Super Mario Galaxy : Not the Greatest

I've heard quite a few raves about Super Mario Galaxy, and one I bought the game all my friends were excited to see me play it. However, about thirty minutes into the game I realized that I had a few issues with this platformer.



I was originally happy to have another incarnation of Mario 64, a childhood favorite. A few of the problems I had:

1. Storyline
Though I should say "storyline". I know the Mario platformers have never been strong in the story department, but this seems completely contrived. I feel they started with a physics engine and decided, "Hey, let's do this in space." So Bowser captures Princess Peach and takes her into space. You need to chase Bowser's minions across planetoids, asteroids and galaxies. Collect stars, move on, same Mario 64 concepts included there.

2. Races
You lose a race, you lose a live. Even though the life paradigm for home console games has evolved to a pointless concept, because you can always keep playing, I have a big problem with being penalized for not actually dying.

3. Controls
Because of the camera angles and the ever changing perspective of Mario on various spheres, Mario moves in directions which are unintuitive to what I want to move. This mental hurdle can eventually be overcame, but the conceptual curve varies (hopefully lower for you than me).

4. Black Holes
I do applaud them for their physics engines, though some surfaces provide gravity and grab Mario back and some of them don't and he falls into oblivion.

I think the game is decent over all, but there's nothing fantastic about it and I think there's plenty of great games out there, but for the Wii's limited collection of great titles, this is definitely one of the better ones.