This will be split up into multiple entries, as it’s overall lengthy. And the latter half of it covers spoilers, so, just a fair warning.
Anyway, I've had the game for a little more than a week from Gamefly (since Tuesday last week). I’ve played it every chance I had, while still taking a break in between, but they only lasted a few minutes at times, because I was so excited to go back and play more. I loved the first Galaxy a whole lot, and this game...it is just so superior in everything. It's got a greater challenge, level design is just as nuts and a whole bunch of other factors that make this game AMAZING.
Bridging The Gap Between 2D And 3D
First thing I wanna mention is the opening level. Because of the ending from the first game, Galaxy 2 repeats that plot, only cutting down on more story than there was before. In fact, the way they presented it was almost like they did it just as a joke or something. I found it humorous hearing a more stripped down version of Galaxy 1's opening, especially when the first bit of text has a hint of self awareness to it. Oh, and Peach has baked a Cake for Mario. Are you surprised?
3D games can often confuse new people because there is almost a lack of direction. After all, in 2D you can go left, right, up, or down, pretty simple to understand. In 3D, you have 360 degrees of freedom, and without a path to show you where to go, you can get lost. The 2D segments connecting to the road in the castle courtyard helps adjust new players to the change in control, and which path to stay on.
Ever since the 1st Galaxy, it was made pretty obvious that the 3D games moved toward linear levels, versus the open world levels of 64 and Sunshine. So that obviously defines the path that players need to take. Galaxy 2 still retains that, along with adding the genre bridge level (that's what I'm calling the opening) at the start to get people more accustomed to how it plays. You only saw the first 2D segment in the Galaxy 1 a little ways in after you started. This time, you see it right at the beginning.
Streamlining The Journey Through Space
We all know how the hub in the last game wasn’t so hot. Compared to in Super Mario Sunshine, there wasn’t a whole lot to do in it besides go to domes that would allow access to different levels. Pretty tiring when you look at it.
First, it makes it smaller than the last game’s hub, so talking to NPCs and getting back to the main platform are a bit faster than it would be on a much larger hub. Sure, at the start, the ship isn’t very populated, only consisting of you, Lubba, and a few lumas. But as you get more stars, you’ll see different characters from levels you’ve gone through come to your ship, like the star bunnies, the Toad Brigade, as well as new and old creatures, plus Yoshi and Luigi.
Second, the ship is a planetoid, so it has its own gravity. One of the fun things about Galaxy was launching yourself along small planetoids to see how far gravity would take you. Starship Mario is in the shape of Mario’s head, and heads are mostly round, so you get to have some fun flying around it, as well as other things to do in your spare time between levels. It’s not really a hub anymore. It’s a sandbox. It’s a small, round sandbox that lets you play with Mario’s moves as well as other things. There's no actual objective to it. Get a 1-up or star bits before you get that next star, but other than that, if you want to kill time for a couple minutes, paying a visit to Starship Mario isn’t too bad.
Yoshi, and How it Does Not Anger Ryan Davis
We all know about Ryan’s distaste for the green dinosaur with a frog’s tongue Yoshi. Most of it comes down to Yoshi as a character and his personality. Plus, when you look at character artwork of Yoshi over the years, his current design was based on the ones from Yoshi Story, which were all babies that had just hatched from their eggs, where as in his debut Super Mario World, Yoshi, was more tall and slender. Not to mention that “cutesy” voice of his, which again, originated from Yoshi’s Story.
Still, this isn’t the first time Yoshi has been in a 3D Mario game. He appeared in Super Mario Sunshine, had had quite a few differences than the Yoshi in Galaxy 2. You could only hatch him by bringing foot, he sprayed juice much like FLUDD did, and when you ran out, Yoshi died, so you had to keep eating fruit. Oh, and you couldn’t go into the water with Yoshi without killing him. But the biggest shame of all is that Yoshi was just…tucked away. He’s definitely a major player in the Mario universe, and when you don’t see him until quite a ways into the game, without much explanation, you don’t really see it as important. That’s probably a big reason why Nintendo stressed the fact that Yoshi would be in Galaxy 2 when they first announced it. He’s given the same treatment as his debut in Super Mario World, an important character whose role does not interfere with the main star.
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Part 2
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