RE: Most Overrated Games
I might get hated for this, but I think Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a very overrated game.
I liked it and thought it was enjoyable to play, don't get me wrong, but to me it felt way too rushed as opposed to the first Mario Galaxy. It felt like Nintendo made SMG2 quickly because of the reception it got back when SMG was released. What was it Nintendo, 2 years?
One of the reasons it was in pale comparison to the other Mario games was of the absolutely terrible story-line. Don't try to tell me the "Oh, Mario doesn't need story so it doesn't matter" bullshit, Mario games generally had good story-lines and cutscenes, such as Super Mario Sunshine and SMG1, which both had pretty good ones, so my expectations were pretty high about this one. What do we get? Progression. Text box. Mario gets this. Princess is captured. Seriously, look up the beginning or ending of the game, and you'll see how terribly bland it is. It honestly gave me a less appealing sense of completion at the end of the game, and you'll see why.
I also found that set aside the shitty story-line, the game felt practically unchanged. The graphics were the same, the controls are the same, and the levels felt too similar to the ones in SMG1. I felt like I was replaying the Good Egg Galaxy in Sky Station Galaxy, and the boss... Seriously, anyone that played the game can understand that. The content they added seemed unbalanced in placement. Yoshi was a good addition to the game, but there needed to be a few more parts with him. The new power-ups were okay, but they felt few and far between to me. I remember using the drill ONCE in the game. Once. Maybe if they didn't reuse the same power-ups the new ones would get used more.
The game felt too linear as opposed to the first. The hub world was small, shitty, and pointless, where you could waste time getting lives that go away after you reset the game, or talking to characters that just say the same thing. The map was a bad idea, giving the player a more guided route as opposed to being able to do certain worlds in certain orders like you could in previous games. The linear map idea is something you would use in the New Super Mario Bros. Series or classic reboots, not changing the original SMG's working style. The levels themselves felt linear as well. The levels seemed like a "get from point A to point B" style and didn't really allow exploration or openness. This and the two-star missions made didn't allow me to follow connect or memorize most levels. Remember back in the first SMG when we could explore Honeyhive Galaxy? Or how in Super Mario Sunshine we got to run around Pianta Village looking for those goddamn red coins and watching everyone party? Don't expect that in this game.
I could go on and on about how the boss fights sucked, the music wasn't as memorable, or how the Green Star missions just turned be off from the game, but all I'm gonna say is that I enjoyed the game, but to me it's just a watered down version of the first game and doesn't even deserve the 10 out of 10 most critics give it.
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