Super Mario Galaxy 2

When I watched E3 2009, I tuned in for Nintendo's press conference. At the time, it was pretty exciting – amidst all of the PR talk of increased sales and increased audience, they were tossing out some serious fan service to longtime followers of the Big N. Strangely, of all the "big" games they announced, I was least excited for Super Mario Galaxy 2. Metroid: Other M looked totally new and flashy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii offered what was beforehand just a dream in that it had four-person multiplayer, Golden Sun DS was a sequel to a game I never thought would have a sequel. And despite the fact that the original Galaxy was one of my favourite games of all time, this game seemed to be just a bit of a retread – an anomaly in the Nintendo pantheon.

Colour me shocked, then, when my copy of the game arrived, and it turned out to be one of the best games that Nintendo has ever made, on any platform.

On the surface, this game and its predecessor are very similar. They both utilize the same graphics engine, have the same sound effects, and share some of the same powerups. Why this game is the superior one is because, somehow, because of Nintendo's desire to absolutely perfect the platforming genre rather than to spin it into crazy new directions, the game ends up being one of the most singularly awesome games I've ever had the privilege to play.

In essence, the two things that the Mario series have always been about are: inventive and elegantly designed levels; and, on a more ephemeral level, the simple joy of movement. SMG2 blends these two things together into a veritable symphony of gaming genius. Even less so than in Super Mario Galaxy, there's only a very bare-bones plot in the game. That's not a criticism, mind you – in fact, I don' t think Nintendo gets enough credit for having witty and well-written dialog, which Super Mario Galaxy 2 has in spades. My favourite new character is Lubba, a portly purple Luma who loves to make puns and is your right-hand man(?) on Mario's spaceship (or as Lubba calls it, "the faceship", as it's shaped like Mario's face).

The faceship is revelatory, as it blends together two great ideas from Mario's past (it's like a Reese's cup in that way). It's both a safe-haven playground a la Peach's castle in Super Mario 64 or the comet observatory in Super Mario Galaxy, while also being a method for moving about the streamlined world map. This allows the developers to show the player exactly how to do everything in the game without being overt about it at all, which is just terrific if you haven't already played Super Mario Galaxy or need a refresher. And for people who do need more overt tutorials, there are Hint TVs and the Cosmic Guide to help out new players. Neither dilute the experience at all – in fact, besides looking at them once for the purpose of this review, I never looked at them again. They're not forced on you in the least, which is just a terrific design choice.

This game more than any other toes that delicate balance of being designed with pretty much everyone in mind, while still being completely worthwhile for smaller pockets of people. That was true of Super Mario Galaxy as well, but here, it's been refined to perfection. I really appreciated the time that Nintendo took to even focus on providing a context for the second-player function in this game in particular. In the last one, the disembodied star pointer worked for getting a second person to feel as though they were contributing, but in this game, having them play as an actual character (a Luma, in this case) and giving them more to do – the ability to destroy enemies and to pick up other items besides star bits chief amongst them – makes the 2P option worthwhile and even fun, rather than just, uh, there.

These weren't the things that people were worried about when this game was announced. Because so much of this game is similar to the first game in terms of aesthetic and control (even though both of those things have changed as well, albeit in much more subtle ways), everyone knew that this game would survive or fail based on the quality of its levels. Before I get into that though, I'd like you to consider this: the first Super Mario Galaxy had almost the exact same amount of development time as this game. For the first one, though, they had to come up with the idea, flesh out the design, create the game engine, refine character control, and then, after two years of doing this, make the levels and the enemies and such. With all of that preliminary planning and behind-the-scenes tinkering already done, all that Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka had to worry about was making levels.

Suffice to say, then, that with all of that time devoted to levels, Super Mario Galaxy 2 has the best levels out of any Mario game. Perspectives shift on a dime, moving from the best 3D platforming I've ever seen to the best 2D platforming I've ever seen and back again. Every level throws a new challenge, or something new to learn, or something completely awe-inspiring (I'll never forget the slide down the side of a pyramid in the Slipsand Galaxy), and it never stops. This is a game that resolutely refuses to bore you – it's admirably committed to keeping a smile on your face and endorphins shooting into your synapses. No surprise, then, that the game is hopelessly addicting, and this is coming from someone who generally can't play games for more than an hour at a time.

If the levels were just a series of (incredibly well thought-out) gimmicks, the game would be good, but what makes it so phenomenal is the combination of imagination and design. Any level that you could pick from the game is pretty much more imaginative than almost any other complete game that I've played this year. And as for design, well, here's an example. In each stage, there's a Comet Coin that completionists like myself should collect. At first glance, it appears to be completely out of reach (oh, and also, you're upside down at this point). Watch from 4:44:

This is another time where the game teaches you something without you even realizing it, and when I did realize it, I was bowled over by the amount of thought and preparation that must have went into this game. Because you can see a whole bunch of starbits in an otherwise unreachable area, the first Thwomp teaches you the timing of the wall jump you need to get to them. Then, you have to apply those same principles to the second Thwomp to reach the Comet Coin. In teaching, this is called Scaffolding, but there's not really a similar term in gaming. This is just one instance, but the whole game is an exercise in more brilliant Scaffolding than I've ever been able to do as a teacher.

I feel as though I've picked this game apart as a series of elements, and that's not my intention at all. Really, outside of just being an improbable improvement on what I thought was already one of the most thoughtful and joyful games of our time, the game captures that ineffable sense of wonder, play, whimsy and audaciousness that one would perhaps rightfully associate only with childhood. This game (and its predecessor) both evoke these feelings at every turn, turning it into more than just a series of challenges but as something that plays much closer to the experience of simply being uplifted. This is Nintendo's gift to the world. In the face of relentless progress, taking a step back and refining and refining again has shown to be incredibly useful in this case. Games like this only come about once every five or ten years, and indeed, if Nintendo ever replicates the level of success that this game has soared to, I'll be shocked and overjoyed. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is why I play games.