I actually beat Mario Galaxy the weekend before Thanksgiving – Rock Band was coming, after all, and touring the world while Princess Peach remained in Bowser’s clutches just didn’t feel right. The level of pure, unadulterated joy I gushed about before lasted right up to the end and beyond, with the final showdown against Bowser at the center of the Universe proving to be one of the most epic encounters in any Mario platformer to date. Carrying the fight from one planet to another, tumbling ever closer to the fiery heart of the cosmos, no other meeting between the arch enemies has carried the same weight to it, the same feeling that this really is a fight to the finish.

Tremendous as the battle is, though, there are moments elsewhere in Galaxy that trump it for sheer spectacle and thrill. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether this is a mark for or against the game as whole – personally, I like the final boss fight just fine. Even if it isn’t as exceptional as the fight in an underwater galaxy against a gigantic shark skeleton or your first meeting with the towering Bouldergeist, it’s a great battle to close things out on. Sometimes it’s not worth reinventing the wheel if it means leaving the player with a bad taste in their mouth, and Galaxy’s end certainly doesn’t disappoint.

I say “end”, but that’s not entirely true. Sticking with the wonderfully elegant design approach that worked so well in Mario 64, Galaxy only requires you to find a portion of its hundred-plus lost stars to experience the end of the game with the rest left to be collected if and when you feel like it. It’s a fantastic idea, allowing players of all skill levels to determine the difficulty and depth of their experience with the game. Can’t manage to get a particular star? Skip it and move on to the next one, coming back when you’re a little better at the game for another try. Get them all, get just enough, or somewhere in between – Nintendo understands you’re just here to have fun, and is smart enough to give you the opportunity to decide how you have it.

I didn’t spend as much of the long turkey weekend with Mario Galaxy as I’d have liked to, between marathon sessions with Rock Band and revisiting friends at the bottom of the sea in Bioshock. Part of that is down to me having the attention span of a teenage girl raccoon when it comes to having new things to play in the house, but a good bit of my hesitancy to plow through all of Galaxy remaining content is that I don’t want it to run out. As much as it pains me to know we’ll probably wait another five years for a game as smart and breathtaking as Bioshock, it could well be another ten before a game as unique and exhilarating, as simply fun to play as Mario Galaxy comes along, if history is any indicator. With that in mind, and with the bar set as high as Nintendo have put it with this latest adventure of their plumber mascot, I think I can be forgiven for wanting the experience to last a little longer.

Filed under: talk about games