The Beatles Rock Band (Wii)

One of the reasons I love films like Pink Floyd's The Wall and Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same is that they allow me to experience the music of bands I love in a different way. By which I mean, instead of it being a pure audio experience, now there's a strong visual component to go with it. The next logical step, then, is also adding something interactive to the music of bands you love...thus, Rock Band.

I played through the story mode on Medium doing the bass parts, and in spite of my almost-total lack of rhythm, I did just fine. Anyway, it turns out that Paul McCartney is more of a melodic bassist than a rhythmic one. Indeed, playing through all these songs as the Macca gave me a new appreciation for his style. Few bands, even those who make music that sounds like the Beatles, use the bass in quite the same way Paul did.

The progression of the story mode, going through various eras of the band's career, is a brilliant and simple way to structure what would otherwise be a boring endless jukebox of scattered songs that get more difficult as you go. Speaking of difficulty, I did find this chronological approach to make my bass campaign wildly uneven in terms of how hard songs were, though how much of that is due to the bass parts being weird (see above) or my own inept-ness, I suppose I can't say.

What also makes the story mode so unique are the introductory videos to the various eras, as well as the generally colorful, interesting, and psychedelic visuals during songs. Some of these are a bit boring and simple, but inspired sequences like the one for 'I Am The Walrus' make up for it. For what it's worth, I loved the ending animation with the elephant and the sprouting flowers; the way it's followed by credits and a post-credits encore song is the perfect capper.

The Complainer: Nintendo Wii

On the helpful tip of a message board denizen, I got my Nintendo Wii on August 17, 2007. I was impossibly excited to have it--so much so that I took a bunch of pictures to document the occasion, which is as lame and nerdy as it sounds. My initial excitement was based on a kind of dream achievement. Let me explain what I mean. I have dreams from time to time where some super awesome thing is just out of my reach. An album or videogame, super rare and expensive, is suddenly at a store near me and it's cheaper than it should be. But I never get there in time, they're sold out, or I just keep looking but never see it. Then I wake up. But in buying a Wii, a dream had been fulfilled. I chanced upon a hard-to-find piece of entertainment, lucking out where I never did in the sleep world.

The Nintendo Wii has been out for a bit over two years and we've already gotten all the usual Nintendo franchise players that show up every generation. With the Gamecube, these were staggered out over its lifespan. This works well for the casual gamer but it wasn't enough for me. And while I may not play games as much as a lot of people, I still find the Wii's library wanting even though it has a Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash Brothers, Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Animal Crossing, etc. Maybe I'm just getting tired of these games, but maybe there's something more to it.

Maybe they're little more than variations on the same games that were available on the Gamecube. Oh, wait. They are.

The only Nintendo title that feels truly unique and innovative on the Wii is Super Mario Galaxy. All the others are little more than Gamecube retreads with imperceptibly better graphics and slight tweaks. This doesn't make them bad games, inherently, but it does give me no reason to want to play them.

I may not be saying anything that other critics and pundits haven't been alleging about the Wii all along. But it's only in the past few months that I've come to accept that the Wii is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It's only fair, though. I am dead to Nintendo. Why else do they promise 'hardcore' titles and then talk about ports of Gamecube games with added Wiimote controls?? At least the Wii sequels had the good grace to be new games. Now they've degenerated into ports of Gamecube games?? Just who are they kidding with Animal Crossing, Wii Music, and Wii Fit?? Why even pretend that you care about anything but having a business model that caters to the mainstream/casual/family demographic?? Look back to the NES and the rest of their history: they've been heading towards it all along, anyway.

On a side note, they released Boogerman on Virtual Console. And it was the only classic game released that week. Really, Nintendo??

The sad truth about the Wii is that Nintendo is paying lip service to the games press and hardcore gamers while focusing entirely on the mainstream press and non-typical gamers. How else to explain the utter lack of care or thought put into the WiiWare service?? It could've been a decent rival to the game download stores offered by the 360 or PS3, but instead it's a joke. Would it be that much of a stretch to get Braid or PixelJunk Eden to run on the Wii?? What's more, why would Nintendo launch something like a download service and not have a Zelda or Mario lined up for it?? Even if it was a simplistic cash-in product, it'd be something. So on one hand, Nintendo is telling the games press that they're committed to digital delivery of games and Internet play, but on the other hand--let's call this hand "reality"--they don't care at all about digital delivery and they make Internet play as difficult to use as possible. The Wii's built-in HD is pitifully small and the only solution they've given to space woes is to delete content and re-download it. Meanwhile, their Internet play, while free, is infuriatingly obtuse and difficult to use because they have to keep it safe for families worried about their kids. There's no reason whatsoever that every game should have its own individual code you have to enter to play with the same people you're "friends" with in other games.

My whole point is this: Nintendo should just give up on the hardcore audience. They don't need us anymore and should stop pretending they can still satisfy us. I admit that I was a naive fool to fall for their lies, but I genuinely liked their games up until recently, so...fool me twice, shame on me, I suppose.

I mentioned in my Videogame Solipsist entry on the Gamecube that I always seemed to bet on the wrong horse in the console wars, only realizing my error a year or two into the race. It seems I've done the same thing with this generation.

I think I need a drink...

The Complainer: Virtual Console

Welcome to the first entry of my new column, The Complainer. In this column I will selfishly and egotistically complain about things that are bothering me. Sometimes it will be stuff you find amazingly obvious, amazingly petty, or just amazingly amazing. Let's begin, shall we??

Nintendo is a company that somehow inspires in me great loyalty and a fervent belief in their new consoles before doing their best to squander my devotion. To be fair, this pattern has only emerged during the Nintendo 64 days and onward, but it's something I've fallen for time and again. Nintendo announces a new and innovative product, and I beat my chest (sometimes with both fists in a tribute to Donkey Kong) and offer up my guttural approval...then it comes out, I'm intensely happy with it for a short period of time before the reality sets in. First party games come out too slowly, and third party games are by and large garbage or can be had on other consoles. All of this is excepting their handhelds, which always build incredible software libraries despite, ironically, spotty first party support.

With the Nintendo Wii, this pattern took a new turn. A sharp, dangerously-curvy-on-the-side-of-a-mountain-turn. Not only has third party support all but dried up, Nintendo has irritating elements in place which make their first foray into console online play a frustrating experience. Friend Codes are awful, and Nintendo's continuous, slave-like devotion to their reputation as the "family friendly" console company creates a kind of ultra-safe, ultra-anonymous online experience that defeats the entire purpose of playing online. Sure, you don't get the opposite side of the spectrum (namely, the griefing and casual racism/sexism of Xbox Live) but is it worth it?? There's a happy medium somewhere. Why does every single game need its own Friend Code?? Why can't my console's Wii Code be my Friend Code for everything??

But I digress. What really gets my dander up is their complete failure to make the Virtual Console into what it could have been. Don't get me wrong. I know I can't expect every company to release every old game--especially SquareEnix, who would be more content to remake or repackage their big name releases--but I am totally mystified as to the process Nintendo goes through in deciding what will come out next. Their typically draconian relationship with the press and gaming community at large means that what gets released every Monday is a mystery to everyone. Insofar as part of the purpose of, I dunno, letting the press and others know ahead of time about game releases plays into the symbiotic relationship of publisher and press (we let you know about a game before its release, you help 'advertise' it), why does Nintendo feel it's in their best interest to withhold release schedules?? I honestly have no idea how they decide what is released when, because sometimes they seem to get the idea ("maybe we should release Metroid and Super Metroid around the time Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is coming out for Wii??") but then other times waste the opportunity (maybe there are licensing issues to work out, but the original Smash Brothers for N64 should have been a no-brainer to release near Smash Brothers Brawl). My impression is that a blindfolded employee is led to room where he or she must first try to dodge three baseballs (for every baseball they don't get hit with, a title is released) and then stumble to a wall where every potential Virtual Console title is written on yellow sticky notes. Whichever one (or two, or three) they touch first (and second, and maybe third) is then released.

I won't bother to go back and pick on the awful, awful titles they've released. What I will do is suggest you go look up the list of "comfirmed but not yet released" titles for Virtual Console on Wikipedia. There are genuine classic titles like Earthbound (a series that Nintendo of America seems to inexplicably hate and wish everyday that the throng of fans would shut up and go away), Phantasy Star IV (a Genesis RPG that's always been expensive to obtain), Shining Force II (my love!!), Mega Man 2 (now that interest has been piqued by the announcement of Mega Man 9, why not release it??), and Super Dodge Ball.

Also on the list are Boogerman and Clayfighter 63 1/3, two games that should never be played by anyone, ever, and should be painfully euthanized and taken off the release list. Sadly, they will probably see release before anything anyone who isn't legally too stupid to operate a motor vehicle would want.

Resident Evil 4

I think this goes for most 'older' gamers, who have things like jobs and friends to take up their time, but I never replay games. Half the time I don't even finish games because I lose interest, or it's been so long since I played whatever that I can't remember what I was doing in the game. So I think it says a lot for the quality and replayability of Resident Evil 4 that I break it out every few months and have another helping.

The old cliché goes that nothing is perfect, but I think we all would call certain games "perfect." There are quibbles you can quibble over when pressed to, but your overwhelming desire is to praise the game and play it again every time someone brings it up. For me, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Fallout 1, and Super Metroid are perfect games, ones that I can replay on a whim and actually finish again because: 1) they're fantastic games 2) they're just the right length 3) they're pretty easy, and I'm a wimp.
Though I will fully admit to liking the Resident Evil games I had played, I always kind of knew they were awkward, clunky, and full of Japanese videogame bullshit that I can't put up with anymore. From the irritating save system to the poisonously bad controls (well, except for RE3, I guess) to the dumb inventory system (a shotgun takes up as much room as an herb??) to the shallow, shallow combat, it's incredible that I liked them at all. Resident Evil 4 does away with all of this, and is all the better for it. Instead of the usual "if you die, you go back to wherever you saved last" the game has various, unofficial 'checkpoints' you'll return to if you die. Sure, it's not quite the fast--and some would argue, cheap--"save anywhere you want as often as you want" system seen on PCs, but it's still better than 90% of Japanese games.

Also better than 90% of any games, Japanese or otherwise: the gameplay. There is something indescribably satisfying about RE4, all the way from the feel of the guns to the little hidden treasures you can find. Not only did they finally get the controls right (I still would like the ability to strafe, but I guess that would make it even easier than it already is), but they made it simply fun to move through the world and fight things. Before Resident Evils were slow and clunky, and now they were quick and smooth. One might even draw a parallel to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead zombies and those fast moving ones from 28 Days Later, but--let me put on my geek hat here--the enemies in RE4 aren't zombies. Not technically. But I digress.
The first word that comes to mind when I think of RE4's combat is "setpiece." But that doesn't mean much without context, so let me explain. When I think of great action movies--say, Raiders of the Lost Ark--I think of the great moments from them, not necessarily in a linear, plot focused way. The truck chase scene from Raiders is awesome. The Velociraptor/kitchen scene from Jurassic Park still makes me nervous when I watch it. And so on. RE4 is the same way. The boss fights are very creative, but they also have appropriate 'epic'-ness about them. Moreover, the various 'battles' you go through still ring true on my 10th playthrough, from the first villager wave you must withstand to the Last Standish fight in the cabin with Luis helping out to fighting through the defenses of the Los Illuminados while some dude in a helicopter is strafing and blowing things up. RE4 is a hell of a ride, as a movie critic would say, and it has setpieces from breakfast to dinnertime.

RE4 may not be a survival horror game, but I would still argue for it as an action horror game. A lot of the "survival" aspects of the previous Resident Evil games were artificial elements put in the game to make it difficult for the wrong reasons. The inventory system was terrible, and having to backtrack to the item boxes to juggle equipment, puzzle solving do-dads, and health items/ammo was just plain irritating and didn't add the "management of scarce resources" element that I think the developers were going for. RE4's solution is to give you an inventory system based on grid pieces--so an herb takes up two grid slots, while a rocket launcher takes up, say, 20. Then there's the absurd-but-clever addition of money and the various shopkeeper dudes you can visit during the course of the game, selling off worthless items, buying/upgrading weapons and equipment, etc. Of course this also gives the game further replayability, because you can't reasonably use every weapon in the game during each playthrough, so it's fun to try out a different shotgun or try out the TMP on this run.
Resident Evil 4 is also scary, at least it can be. Mention the Regenerators around me and my immediate impulse is to run like hell or scream. Oddly, I never found the Resident Evil games that scary. What fright they did provide was always "dog jumps at you out of nowhere!!" crap, which is cheap and easy. What RE4 did, other than adding some of the surreal/creepy-ness of Silent Hill, is to take the relentless Nemesis enemy from RE3 and give most of the enemies in the game his same ability to follow you through doors and keep coming at you. There still are doors that serve as loading screen transitions between areas which they won't go through, but for the most part the enemies will be hot on your heels all the time until you kill them or get far enough away.

I've made a pretty strong case for RE4's great gameplay, I hope, but there are some things that I'll still quibble over. (I think this is the most times I've used the word quibble in one update). Mainly, I guess, it's that the timed event/button press stuff is fun for awhile but quickly gets old. If you're playing the Wii version--and again, you really should be--then you get to do the kind of flopping and waggling that everyone personifies Wii players as looking like idiots for. It does add some interactivity to the cutscenes, but nowadays it frustrates me. I'm thinking of the knife fight/cutscene with Krauser, where you really have to be on time with your button presses or Wiimote shaking lest you die and then have to sit through all the talking over and over again.
There are some other small things I could quibble over (I promise that's the last time I use 'quibble' in this update) but they're mostly nitpicky stuff, like how some weapons are definitely better than others, and how the Mercenaries and other 'extra' modes are really cool but you won't play them much. Rather, the last thing I want to bring up is the cheap, cheap insta-deaths the game throws at you. I think I said this somewhere above: RE4 is a relatively easy game. I've never tried it on Professional difficulty, and I do die a lot even on the regular difficulty, but the kind of deaths I suffer are due to crap like failing the button pressing/timed events or the instant kill moves that some enemies--like the chainsaw dude pictured above--have. Because of the way enemies will drop health items/ammo depending on how badly the player needs them, you're very, very unlikely to run out of ammo or herbs, so practically every death you suffer is because you didn't hit A in time or those big blind guys with the giant Wolverine claws swung around in a fury and decapitated you. On the bright side, these losses of life and limb lead to awesomely gruesome and gruesomely awesome death sequences. I said this about Smash Brothers Brawl, and it applies to RE4, too: any game that can make losing just as fun as winning is pretty damn good in my book.

I've run out of things to say, and I can't think of a clever way to end this review. Basically, you need to play Resident Evil 4 if you haven't already. It's my favorite game of the decade so far, and I'm more than willing to call it A Modern Classic and have this sentence put on the gamebox with my name attributed. I'm waiting, Capcom.

How Impossible Art Thou, Bubble Bobble End Boss??

I was visiting a friend in Cleveland over the weekend, and his roommate ended up downloading Bubble Bobble on the Wii's Virtual Console. We both used to play the game like crazy as younglings, and proceeded to power through most of it without any trouble. Some of the stages are a bitch, but with persistence, we got to the boss. I vaguely remember fighting the boss as a kid, but what I didn't remember is that--like so many other NES games--the end boss is bitch hard.


Though there are better known bitch hard NES bosses, I'm surprised nobody brings up the dude from Bubble Bobble. Here's the set up: you have to get to the top of the stage to get those lightning bottles. They allow you to blow bubbles that, when popped, shoot lightning. The "80" you see at the top is how many hits it takes to bubble the last boss so you can then pop him.

As the boss cuts through the room in his 90 degree patterns, he throws out waves of bottles. GameFAQs informs me that the boss is known as "Super Drunk" which is kind of funny now that I think about it.

Not so funny is the way I can't beat this boss. Keep in mind I'm playing this on an emulator and a keyboard is hardly the ideal way to play the game, but I didn't fair much better with a partner.
You'll see this a lot. After 20 minutes of trying, the lowest I got him down to was 64.
The reason this boss is impossibly hard is a combination of the mechanics of the game and the unfairness of the fight. Quite often you'll find yourself cornered by the boss and wave of bottles, and the bubble blowing and popping is shaky at best best. You never feel like you have enough time or control to set up your attack as you'd like, so it's left up to luck how well you come out each attempt. Other than this boss, the game is about bubbling enemies, popping them, and trying not to get killed. There are also various items you can get to help you, and that experience is a lot of fun. The game's mechanics weren't really designed for a boss fight like this--at least, they don't feel like they were--so that might be a lot of it. Of course the fact it takes 80 hits to kill him--and then you can still screw it up if you don't get to him to pop his ballooned self in time--is just the cherry on top.

As children, we had all the time and bloody mindedness necessary to conquer challenges like this. However, nowadays I have neither time nor bloody mindedness for unfair, rigged crap like this. For its time, Super Drunk was par for the course, but seen through modern eyes he is an antiquated game design element that is both difficult and difficult for bad reasons.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Trying to come up with a good way to begin my review, my head is a jumble of ideas, features, and concepts that swirl around each other in a chaotic mess. But, somehow, that's the perfect introduction to this game: Super Smash Brothers Brawl is chaos, and that's a very good thing.

When I was a kid, I used to get out all of my action figures and have a huge battle royale. Sure, they didn't all have the same scale so some of them were huge in comparison, and more often than not in my excitement I'd break something or put dents in the walls of my room...but I'd be lying if I didn't say that those were always the most fun times I had with those toys, because something about the mash ups and juxtapositions it allowed for was ridiculous and compelling. Thus, the main reason why I think Smash Brothers fascinated me before in the first two games and continues to fascinate me and everyone else with this new installment: it's just fun to see totally unrelated characters fight each other.

The best way I can think of to describe the Smash Brothers series is the following formula: one part party game, two parts fighting game, one part platformer, and three parts nostalgia. Let's take these parts one at a time.

Ever since the original on the N64, Smash Brothers has been one of those de facto party games that people get together to play. It's simple and easy to play, and while skilled players will normally dominate, there's enough chaos and randomness to allow even newcomers to win. Or lose miserably, which is just as fun. It is exceedingly rare that a game can make losing fun, but Smash Brothers does it. Perhaps that's because Brawl, more than ever, makes death a constant. So many things are happening on screen, so many attacks and items are being thrown around, that you're bound to miss something and eventually die. But I almost always find myself laughing and having a great time when, say, a stray Bob-bomb nails me or someone else gets to the Final Smash (a floating item that, when hit enough times, grants the player an overpowered super attack) and destroys everyone on screen. In any other game these kind of things would frustrate and have you shouting "CHEAP!!" alongside obscenities, but as long as you aren't playing to win, you'll always have a great time.

The fighting game aspect of Super Smash Brothers Brawl comes in the fact that it's the game's basic genre. The goal of the game is to knock the other players off the stage rather than simply wearing down a fighting game standard life bar. However, the higher each player's damage percentage becomes, the easier they are to knock away. At the same time, Smash Brothers has always been a pick up and play kind of fighting game because it uses far fewer buttons and attacks than the typical fighting game. The A button is responsible for your basic attacks--kicks, punches--while the B button does all the special moves, of which each character has four. These special moves are unique to each character: Mario has his fireballs, Link has his bombs, Pikachu has lighting attacks, etc. While there are hardcore Smash players out there who will master Brawl, the game is still decidedly aimed at the casual gamer who won't want to--or even need to--master the crazy, advanced moves that people discovered in Smash Brothers Melee on Gamecube.

More than the previous two games, Super Smash Brothers Brawl has inspired stage design just like a platformer. Whereas most of the stages from the others were relatively static, almost all of the new ones from Brawl change as time ticks on and do all kinds of creative things, from the WarioWare stage that interrupts the action every so often to make the players do WarioWare minigames to the way the Frigate Orpheon stage flips upside down, disorienting everyone for a few seconds. Moreover, the new single player mode--Subspace Emissary--is even closer to a platformer, similar to Melee's Adventure mode but much more fleshed out and varied. Though it's no Super Mario Galaxy, Brawl's level designs are one of the many things that make the game as amazing as it is.

Finally, and this part is critical, the nostalgia factor. If you've been a Nintendo fan for any length of time, this game is essentially aimed directly at you. Even setting aside the characters new and old, Brawl has the series standard huge number of Trophies to collect (essentially just collectible 3D models with accompanying text) that are items or characters from seemingly every Nintendo game from the past 25 years; Stickers, which are similar collectibles but ones that can be used in the Subspace Emissary to power up your characters; and Music CDs, which allow you to listen to tracks from a variety of Nintendo games. The fact that they included Pit from the NES game Kid Icarus as a playable character--a character, it's important to note, who hasn't appeared in anything since--speaks volumes for how dedicated this game is to pleasing Nintendo fans from the absolute hardcore to the most casual.

There is so much more I need to talk about--the Stage Builder, the minigames, the Events mode, the Challenges wall, not to mention more about Subspace Emissary and the characters/stages themselves--but I need to get to perhaps the greatest addition to this series: online play. Using the Wii's WiFi Internet capabilities, players can battle each other online. Using game specific Friend Codes, you can play with friends online in a handful of the games modes (one hopes that someday we'll be able to play the singeplayer-only modes like Subspace Emissary and All-Star with friends online) as well as use primitive chat via the game's Taunts. Then there's the Play Anyone option, which finds random players online to fight, though you can't use any of the Taunt Chat and are limited to the basic fighting mode--or you can be a Spectator and bet coins on other people's matches. So far my experience with Online has been hit or miss, both with Friends and Play Anyone. Matches ranged from no latency whatsoever to a one-to-three second delay, which completely ruins a fast paced game like this. As for Play Anyone, sometimes you will find three other willing opponents in less than a minute, and other times you will find no one after three minutes of waiting (or simply get disconnected from the servers). In short, when it works it's great; when it doesn't, well, there's enough other things to go on your own.

From a purely "is this game fun or not, and is it a good value??" point of view, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is the best title currently available for the Wii. I could put on my critic's cap and really dig into the minutiae, how some characters seem overpowered or some of the game's single player content is frustrating and cheap on higher difficulty levels, but this is the sort of game that resists criticism.

It seems as though this entire review ended up being a big jumble of ideas, concepts, and features after all, but as I said at the beginning, maybe that's the point. You don't need to sit around and think about the game like you would a BioShock or Silent Hill, where even though it may not have always been fun, it was a compelling experience. You don't need a critic to help you make sense of it. All you need to do with Super Smash Brothers Brawl is just put it on, hit start, and have fun.

Super Mario Galaxy

I can't swim. I took lessons as a kid, but I never stuck with it beyond the beginner session because going to the deep end scared me. Yet, paradoxically, I love water--maybe it's because I'm an Aquarius, maybe not--and when my family went on vacations and I was a kid, I couldn't get enough of hotel pools or the ocean. There is something beautiful and uncanny about swimming in a pool and turning upside down, feeling weightless and confused because now what used to be below you feels like the roof--and when you look "down" it now looks like up. You see the water surface above you, and above that, the "true" roof, and your sense of disorientation is both delicious and mind blowing.

Stay with me.

My Mom taught me a neat trick during a bored summer afternoon when I was younger. What you do is you take a small hand mirror, hold it just under your nose, and go outside. Let's say you have a deck or a set of stairs outside you can use. So, with the mirror under your nose, look down into it and you see the sky. Jump or step off the deck/stairs. For some reason your brain thinks that you are going to fall into the sky and you feel frightened and free of gravity at the same time. This also works indoors, where you keep stepping over doorways and ceiling fans when you don't need to.

I bring both of these childhood memories up because they're exactly the kind of things that Super Mario Galaxy gets right. You're never sure exactly which way is up or down, or even if there is one. It is often completely subjective depending on which "ground" you are standing on. While Mario 64 may have brought the series into 3D, I feel like Super Mario Galaxy is the first "true" 3D platformer because there is a real sense of depth instead of simply moving up/down or left/right.



The first time you end up on a planetoid and you can run around the full sphere of it, wrapping around it over and over, doing Mario's jumps, spinning the Wii remote to attack enemies, using the remote to collect star bits to shoot at enemies, too...well, this feeling of "wow, this is so much fun!!" never goes away. Even the levels that force you to use the Wii remote's motion sensing to control Mario completely, such as the manta ray surfing level or the Super Monkey Ball-esque one, though frustrating at first, quickly become second nature. It is an immersive game, by which I mean you never have to look down at the controller and figure out what you're supposed to press to do what, it comes completely intuitively.

The other big thing that Mario Galaxy gets right is variety. I am tempted to call it a mini-game collection fused with Mario 64's core gameplay, but that's misleading. Simply put, every stage you play on is completely unique and you will always be doing new, interesting things you never thought you would be doing. Galaxy constantly surprises and pleases you, even with the stages which are difficult and frustrating--and there are some. However, this ties back into the genius of the game's variety: you don't have to play every level or collect every star to complete the game. If you get stuck on something, you can either skip it completely or come back to it later with a fresh mind.



Let me close this review with why precisely I bought the game. I wasn't completely sold on yet another Mario game until I was in Best Buy two weeks ago. I had heard so many great things about Galaxy, but it was only once I played it at Best Buy that I knew I had to have it. I ran around the main hub world part of the game, watching little star people gurgle and coo at me, soothed by the delightful music, and played half of one level, dying by falling off the stage and getting sucked into a black hole. I put the controllers down, walked over to the Wii games, and immediately went up to the checkout. If you have a Wii and you don't have this game, there's something wrong with you.