As usual, Bowser has captured the Princess, but this time he has taken over her own castle! Mario must travel the lands, defeating Bowser's minions as he goes in order to get back to the castle and save the day.
Graphically it is not up to standards for the Wii U. It's trying to be retro but with a modern twist like the series was on the 3DS. However, the inconsistencies with the graphics is a bit odd, and the majority of the game doesn't live up to the standards of 'next gen'. Rumours stated it was meant for the 3DS but was transferred to the Wii U in order to make up for the lack of games, and to help the launch.
For the most part, New Super Mario Bros. U provides exactly what you expect, but with a few tweaks here and there. There's a new flying-squirrel power up which you can use this to glide, launch in the air and cling to walls. Yoshi makes his return on a few levels in addition to smaller Yoshi's that you must carry to utilise their various abilities. Pink can inflate like a balloon, Blue shoots out bubbles, and Yellow that is a source of light.
After completing a stage, you are prompted to post to Miiverse to give your opinion/make comment on the level. Your post is automatically tagged with any significant achievement such as if you collected all the Star Coins, completed the level quickly, or didn't take damage. If you lost many lives you are prompted to write an angry message to Bowser to rant about the difficulty. Miiverse posts can pop-up in balloons next to the level. Pressing the L-trigger views the zoomed-out map and views the contents of these posts. These can be disabled if you don't want them at all.
When on the world map, you can choose an item to start the level with. Ten of these can be stockpiled in your inventory which are awarded to you when you visit the Toad Houses or by completing special areas. You can also perform a Quick Save which gets deleted when you load the game. Permanent saves are made when you complete the Castle stages.
The game starts off pretty straight-forward and easy, but suddenly spikes in difficulty, then becomes really inconsistent from then on. There's plenty of difficult sections throughout the game, but you don't really know what to expect during the level. The game is generous when it comes to extra lives though, so it's fairly easy to maintain a large stockpile of them. The 3 Star Coins in each level adds to the challenge like all recent Mario games do. Some of them are cleverly hidden, or just hard to reach, making you risk your life to collect them. Some boss battles are decent, but the majority are fairly easy and typical of the Mario series. It's all the predictable 'hit three times to defeat' style bosses.
Up to five players can play in the multiplayer. There's Mario, Luigi and two Toads. The extra player uses the GamePad to create extra platforms to assist the other players.
One of the more interesting additions is the Challenges mode which contains five types of trials: Time Attack, Coin Collection, 1-Up Rally, Special, and Boost. Time Attack is a speed-run through a level. Coin Collection sees you collecting/avoiding coins within a stage. 1-Up Rally utilises the mechanic of earning 1-Ups for consecutively jumping on enemies' heads without touching the ground. Special challenges offer a variety of scenarios. Boost challenges are focused on using the GamePad's touch screen to assist another player reach a goal.
Overall, New Super Mario Bros. U plays it fairly safe. It's a decent Mario game but just seems like it doesn't really add to the series.