The Gaming Lounge

So, I got my hands on a leaked copy the other day, and I've been playing through it nonstop.

This game is really great.

A lot of people were worried that this was just the first game with more levels, but they really added a lot of new content here. No, the graphics aren't significantly better, but the game's still gorgeous, and the levels are great. There's a lot of creativity here, and the first game definitely had room for more (I love Splatter Matter and Dark Matter). Yoshi's pretty rad; his tongue can target three things at once and quickdraw them all one by one.

Only complaint? Hub world isn't very charming. Silly, but not as fun. Oh, and lots of sky in this game, a lot less space and stars. Which is weird because it's supposed to be in space, but whatever.

I'm pretty excited about this game, despite my critical lack-of-Wii.  Though with some of the titles popping up, I think I'll soon rectify that.

The hub is significantly different than that of the first game's, isn't it?  I've heard it was supposed to resemble that of Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World.  I kinda liked that idea, but since it's a game that takes place in space, going from world to world, I can't help but think of Kingdom Hearts.

Well, there's a HUB world, the Faceship (spaceship shaped like Mario's face) which you move along a world chart (I refuse to call it a world map. It's not very interesting to look at and makes the maps in New Mario Bros look interesting). Galaxy just had the HUB, but it was a more spacious one, and was just way more charming to look at and explore. They're both kinda useless, but it's the little things, I suppose.

That's weird...  I wonder why Nintendo would have changed the world hub to a boring map?

Well, in Galaxy, the HUB World had rooms in it. And each room lead to a cluster of galaxies. And you'd go from room to room, clearing galaxies and revisiting them and such. Here, there's one HUB, and going to the steering wheel takes you to the little map, which is broken into worlds, which contains a few galaxies. Technically, Galaxy 2's more streamlined in that regard, since you're not physically navigating from room to room, but it's a little less charming in the process.

I think it's to make it more accessible. New Mario Wii beat Galaxy 1's sales, and that game's super accessible, so I'm guessing they want to repeat that. The game also comes with a DVD on how to play (which you can't watch on your Wii. Har.) as well as Super Guide implementation. I'm not sure why the DVD is included since the game does a fine job explaining everything, and the controls haven't changed since the last game minus Yoshi. Super Guide I can understand, since it's actually pretty hard. Worlds 1 and 2 haven't been busting my ass, but they're not as easy as I thought.