Ravenprose said:

Miyamoto discusses the current progress of Super Mario Galaxy 2

We're in the middle of finalizing the game with the ideas that we've created. Almost entirely new courses...we've added some new abilities for Mario, and the goal is to take the system and the gameplay of the original Super Mario Galaxy and turn it into something that's a little more expanded, and offers a great deal of challenge for people that enjoyed the first game. - Shigeru Miyamoto

 Glad to hear it. SMG was too easy.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3178108

There's one simple phrase that accurately describes every experience I've had when playing anything starring Mario: "Mario games make me happy."

It is, in all likelihood, a nostalgia thing. I prefer to believe it as a testament to the purity of a Mario game; how it can combine the feel of player movement, the design and layout of the world, and the (wonderfully) wacky tools to navigate the world and its obstacles with. I basically can't help but grin when I have Mario buttstomp an enemy, or jump his way past some rotating firewalls, or duck underneath a nasty Thwomp, or any other marquee Mario moment. I already am a bit giddy at seeing the new Super Mario Galaxy 2 trailer below, but here are some specific things that just made me smile while playing.

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 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...

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.

Yoshi bothers me, I only really liked him in Mario world and yoshis island. I hate that little extra jump where he kicks his legs about in mid-air.

He's not in NSMB Wii enough to be useful either and was useless in Sunshine. I hope he isn't used too much in SMG2 or if he is, he's actually useful and well controlled.