andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

Adam Sandler once sang in The Wedding Singer,”All I wanna do is grow old with you,” which for many, whether we intended to or not, happened in the case of Mario and friends . Till this day, we can still see small children getting introduced to the ever flourishing franchise.

Who are we talking about? We are talking about the short, confident, Italian plumber who wears a trade mark red hat and overalls. Throw in his taller, more socially awkward younger brother who sports an identical outfit only in green. Also in the mix would be the dragon like figure bent on kidnapping a certain princess of the mushroom Kingdom.

Now Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Princess Peach and many other familiar faces are back for another game. So what’s happening in the world of Mario now? There are so many examples that could be used to explain the whole situation but the most simple is one quote:

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” READ MORE »

There are three things I love about this job: being able to talk about gaming all the time, getting a chance to play alot of the newest titles and write about them, and special events. Now, these special events…well, they’re very special. They could be as big as going to E3 (maybe next year?) or as small as a demo station in a hotel lobby. Either way, it’s a break from the ordinary and it can lead to very unique experiences (such as playing NHL 10 with Patrick Kane and John Tavares likes we did earlier in the week).

Recently we were invited to another special event, the E3 of the North as they called it. We got a chance to not only sit down with Matt Ryan of Nintendo Canada (along with other members of the Nintendo family) but we also got an opportunity to try out some of the biggest titles that were revealed at this year’s E3!

Lets start with the DS titles. READ MORE »

Why does the galaxy hate Mario? Why is it that no one ever hands him a star directly but only after he completes their demeaning tasks then they throw it a few feet away from him, making him crawl, skulk to the shiny star and pick it up like a slave groveling for a morsel of bread.

Everyone’s favourite feisty Italian plumber is back for another romp in Super Mario Galaxy, exclusively for the Nintendo Wii, naturally. Released in November of 2007, Galaxy returns to the basics fans love after Mario’s stint as a janitor in Super Mario Sunshine for the Nintendo Gamecube. Expect platform jumping, star collecting, and costume changing a-plenty in this all-new adventure across the universe.

The story is as classic as can be. While celebrating the centennial star festival, Bowser attacks the mushroom kingdom and kidnaps Princess Peach. A tested and true Mario story, but here’s where things get a little different. Bowser’s not alone this time as he comes flying in not only with his airships, but also with a giant UFO. As the entire castle gets lifted into the outer reaches of space, Mario is slung off the castle steps and finds himself on an observatory deck surrounded by astro-puff people known as Lumas and a mysterious woman named Rosalina. As it turns out, this observation deck runs on star power and, is stranded in space as Bowser stole all the stars to power his own evil plans. It’s once again up to our favourite underdog to collect the stars, stop Bowser, save his friends and rescue the princess. All in a day’s work for a servant of the pipes.

Super Mario Galaxy utilizes the Wii’s next generation capabilities to the max by taking 3D one step further. Gone are the majority of flat levels and introduced is the concept of gravity. Most levels take place on multiple small planets where Mario can be launched from gravitational field to gravitational field, more often then not using the momentum and force to his advantage in unique and intriguing ways. As well, each galaxy contains a specific theme, from the Good Egg galaxy to the Honey Hive galaxy, and each theme usually creates a diverse set of scenarios Mario must overcome to collect the stars and bring a little power back to the Lumas’ observatory. Some of these planets have special mushrooms unique to their world and as we all know, Mario’s a sucker for a ’shroom. These special mushrooms are more than flavorful fungi, they transform Mario into one of eight special suits including bee Mario, ice Mario, and invincible rainbow Mario. Much like Super Mario Brothers 3, these dress up additions do more than improve the Italian’s fashion sense and help him proceed through treacherous galaxies and eventually save his princess.

Nintendo did an amazing job creating innovation with a system that is nothing close to ordinary. They take the aspects that make the Wii unique and exploit them to new levels. Take for instance when Luigi goes missing in search for a star, turn on your Wii and you have Wiimail from Nintendo saying Luigi is missing and gives you a hint on how to find him. Or another great example is on one of the boss battle stages you traverse on multiple moving platforms with different sections of the world having different gravitational pulls, in all directions so you constantly have to jump to a different side of the platform to avoid being sucked into a black hole. Sometimes you have to use your Wiimote as a joystick while others as a target. Mario Galaxy offers a lot of variety in getting to the end of the game, with a number of different meteors that change up galaxies such a meteor which gives you one life on a mini-boss battle, or a meteor that forces you to race against a space Mario clone, or one that speeds up the bad guys. As well, when you achieve certain goals, specific one star galaxies open up that seem more like fun mini-games than new stages. Some galaxies even contain secret stars that can only be obtained by feeding a hungry Luma enough star bits (which are found throughout the galaxy and are used to feed Lumas or stun bad guys) or using a specific item in a novel way. Nope, not done yet, You can also gain new stars by finding Luigi when he gets stuck in older galaxies get red stars or green stars that affect the game in different ways, collect purple coins on secret stages, or find Lumas hanging around the observatory looking for a snack to open new secret galaxies. There’s plenty to explore like the library where Rosalina tells her back-story or getting high coin scores. Once you get ALL the stars, you can play the game all over again using Luigi, who plays a little differently than Mario and changes the story up a little bit.

While Galaxy lures players into the game with a subtle but effective tutorial system near the beginning of the game, gradually adding in new aspects, differently controlled gameplay, unlockable features and intense boss battles keep the player in for the long haul. The only times I find myself annoyed with Mario and his friends are when the gravity becomes too much for me, jumping from the tops to the bottoms of surfaces often disorients me for a little while and I still find myself having trouble controlling Mario underwater. The controls are amazingly simple yet robust and even with changing gravity and camera angles, you still have the option (most of the time) to change your angle of viewing to see what’s around you, maybe find a way to a new secret star or some out of reach star bits.

Mario Galaxy is by far one of the best looking games out there for the Wii and offers special particle and lighting effects rarely found outside of a Nintendo brand title. Glitches and spazzes are few and far between and through the chaos of gravitational pulls, multiple bad guys, coins, star bits and flying Bullet Bills – I have not experienced the slightest sense of slow down or even as much as a hiccup in gameplay. Small details in gameplay such as Mario’s hat popping up and down, or Goomba facial reactions give the simplistic art style extra flair in a title that prides itself on simple complexity. Super Mario Galaxy pulls off the toughest feats by sucking the player into a world so obscure it has to be fantasy driven, in space no less.

The game sounds amazing, from the first time you hear Mario utter the title to the epic and familiar background music. Utilizing Dolby Pro Logic II, Mario sounds the best he ever has. With the amount of things going on all around him in the more chaotic stages, it definitely helps to be able to hear enemies waddling towards you from whichever direction the sound is coming from. There really isn’t much voice acting in this game, but true fans wouldn’t want it any other way. Instead as always, he lets his fists do the talking with a random ‘Yahoo’ thrown in for dramatic effect. The music is orchestrated on such a level that in certain galaxies, you may feel a strong sense to survive, not because if you die you let down the princess and the Lumas, but because you just cannot allow for such intense music to die along with you.

In terms of lasting appeal and gameplay, you can play this huge game twice before replaying anything, once as Mario and again as Luigi. On top of this, if you’re one of those people who can’t stop playing when friends come by, don’t fret, Nintendo provides players with a great little addition that changes the way people will look at single player games for years to come. Now a second player can join in at any time with a second Wiimote. Although player two doesn’t control an actual character, they can use the Wiimote to grab and hold enemies and projectiles, shoot and gather starbits, help Mario jump further and hold moving platforms in place. At times it feels like this type of help is required for some of the tougher stages (and believe me, the stages can get pretty hard). If your buddy gets bored he can change from a helpful addition to the antichrist, forcing you to jump when you don’t expect it, wasting your starbits and being a nuisance over all. The only real problem I have with the Mario Galaxy game is that every time you turn on your Wii you lose all the lives you had saved up in your previous session. Fortunately, you are given a letter from Peach every time you start up, offering you five extra lives right off the bat. In the end all these free tries and resets make the concept of having a certain number of lives pointless as you can always just go get more lives if you start to run low.

All in all I would say that after the somewhat disappointing Super Mario Sunshine for the Nintendo Gamecube, this title is more of an apology to gamers who miss their Mario the way he used to be. Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii is by far the best platformer for the Wii, the best platformer in the history of next gen systems, quite possibly the best platformer ever created to date. With innovative controls and design, the basic yet required story, and familiarity to those who had an original NES system, Super Mario Galaxy is one of those games that make you want to go out and buy a system for that title alone.

Graphics: 5.0 / 5.0
Gameplay 5.0 / 5.0
Sound 4.5 / 5.0
Replay value 4.5 / 5.0

The eclectic new cast of “Dancing With The Stars” was announced yesterday, featuring everyone from young R&B artists to infamous figure skaters.

The men in the running are comedian Adam Carolla, Chilean actor Cristian de la Fuente, “Police Academy” star Steve Guttenberg, 21-year-old Grammy nominee Mario, illusionist Penn Jillette and NFL star player Jason Taylor. Lovely ladies Priscilla Presley, “American Pie” actress Shannon Elizabeth, Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, the original “Tracy Turnblad” Marissa Jaret Winokur, tennis champ Monica Seles and Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin will also tear it up on the dance floor.

Stars will be paired up with their professional dancer partners this morning, and fans will get to see them in action on March 17. They’ll have to prove themselves right away, as the March 25 episode will be a double elimination – the first in “Dancing with the Stars” history.

I don’t know if this is a sequel, an expansion or a whole new soccer game with familiar characters. Next Level Games, a Canadian developer located in British Columbia, introduces Mario Strikers Charged just two short years after releasing Mario Strikers for the Nintendo Gamecube and I have to ask myself, was it really needed?

For those unsure of what a striker exactly is or why it would be charged, this is the second installation of Next Level’s view on soccer (or as you UK blokes call it, football) with all your favourite Mario characters from Donkey Kong to Wario. Complete with power-ups like shells and Wii specific motions this is more of an upgrade then anything new or overly exciting.

The game’s presentation fits the bill, and with the use of the Wiimote, it makes selecting your game types and options a lot easier and somewhat more involved then with just the analog stick or D-pad. However, selecting between options, screens and pretty much any time the screen menu changes, it feels cut off and doesn’t seem to have a very smooth transition. Selecting characters and now their sidekicks (with their own special moves as well) can be decided upon by using the Wiimote to see their strengths, weaknesses, and playing style and with 12 captains to choose from the Mario universe, 8 sidekicks, and at least 17 arenas, selecting your game may take the longest amount of time to decide upon.

There is definitely a lot to keep you busy in this game, the sheer amount of players to try out, tournaments in which you win different trophies as well as little extra achievements like the brick wall award or the golden foot award, which unlock new arenas to play in, a detailed and expansive tutorial system, various challenges in which you may have to do something fairly easy such as score 2 goals in 2 minutes with an easy computer opponent, to the extremely hard scoring 7 goals in 2 minutes AND win the game against an extremely tough AI opponent, completing these challenges unlocks cheats to use in the game. On top of all these options, you still have the normal versus mode, AND a fully functional online play mode. This option allows you to play against a friend or a random person from anywhere in the world with little lag noticed and stats to back up your trash talk. The only downside to online play is that you cannot actually trash talk, it would have been nice to chat online, or even text chatting before or after a game.

The graphics and sound are more or less a slight improvement over the Gamecube original, however there are still improvements. The colour and animation style are a lot more vivid and smoother. When your character gets blasted with a fireball or electricity, you see it on their bodies in cut scenes after goals and games. When captain super-shots are done, there occurs a little 5 second animation in which they become supercharged (hence the name) and do their personal power shot. It’s very pretty and fun to watch, but after a few of these shots, and not being able to skip the animation, you may start to tire of them. The stage designs are truly stunning, with crowds cheering on the sidelines for some levels, tractors being blown over the field in others and just all around chaos occurring in most stadiums with no signs of slowdown the game is a visual treat to play as long as your not looking for the best graphics in this next generation system. As for the sound, the music is where it’s at; each character has their own theme music, from Bowser’s heavier beats to Luigi’s salsa-western fusion, each captain has their own style of entrance and knows how to work their fans. The sounds in the game usually consist of characters yelling for the ball, explosions, and roars from your crocodile goalie.

As a Nintendo Wii game, you would assume the controls to be very motion sensitive, this is not the case with Mario Strikers Charged and I feel this is a good thing. So many developers these days are trying to use as much motion as possible in their game to justify the Wii’s capabilities, but Next Level Games knew better than to do this. Instead they only infused the motion sensitivity when it would enhance the game. It’s used for menu selection to change your item you flick the nunchuck, to hit your opponent when you don’t have the ball, and my personal favourite and an improvement from the original title, when a power shot occurs, instead of it being almost always a guaranteed goal, the setup is more like a Mario Golf swing where you charge up, push B near the end of the ‘swing’ to select how many balls to shoot (from 3 to 6), then B again to determine the speed of the balls. From here the goalie takes control in which a set of hands show up on the screen and you control it entirely with the Wiimote, blocking balls as they appear on random spots on the screen. The benefit to this is that if you’re good enough, you can easily block all 6 shots, or if not, totally miss and have 6 goals hit you like a hurricane. The controls are tight and responsive, and the layout for each button, although you cannot alter them, works well for this fast paced, chaotic game.

The gameplay itself can be both amazingly fun and intense or extremely annoying at times, depending on your playing style you could be winning 20-0 or 2-1, on the other side of the spectrum, you could be losing 0-20 or 2-1. If you can find the perfect opponent online you could be seeing a 10 minute sudden death overtime period, which can keep the average player on the edge of their seat the entire match. Sidekicks are also a lot more to worry about as they each have their own special moves, which when done correctly can almost guarantee a goal. From the hammer brother’s hammer toss to the toad’s fireball shot, each can leave the goalie stunned for enough time to hit the rebound with no defense. The items in the game have pretty much stayed the same with one new exception and that is each captain now has their very own special item, Mario and Luigi grow to super sizes, Bowser gets a blast of fire breath, Diddy Kong and his red card attack and more.

If you’re a fan of the original Mario Strikers, or Mario sports games in general and want a game that’s quick and easy to pick up with a friend, either in the same room or across the globe, Mario Strikers Charged is the perfect Mario driven soccer follow-up. Then again, it would have been nice to have more than one save slot for career mode.

Graphics: 3.5 / 5.0
Gameplay 4.0 / 5.0
Sound 3.0 / 5.0
Replay value 4.0 / 5.0