Reader Review: Super Mario Galaxy 2 For Beginners DVD

Do you have what it takes to get a review published right here on Kotaku? Andrew does, as he sits down for some butt stomping lessons.

Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

This review was submitted by Andrew Costanzo. If you’ve played watched the Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Beginners DVD, or just want to ask Andrew more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Beginners (DVD)

Nintendo seems to be getting less confident in our abilities to play their games these days, and opted to include an instructional DVD with Super Mario Galaxy 2. Is this DVD worth watching, or have Nintendo lost their faith in this generation of gamers?

Loved

Challenges: Nintendo has been kind enough to show off their best displays of cool moves in this game. There are short clips of Mario doing cool things, like getting to far out areas of levels, killing enemies in fancy ways, or getting a big chain in goomba kills without touching the ground. These moves look hard to replicate, so get ready for some tricky challenges once you’ve done everything else in the game.

Creative Play: Creative Play gives you some tips on how to do some useful moves in the game, such as using Yoshi to double jump or having a second player retrieve air bubbles for Mario when he is underwater. While this may not be useful to those who have played the first Super Mario Galaxy, it is handy for those new to the game.

Hated

The Basics: By now, everyone should know how to use a Wii remote. It was redundant of Nintendo to give a 20 second video of how to plug in a nunchuck and how to hold the Wii remote. It also teaches you how to play the game, such as jumping, spinning and collecting coins. What makes this worse is the voice-over during the footage, which is slow and dull.

DVD Format: The instructional footage comes on a DVD, and not a Wii optical disc. What this mean is it will not play on your Wii, and you will need to play it on a DVD player. Nintendo should have made it playable on the Wii, or simply put in on the Super Mario Galaxy 2 disc, rather than having a separate disc.

So is this DVD worth watching? Probably not, since the instructional footage goes for about 15 minutes all up, whereas you could just flick through that manual in about five minutes or less to get the same information. As for the nine minutes of Challenges and Creative Play, it really isn’t that useful unless you are have finished the game, and are bored enough to look for new things to do that don’t really amount to anything except stylish moves.

My suggestion: skip the tutorial, and jump straight into the game. For the average Kotaku reader, this is a step backwards in Nintendo’s approach to the hardcore gamer.

Reviewed by: Andrew Costanzo

You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 500 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.

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