So I finished it last night. I was disappointed that it was so short and so easy and then I realised that I'd had to get 60 stars to get there, plus five boss stars, probably over the course of 10+ hours, and I'd just enjoyed it so much I hadn't realised how I'd played it. There's another 60 stars to get before some of the other bonuses come through.
Criticisms:
- What's the point of having extra lives if they reset to 4 every time you load your game? And then Toad gives you 5 extra lives anyway - after a hard-to-skip dialogue.
- The galaxy mechanic often involves a lot of sudden death falls. Being in 3D makes it harder to avoid them.
- The camera occasionally get totally screwed, eg. trapped behind a wall and unable to manoeuvre out of it. Likewise, the "you may not control the camera here" areas seem annoying and unnecessary, often in place to force you to explore something without being able to see it properly.
- If we only have a 3-section life meter, we're going to be at 1 unit occasionally. The fact that we just got hurt twice is a big clue, as is the red life meter. We don't need incessant beeping to let us know we're on our last unit.
- It is basically an easy game. That's pretty much necessary these days, perhaps more so on the Wii. People can't accept the brutal difficulty of the 8-bit generation where you had to make it hard to make a 4-level game last more than a day, modern 60-level games need not rely on that. It's still a little sad that I could beat the final boss on my first try.
Particular praise:
- The graphics are really great. The fur, glowing/translucency and water effects are all outstanding, without any slowdown. The art design is also extraordinarily good.
- The occasional minigame-esque bonus stages (bubble blowing, ray surfing, ball rolling, etc) are done very well.
- Bee Mario is really endearing.
- The music is certainly on a grand scale, the boss music sounds like something from Lord of the Rings. Audio is generally excellent.
- It probably has more "wow" moments than any other game I've played.
