall I really am enjoying SMG2, much more so than even SMG1, but I still long for the SM64 at times. Because as noted above, sometimes SMG just doesn't feel like a true SM quest... it just feels like a random collection of crazy platforming challenges with wildly fluctuating difficulty to boot.
 
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Jules said:
is it me or do you lose lives by saving and exiting the game?
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You go back to 4 lives each time you reset the game. Even if you saved up 100 lived before you go back to 4. Although princess peach always seems to send you 5 free 1ups at the beginning as well. At first this may seem really annoying but it prevents the game from becoming too easy. Besides there are plenty of opportunities to earn 1ups. Even the most difficult levels are not usually restrained by the number of lives you have.
 
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