Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

Here's an embarrassing admission for someone who loves games so much: I'm not a Mario guy.

I was a full-on computer gamer in the Mario era, from the Apple IIC to the Apple IIGS to the big prize: the Amiga 500. It was an entirely different track, and all my friends who gamed were on that track.

I saw Mario and it looked primitive. I even played a few levels, but it never grabbed me.

Starting with the SNES, I played every Mario game, at least for a few hours. Still, compared to the computer games I was playing at the time, Mario games never seemed to be as interesting.

I just didn't get it.

Last week, we finished Super Mario Galaxy. I played with Eli 6.7 the entire time, and now he's playing the game again, on his own (with occasional help from me as a wingman).

It's not an exaggeration to say that this is the most creative game I've ever played. It bends reality--and gravity--in so many wonderful ways that I burst out laughing on many of the levels. Yes, it's a childlike world, and children can play, but there's this unmistakeable sense of anarchy running through the level design, a bit of twisted genius involved, and I mean that in the best possible way.

The graphics are bright and stunningly beautiful. The controls are flawless. The animation is outstanding. The sound is fantastic.

Most importantly, the gameplay mechanics are wonderful. Just wonderful. Mario runs, he jumps, he swims, he surfs (on the back of a manta ray), he skates, he flies--he does so many things that I can't even remember them all.

Oh, and he turns into a bee. Seriously.

This game appeals very much to the big part of me that is still eight. In many ways, though, it appeals even more to me as a grown-up, as a quite beautiful demonstration of unparalleled creativity. It's a work of art that I see all around me as I move through its world.

When Eli first started watching television, I was fascinated by how he did it. He'd watch a show once, then, if he liked it, he'd watch it over and over again over the next few days.

This puzzled me. It seemed boring. Why would he watch the same show over and over again?

It took me a while to realize the answer: he wasn't. The first time he watched a show, he grasped very little of what was going on--just enough to know that he was having fun. Each successive viewing filled in more of the blanks, like laying down tracks on a recording. It was only after half a dozen viewings or more that everything was filled in and he truly understood what he was watching.

Remarkably, that's how Super Mario Galaxy works. The first time we played through, we discovered all kinds of awesome things, but I've noticed as Eli plays through a second time, he's discovering even more surprised. There are so many different techniques that can be used to get through a level, so many surprises, that the game gives you its meaning one track at a time.

This is not a game, by the way, where the Wiimore controls were just tacked on. The Wiimote is an integral part of the game, and playing with a regular controller wouldn't have been nearly as satisfying.

One last note: the co-op mode is one of the best I've ever seen. Interestingly, though, it doesn't seem like it at first. The second player doesn't control a character. Instead, he collects "star bits," which just require the player to point the Wiimote at them. The second player can also make Mario jump, or jump higher. Most importantly, the second player can freeze many enemies by pointing at them with the Wiimote and pressing a button.

That sounds boring when I write it, and for the first half of the game, it actually was pretty boring. The more we played, though, the more we realized that the second player really acted as a kind of shepherd to help the first player through the level--freezing enemies and moving obstacles, collecting star bits to procure extra lives, even blowing up enemy attacks that involved projectiles.

That made all the difference, really. Once we realized that the second player wasn't an assistant--he was, in effect, the guide--we both got very involved in playing as the second player, and it became two players playing together as a team, not two people playing as single players next to each other.

Eli discovered one other important aspect of playing as the second player, and that relates to exploration. Since the second player can't die, it leaves them free to look around and think about what's happening on the level, and there were many times when he saw something important that I had totally missed.

In the final battle, we were beaten several times, and Eli wanted to give up and go look up the strategy on the Internet. "No," I said.

"No? Why?" he said. "We've done it before." We did do it at three other points, because I didn't want him to get too frustrated.

"Because this is the last boss battle, and it's going to mean more to us if we do it ourselves," I said.

"But I don't know how!" he said.

"I know," I said. "Think."

I was playing as Mario (I usually played the most difficult sections), and we were getting our tail kicked. We couldn't figure out how to start the sequence of damaging the boss, which required something specific to happen.

"I got nothing," Eli said.

"Keep thinking," I said. "I know we're missing something."

A few seconds later, he discovered what we needed to do. Not me. And when we defeated the boss, we were high-fiving and shouting and laughing.

Now, I understand.

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