Yahtzee: Initially, Mario Galaxy gets an easy ride because it has to be inevitably compared with Mario Sunshine, the last proper Mario game, disregarding all that spin-off bullshit. And you could transplant the head of Joseph Goebbels onto the body of a praying mantis and it would still compare favorably to Mario Sunshine. I understand that Mario is a plumber, but while having him clean up huge piles of semi-liquid shit makes for good characterization, it's not much fun to anyone except obsessive-compulsive squirt-gun fetishists. What I did like about Mario Sunshine, though, were those sections where they took that asinine water pistol away and left you to navigate a set of colourful platforms floating in the middle of a bleak, empty void. They were frustrating but in a good way, frustrating like opening a carton of ready-made custard for your rhubarb crumble, knowing that the rewards will be all the sweeter for the effort. I remember saying at the time if they made a Mario game that was just this kind of shit, then I'd be all over it like Robby Coltrane on a plate of chips. Well, it seems some kind of Nintendo independent thought detection van was passing by my house that day, because Mario Galaxy is pretty much that. Okay, I admit it, Mario Galaxy is fun. It feels like a return to form; lots of interesting levels with a huge variety of settings, terrains, and challenges. Plus watching Mario rocket through space at meteorotic speeds holding his little stubby arms out has a rather perplexing charm to it. It's cutsey and colourful enough to be kid-friendly while still challenging the adult audience. And some moments are appealingly fucked up when taken out of context, like force-feeding a guy sweeties so that he explodes and turns into a planet or crawling around on the exterior of a giant woman, picking debris out of her rampant pubic hair.