MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Mario Universal Gravitation, by Ultramario
Review Author	Black Squirrel
Created	Jul 5 2008, 4:31 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation states "every point mass attracts every other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the point masses. F = G(M1M2/R2), where "F" is the magnitude of the gravitational force between the two point masses, "G" is the gravitational constant, "m1" is the mass of the first point mass, "m2" is the mass of the second point mass and "r" is the distance between the two point masses.

Basically it means everything has gravity. But as far as "Mario Universal Gravitation" goes, the only gravity that exists is the "pull" from the bottom of the screen. Sure you can change the magnitude of the force, but not its direction. THEREFORE ULTRAMARIO AND NINTENDO ARE WRONG.

MUG is also a puzzle game.

Pros	-Original Concept -It works -Challenging
Cons	-A bit dull and boring

Impressions

Gameplay 7 / 10	There is no story so I'll make one up. Mario went into a cave somehow and found that he could change the laws of physics. You play as Mario, and you hit "?" blocks to change the gravity. Doing so allows him to progress through this cave. There are three strengths - Heavy, which obviously stops you from jumping high, but allows you to crush rocks benieth your feet, Medium which is normal Mario gravity and Light which gives you the power to jump really high and allows you to walk on air. Then you can solve puzzles and whatnot. It's an interesting concept, and very challenging, which is a good thing. Ultramario's a MFGG GameMaker god so I don't need to tell you that it's all been programmed very well. Everything is pretty much perfect. ...but it doesn't get a lot more interesting than that. The difficulty increases but the formula grows stale after a while. Now see if ultramario had taken it to the next level and had gravity coming from all directions instead of just one, it might be a bit more entertaining. As it stands, you end up backtracking a lot with a different weight. Don't get me wrong, the game's hardly ruined by what it has, but I just think it has the potential to do a lot more.
Graphics 3 / 10	So what's "NEW" about "Mario's Universal Graviation"? Not the graphics that's for sure! If you've been stalking me for the last three or four years you would have probably noticed that back in the day I'd rate pretty highly for SMB3 graphics. Why was this? Because they were new to me. Fresh, barely used due to lack of rips and because I grew up in a Sega/Sony world I hadn't had them perminantly stored in my head pixel-for-pixel from the age of three. Now, having been through hundreds of Mario fangames I'm bloody sick of them. Yeah they do the job, but they've been doing that job for 15+ years. About half the reviews I write rant about Super Mario SNES graphics yet games are still filled with them. But even if you don't mind the graphics themselves, you can't really deny the blandness of MUG. Every level is set in a cave. Every level has the same boring SMB3 enemies. If the gravity changes are truely universal you'd think they'd happen outside of a cave too! Considering both Super Paper Mario and Super Mario Galaxy put gravity changes in more interesting places it's not like it couldn't be done here too. So yeah. Don't take the graphics mark personally.
Sound 5 / 10	Thankfully however we're not treated to SMB3 music as well. Yep, instead we've got the single MIDI from... some game I can't recognise. In a way that's a good thing though, since it makes MUG more original to me. It's an okay MIDI, but there's no others to join it in its musical quest. And with your average Mario sound effects the sound category of this review doesn't score loads either.
Replay 7 / 10	MUG is challenging, and has a save system, so it does have quite a bit of replay value. Collecting the red coins is very difficult, and as something is supposed to happen when they're all collected, it might be worth having a go to get them all.

Final Words

MUG keeps the coffee in but it doesn't look fantasic on your kitchen counter.

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Comments

	Ultramario Jul 5 2008, 8:25 PM
Yeah, I've had in mind of letting the player to switch the direction of the gravity. I'll definitely impend it, if I ever feel like making this game lengthier. And the music I used is from Mario Party 3.

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