deKay's Gaming Diary

Had a go of this today with my wife, on the Shyguy Train board. Things got off to a bad start for me, as for the first four turns I couldn’t roll higher than a 3, and by turn 8 I was still starless while everyone else had two or three.

However, I somehow managed to turn it around, and on the final turn had three stars, beating everyone else. To further prove my superiority, I then won all three bonus stars, and the stats showed that regardless of which bonus stars had been randomly chosen, I’d have won the game anyway – even if I hadn’t picked any stars up on the board. Amazing!

Played through a bit more of this, nabbing about ten more stars. I only need about 12 now before I can face Bowser at the “end” of the game as Luigi.

I’m still convinced there are more baddies as Luigi. For example, when fighting King Kalicente (is that how you spell his name?) for the second time, he chucks one hell of a lot more of those blue flaming things at you.

Haven’t played this in a while, as I’ve had a lot of Team Fortress 2-ing to do, and Peggle and other stuff, so I felt a bit bad about neglecting it.

But no more! For I returned with Luigi and got him 7 more stars, taking his total to 35, and 155 overall. Just, erm, lots left to go!

Got my first green star with Luigi, and my first letter from Luigi to Luigi, which is all a bit strange. You’d have thought you swapped places with Mario on the second run through, but no. And why is it that the other Luigi is taller than me? Very odd.

I’ve opened up the Bedroom now, and have 28 Weegi stars to my name. I managed to get the wrong star in the Freezeflame Galaxy too, somehow, by going completely the wrong way. I’m pretty sure there were more flying ice blob things and ice bats than with Mario, though.

And I was right about Luigi sliding around on the ice more than Mario. It’s like he’s been greased up or something.

Four more stars, taking me to 18 Weegi-stars and 138 stars in total. I’ve also found out today that there isn’t 241 stars overall, but 242. Amazing!

Getting used to Luigi’s slippery movement now, but not looking forward to coping on the ice-based galaxies! Oh, and Cosmic Luigi is waaaaay faster than Cosmic Mario, and constantly long-jumps to go even faster. I couldn’t beat him on Honeyhive. Grr.

Not really much to say today, apart from that I’m still loving it, and managed to get up to 14 Luigi Stars, making 134 in total.

This time through, I’m trying to do as many later levels as possible, so I get left with the easier ones nearer the end of the game (if that makes sense). I know it’s not really possible, as you have to do early stars to unlock later galaxies, but once all the galaxies are open I’ll be doing the last ones first.

Or something.

Luigi slides all over the place, jumps higher (and seemingly further) than Mario, and says “Yoshi” every time he uses a launch star. He also makes a noise that sounds like it’s taken straight from Pretty Fly for a White Guy when he gets a power star. Oh, and he looks stupid in a bee suit.

Aside from all that, it’s the same so far. Well, except for one thing which I’m not sure if I’m imagining or not: the levels all seem to have extra baddies on. So far, they’ve mainly been those blue bouncing blob things, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t there as Mario. Oh, and Weegi gets 20 1Ups from Peach, not 5. I always knew Luigi was doing her on the side…

With the last of the stars collected yesterday, all that was left was to defeat Bowser again. For some reason, I had problems getting to him this time – losing several lives (all regained through mushroom collection) on the way.

He was just as easy as before (of course, he was exactly the same, that’s why), and then the end sequence with a bit extra.

And then! “You may now play as Luigi!” comes up on the screen, and Luigi says “Super Weegi Galaxy!”. AMAZING! Of course, it’s just the same game again, although Luigi can jump higher and slides all over the place like he’s got greased feet. Collected the first three stars as him too.

What a fantastic game. From start to finish I thought it was brilliant – well designed, varied, and even plenty of genius moments. Best game ever? Perhaps. Mario 64 was one of the best games ever – probably in my top 5 – and this beats it. Amazing.

120 STARS!

Amazing! I came to it today with just four stars remaining – all of which were actually comet stars, it turned out. First up was a Daredevil Comet on the Deep Dark Galaxy (killing the big Magikoopa without getting hit – easy!), and then I braved the Luigi’s Purple Coins star, which drained a good 8 or 9 lives before I nailed it. The last two (another purple coin one, and Fast Foe one) were both waaaaaay easier than Luigi’s coins.

So, 120 stars! Just have to kill Bowser again now, I think!

So close to the end now, with 116 stars complete. Just three more comet ones left, including what seems to be the hardest of all the stars by seven million miles – Luigi’s Purple Coins. Gah!

Oh, and I finally managed to find the hidden star on Deep Dark Galaxy. It turns out it was under the wreck of a boat (well, it wasn’t, but the route to get to it was), where I’m pretty sure I’d looked at least twice already.

113 Stars! Cleared out the last of the “normal” stars in the Garden and Engine Room, and now it’s just hidden and comet stars left. Also managed to find a couple of hidden stars, and one of the Speed Comet runs on Dreadnought Galaxy, the latter of which was much easier than I was expecting.

There’s a Purple Coin collecting star on Dreadnought that I’m not looking forward to doing. I had one go, and it’s not easy! I’m also unable to find the hidden star on the Dark Galaxy (Dark Dark? I forget the name). I’ve looked everywhere!

At the risk of these entries becoming little more than just updates into how many stars I now have, I’d just like to say “108 Stars!”.

Thing is, it’s hard to describe what levels I’ve done to get those stars for two reasons: the first being The Spoiler Problem, and the other is because when you play the game it all blends into one gooey fuzzy lovely experience, and I forget which planet was in which galaxy and stuff.

I’m running out of “normal” stars now though (that is, the first three for each galaxy). There’s a few left in the Engine Room and Garden, but pretty much everything else is a hidden or comet star.

I’m running out of game. That’s not right. Can’t we have 2,000 stars instead? As it stands, I’m up to 104 after today’s play (a couple more Purple Coin collecting levels taking up most of the game time), and I’m starting to think about it almost all being over.

And that makes me sad. Bah.

100 stars get! A couple of Purple Coin collecting ones today and then the hardest star I’ve had yet – Bouldergeist with the Daredevil Comet.

He’s the only boss I’d had difficulty with, and lost several lives to him even with full energy, so having to kill him again, only with no energy? Erk. He took 14 of my 15 lives before I beat him!

Also killed a giant mole on Gusty Garden, and completed some more stars on Freezeframe Galaxy.

Finished off Melty Molten Galaxy today (amongst other things) which included a Daredevil Comet Run (which was really hard) and a Purple Coin Collection “mission” which was also really hard, as some were floating over the top of the lava and those long crouch-jumps were required to get them else your bottom got burnt. A lot.

And it did.

But I’ve got 93 Stars now – only 27 left! Actually, that’s not quite true, apparently…

Got a few more stars, taking my total up to 83. That’s just 37 remaining now (although most of those done are the early ones, so it’s mainly tricky ones left). Found the final Green Power Star, which opened up a few more “odd” galaxies, like another Ray Surfing one, and a Monkey Ball type one.

And Melty Molten Galaxy is amazing.

I’m now up to 77 stars. Most of today’s play was spent getting the purple coins on the water ring level, which actually involved totally avoiding the water and Bee Mario-ing from cloud to cloud stopping off at trees on the way.

Also had another race with a Boo, as Boo Mario, and collected loads more purple coins in the bone yard place. And killed a giant rock! And defeated a mole in a cannon up a tree!

AMAZING.

Now up to 71 stars! Had a difficult purple coin run on Battlerock, and a sedate purple coin run on Honeyhive – which took ages as there were a few coins that were difficult to reach.

Also found a hidden star on the Beach Bowl level (Ice Mario wall-jumping up waterfalls! AMAZING) and completed another Haunted Mansion level which was a race against a Boo. I’ve done all of the first two observatories now – hurrah!

You might say “What? Already? What a short and/or easy game!”, and you’d be wrong. You see, like Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine before it (in fact, like virtually every Mario game, actually) just beating Bowser at the end is The End as such. You only need 60 stars to do that, “win” the game and see the credits. So with that many, I beat the boss and completed the game.

But that’s only half the stars! Now there’s the task of mopping up the rest of them, mainly from alternate goals in galaxies I’ve already completed, and also some more in galaxies not yet unlocked. I went back and did some more (including collecting 100 purple coins on an ocean level, which took aaaages as I kept killing myself accidently…) and now I have 66 stars.

46 stars! And so many things that I found ace! I can’t even begin to begin… and I don’t want to spoil things for people as they come across stuff for the first time, because everything is so special.

But I will say that finding Luigi was amazing. The giant toy robot? Amazing. The Bowser boss battles with the Mario 64 boss style levels (and music!) – amazing.

Look, the WHOLE BLOODY GAME is amazing. If you disagree (and only two people on the entire planet do, and they haven’t played it) then you have no soul.

I am now 23 stars in, and, so far, I haven’t had a single thing I didn’t like. I did worry that the whole gravity-on-small-planets thing might detract from the game in some way, but it really doesn’t – it just feels like a natural progression from Mario 64. An extra dimension, if you will.

And it’s all just so… fantastic!

AMAZING.

Perhaps you’d like a bit more in the way of detail? You don’t need any – that covers it. I have 7 stars, have played for a few hours, and love it.

Although I love Mario Sunshine, it never really felt like a proper follow-up to Mario 64. Too much of it was removed from the former game – the location, the Piantas, the shines-not-stars, the FLUDD, and so on. It was a great game, and I’ll have none of you haters saying otherwise, but it wasn’t a sequel.

Galaxy however, is.

It feels just like Mario 64, only with More. Which is a Very Good Thing.

These 20×20 puzzles really make my eyes bleed. Managed five of them before giving up, in case my eyeballs exploded or something.

It would appear that Level 7 isn’t the final level at all. Far from it. I managed to complete the remaining five puzzles on Level 6, then all the Level 7 puzzles, and Mario unlocked Levels 8, 9 and 10 for me. More!

Not just more either – these are 20×20 puzzles (Levels 4, 5, 6 and 7 are 15×15). The first one was clever too – the was a picross of a picross puzzle!

Completed Level 5 at last! Also completed four Level 6 puzzles without any problems. Still no Nintendo themed pictures, although I did have a monkey.