Blast off...to adventure!

Guess what? Not all Games You Should Have Played are older, classic games. Sometimes new games come out that demand to be played. Bioshock is one example.  But today I’m talking about Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii.

Simple question here: Do you actually enjoy playing games? Do you? For real? Then you should be playing Mario Galaxy right now. Do you hate platforming games? Oh, that may be why. Okay, if you dislike platforming games, sure, skip it, because why would you want to play the game that reset the platforming bar yet again?

The Rule of Three

The biggest Mario Game to date.

Mario does three things in all of the games in the official series. First, he saves the Princess. For Mario Galaxy, Bowser has once more kidnapped Peach, this time during a festival the Mushroom Kingdom has to celebrate a comet that passes by every hundred years.

As Mario you’ll pursue Bowser, only to get blasted into space and land on the comet, discovering that it’s actually a spaceship powered from stars and run by Roselina who is, in short, the mother of the universe since she raises Lumas (little star babies), into adulthood where they become planets, suns, and galaxies. Just that alone makes for a good story and a good premise.

Secondly, Mario will jump and jump it what you shall be doing all the time in Galaxy. The whole platforming angle is shifted from the usual affair to something slightly different since you aren’t just limited to jumping up and down. Each planetoid you land on has its own field of gravity, so you’ll have to get used to running upside-down, sideways, and all which-ways.

It can be confusing, but it makes for a fun twist on what you’ve come to expect.

Finally, Mario sets the standard for good adventure games yet again. Every few years he seems to decide what good games should be and everyone else is forced to take notice. You will have plenty to do in Galaxy as there are once more 120 stars to gather in the various levels, with the difficulty varying between laughably easy to knuckle whitening difficult. That’s the sign of a game that has something for everyone. One minute you’re a bee buzzing around from platform to platform, the next you’re running over an image of a pixilated 8-bit Mario with the threat of falling into instant death. Oh, and you can run on water as Ice Mario, too. Crazy fun.

Just Tons to Do Before You’re Done

What the heck is that and why does it want me dead?

Overall I spent a good week (and I honestly mean a GOOD week), playing for hours a night until I finally finished the game at 100% completion. And then I played it all over again. That’s how great the game is. It’s worth playing back-to-back all the way through. It’s getting rarer for games to be capable of providing that amount of fun for that long of a time.

Simply, if you have a Wii, you should have this game. I’ll get into the 5 Wii games you should own another time, but rest assured, Super Mario Galaxy is on that list. You’ll enjoy yourself.