Twelve... Ten... Nine... Four...

So, it's 2008... looking around, I gotta say the first couple hours haven't been particular better than last year. Galaxy rocks of course, but it rocked yesterday too, so I don't think we can pin that one on the new year.

Finally, galaxy has produced a truly beastly star, complete with an ice mario and ingenius use of enemies, wall kicks, all with an element of speed. A little frustrating, especially for the first guy (j_vert) but I think it's one of the best yet. On a completely different note, when d-pad targeting, the star bits hurtling towards you are pretty crazy. Not for those with heart conditions, or war veterans with post-traumatic stress.

I must say, the scattered nature of these galaxies is not in keeping with traditional mario, and I don't thinks it's an improvement. Although I love bowser worlds, a game of all bowser worlds just wouldn't work (this isn't nearly as good as that, but it's analogous to the highly sectionalized planets and puzzles). Bowser worlds are the desserts (specifically gumdrops) of the standard world meal (pizza of course). You can't just eat gumdrops... well you can, but it's much better to eat a crapload of pizza first. Some of the galaxies (honeyhive and the penguin beach one so far) are mostly just one planet, but even with that, typically one of the stars is at least half on a different mini-planet, so no single planet has more then 2 stars, and is therefore reletively simplistic and small. No need to really pack stars into small areas, or reuse sections of puzzles without changing them. I've always liked how Bo-omb Battlefield had you run past a chain chomp for 5 stars without making a big deal out of it, and then brought it back for the last star. It wasn't a new addition to the area, it had always been there, it just gained new importance. The galaxies do condense stars somewhat, but only really with comets, which reuse previous stars, with what is quite honestly not a huge change, not enough to really justify a whole new star.

Really, I just miss the large scale worlds of mario 64 filled with stars that you didn't have to get in any particular order. They were all there, the order was there just to give you hints on how to reach a star. Sunshine had even bigger worlds, with even more stars. The areas tended to be larger per star, with more specialized puzzles, but it worked out well because most of each level was still reused, with minor changes at most. Galaxy, so far, has been far too highly specialized for each puzzle. It's still good, but the style is a step backwords from its predecessors.

Now I'm feeling mean, so I will throw this out there: Galaxy has done very well with gravity and 3D mini-planets, and I'm loving the occasional step back into sidescrolling (especially the uses of gravity there).

That being said, I've lost basically all organizational skills, and I'm pretty sure my point rambles quite a bit more then it ought to back there, so I'll wrap this up for now. If anyone wants it, I'll very happily do another longer rant with more specifics (plus more galaxy will let me judge it's content better, we've seen less then a third so far).