| S.Peelman said: Definitely not nostalgia. (Ugh) |
Mario galaxy love is pure nostalgia : The game has so many flaws it boggles my mind how this is considered one of the games ever.
I am shocked at how frequently poorly this game plays. I submit it is the most frustrating and fun-sucking mainline Mario game after SM64DS.
Far too often, Mario does not do what I want him to do. I am fighting the game, the controls, the camera. It feels variably like wading through thick sludge, or trying to catch a soap bubble in the wind. For all the excellence in presentation and creative design, the core gameplay is bad for any game, but shocking bad for a Super Mario.
Specifics:
the camera control from previous 3D Marios was (almost entirely) taken away. This, in combination with wildly shifting orientations means you are at the mercy of trying to navigate a shifting 3D space with a 2D control option and it doesn't work as often as it needs to.
The level design of scattered planetoids and poor camera control means you are typically disoriented as to where you are in the big picture, and despite it being the 'most 3D' Mario, it plays like a series of linear discontinuous sections, with little to unite them or utilize the grand scope of being in a fully 3D singular space
Mario can't jump! His basic leap isn't high enough for almost any traversal. He feels weak, neutered. Going up a flight of 3 steps, he can't jump to the top of them, and they're not spaced far enough apart to chain together 2 jumps. You just crash in the 2nd or 3rd step, halt momentum, and then have to jump up the remainder with zero horizontal speed. It's terrible.
The inertia sucks. It takes far too long to get moving at any functional speed. And yet Mario is animated like's hurrying.
The run/traversal speed is slow. Lasagna legs
Is long jumping broken? I cannot get the timing down and end up backflipping, or skidding to a normal leap more than half the time I try to long jump - which I'm doing to speed movement cuz Mario is slow AF. I didn't have this issue in SM64 or Sunshine. UPDATE: I did figure this out much better by the end of the game (the game did not teach the move well and only requires a long jump ~once thru all the stars), but it's still less easy to quickly and reliably activate than other 3D Mario games
Scripted changing camera angles results in misaligned jumps as the camera shifts mid leap, and clipping corners and rubbing against walls as your joystick orientation suddenly applies to a different direction
Getting stuck on small objects is such a pain. There's no gliding off non-obstacle objects or surfaces or rubbing past them. All momentum ground to a halt because of a tiny stone or pole in an otherwise open field.
Mario gets sent too far from taking the slightest damage, knocking him back and off multiple platforms and undoing significant platforming progress. Unnecessarily punishing on top of the health loss
Jumping out of water, which many games struggle with, is bonkers bad here. You'll tread mush and find yourself diving under what you're trying to climb onto or spinning in circles.
Skating when you want to be still, unable to stay in place, forced to do loops and crash into things or fly off platforms.
Air control in this game is like fanning a pamphlet at a rock. Once you commit to a jump, trying to readjust mostly just slows speed and makes a bad problem worse.
There's mid-air falling and recovery animations for walking off even the smallest ledge. Try running down the green steps from Rosalina to Captain Toad. Completely kills speed and pacing. Atrocious
Edge climbing up is far too slow. This is MARIO not some cinematic adventure title where I need to feel his effort. Let me MOVE.
Spring suit controls like piss, with the inability to stick a place on the ground and stay there (whilst bouncing). Trying to get the star in the air after the spring/mole boss was more difficult than the boss itself.
Spring, bee suit, swimming are unable to 180 and instead force these little loops that just ruin any precision.
exceptions:
Flying Mario and shell-swimming seems to work just fine, both in large part due to the brake button and the laser sights that show where you're oriented.
2D plane locked sections are more successful, tho still share several of the problems above.
Last edited by zeldaring - on 03 July 2024
