The level design gets zanier
I thought New
Super Mario Bros Wii did a lot of stuff with the level design that
added both freshness and stress to gameplay; like level 8-1 where The
Nothing (well, technically, a lava cloud I guess) is eating up the
level, or cramming an airship level with crazy amounts of bullet bills.
SMG2's level design gets even crazier at times -- it probably helps that
SMG2 is allowed to feature all sorts of crazy locales with the blanket
"it takes place on worlds across multiple galaxies!" excuse.
One of the more memorable levels is essentially a 3D version of the
beginning of World 4 in Super Mario
Brothers 3 , where normal-sized Mario is made teeny-tiny due to every
block and enemy being humongoid. This is probably one of the few times
where I felt a bit intimidated by a screen-filling Piranha Plant.
Another level that stands out (both in aesthetics and difficulty) is a
2D-style jaunt through a place that flips gravity. As you run-and-jump,
you either get pulled downward when in front of a blue-wall with arrows
pointing downward, or you "fall up" when in front of a purple wall with
arrows pointing up. Some of these walls slide around, so you might find
yourself traversing a long hallway without really touching the floor or
ceiling. One particularly devious passage changes gravity every few
seconds; you'll need proper timing to get past intricately placed
electric panels along this shifting wall.
The boss battles are imaginative as well
The boss design, in this more freeform "anything goes" Mario title,
range from solid uses of existing mechanics to expected "you got a new
item, use it effectively here" matches. For the former, there's a pretty
crazy fight with Gobblegut (thanks, Nintendo Treehouse personnel, for
clarifying the boss names), a giant dragon where you have to smash apart
his multiple (and bulbous) pink bellies. All this fight requires is a
spin attack, but the way this damn dragon chases Mario around the tiny
planet, or at times through the planet, make the act of hitting the
glowy red bits an actual challenge.
Then there's this Digg-legg, a giant robot with equally giant legs that
stomp around the once-again smaller-than-you-need planet. While this
dude is quite big and uses both his massive legs and his drill-based
minions to fight you, he's also greatly exposed between said legs. This
logically follows a level where you've been using the new drill, and
therefore you use fine timing to dodge his legs/minions, and drill
through the planet and into his exposed robot area. But by far, my
favorite boss battle, Mallettoid, incorporates classic Mario mechanics
and new SMG2 elements in this next point...
Click the image above to check out all Super Mario Galaxy 2 screens.
Yoshi is Back!
While Yoshi was pretty neat in New Super Mario Brothers Wii, he's back
in 3D and even spiffier in SMG2. The main gameplay tweak that Yoshi
brings is that your pointer turns from a starbit gatherer into a Yoshi
Tongue Guidance System. Simply place the pointer over the bad dude that
you want Yoshi to grab, and hit B. You can do this for a great many
enemies (and then have Yoshi expel them into a poof of starbits), and
even for things like fruits or switches. In fact, one world requires
Yoshi to eat Bullet Bills in-flight, and then spit them out at breakable
objects like glass containers or Bullet Bill launchers.
As mentioned earlier, Mallettoid is a giant clown-bot that Bowser Jr
pilots, and you take him down by having Yoshi swallow Bullet Bills, and
spit them at Mallettoid's three critical spots -- which then exposes the
cockpit for the final Bullet Bill loogie. The whole time, he's using
his giant mallet-hands to smack the stage around while his many cannons
fire Bullet Bills all the while.
In addition to grabbing bad guys, Yoshi can also use his tongue to grab
onto objects; sometimes you'll need to flip a switch from the very
platform that the switch controls. Other times, Yoshi will latch onto a
flower (a reference to the flowers from Yoshi's Island) and his tongue
serves as a rope to swing across chasms with.
Though, besides using his tongue, one other feature I check out is
having him eat blimpfruit, which expands his stomach and allows him to
float around (with his mouth, not his posterior, as the exhaust port
thankfully) as a balloon for a limited time. This seems restricted to
the more 2D-style worlds; the main showpiece for the blimpfruit is a
world that resembles a giant tree. In it, as you collect pieces of a
warp star, you need to use the "blimped out Yoshi" (Nintendo Treehouse
localization fellow Nate Bihldorff's turn of phrase) to gracefully float
past the many spiked plants and collect warp stars. Though, since the
level is a giant log, you can't "fall" off it; in fact, you need to take
advantage of its large cylindrical shape and "strategically fall" onto
the right platforms to grab all the star pieces.
While I play several levels of the game, all it really takes is the
simple act of having a 3D Yoshi snatch Bullet Bills and spit them back
at the crazy giant robo-clown for me to feel happy while playing a Mario
game.
Orginally published on 1UP.com .
