Playtest: Super Mario Galaxy

The only place that can hold a Mario adventure this big is space.

In Super Mario Galaxy for Wii, Nintendo's iconic plumber hops from planet to planet in search of 120 Stars spread throughout the cosmos. The first thing you'll notice about the game is the incredible depth of field it brings to your television screen. If you didn't know any better, you would have thought the game was designed for high definition TVs. Seeing stars, comets and other planets off in the distance gives the game an amazing feeling of openness. The bright and vibrant colours of the Mario universe are truly something to behold in this one.

You'll use four basic controller functions to help Mario move from planet to planet. Like always, the A Button is jump. You'll use the Control Stick on the Nunchuk to move Mario. Shaking the Wii Remote makes Mario do a spin move and can help him perform a double-jump of sorts when his regular jump comes up just short. Finally, you can point the Wii Remote at special stars that will guide Mario toward other planets. There's an elasticity involved with beaming Mario from star to star. He doesn't just cling to the star like it was a magnet and he was a paper clip. Sometimes you'll need to direct Mario from star to star so that he'll avoid rocks in an asteroid field. The Wii Remote pointer also comes in handy when you want to pelt enemies with a few crystals you have lying around in your inventory. Once again, these moves simply serve as a primer for Mario's mighty arsenal of actions.

The pointer function is also the key to the amazing friendship play. Simply put, friendship play is a multiplayer mode that lets a second player help Mario by putting the freeze on things in his environment. The second player can point at an enemy and press a button to hold that enemy in its place. Also, the second player can throw crystals at enemies to knock them down so that Mario can simply walk up to them and kick them off the planet.

Here's a gameplay twist for you: The second player can also manipulate Mario by pointing at him and holding him like they would an enemy. Did the first player make Mario jump just a little too soon to the moving platform? No worries. The second player can hold Mario in place until that moving platform comes back underneath Mario's feet. On a basic level, friendship play would make the game easier to play, but you can see the value of teamwork when it comes to those really hard-to-reach Stars.

Each planet is unique, from its gravitational pull to the enemies that stand in Mario's way and more. No matter what planet you're on, though, your view of that planet stays pretty consistent. As Mario runs up or down to the planet's other hemisphere, the camera angle quickly changes, almost snapping into place. Because most landscapes in the videogame world are rectangular in nature, the more rounded setting of Super Mario Galaxy makes for a nice departure from the norm.

One of the galaxies in the game is the Honey Bee Galaxy. This colourful, flower-filled place is a world of harmony and honey, a sweet place for Mario to find star pieces. What puts this galaxy over-the-top on the coolness scale? A bee suit. When Mario dons the bee suit, he can fly around for a period of time and also stick to honeycombs. Bee Mario can walk on the petals of flowers normally he'd fall through them. But as soon as Bee Mario touches water, he loses the bee outfit, leaving him as plain-old Super Mario. The bee suit is incredibly cute and a good preview to how much charm is waiting for players in this game.

Super Mario Galaxy is shaping up to be a trip unlike any other. Not only does the game look great which shouldn't surprise anyone, the play mechanics represent another evolution of the Mario franchise.

Super Mario Galaxy is coming soon, only for Wii.