Anyone remember seeing E3 and Nintendo presented their next Mario game for the Wii U. I remember how disappointed I was, how that first trailer was, to me, uninteresting. It's until I saw the last trailer before this game launched that I knew I had to buy this game. This game is one of the most delightful surprises Nintendo has produced. It's awesome in a lot of ways. Not as awesome than my first play at Galaxy, but it's still a fantastic game.
First off, it incorporates lots of previous mario game details and controls (same kind of controls than Galaxy, without the wiimote star), same variety of character controls as in Super Mario Bros 2. Some simmilarities are present, but there's so much variety in this game that it hardly makes an impression in my mind. All the levels are unique and I don't think there was one of these I didn't like. This game is as complete as this genre can get, and I feel that Nintendo went full on into this game, not missing or barely missing any details. The controls are spot on, graphics are great, gameplay is great, coop gameplay is great (very competitive and I've rarely seen a platform game perform so well in coop play), level designs are great, the difficulty is right on. It's almost as good as it gets. To me, I'd rate it a 9.5.
If I where to be pickey, I'd say Nintendo could have done more with the story and I don't always appreciate having to get everything in order to unlock the last stages of the game. But nonetheless, doing so gives you a great sense of accomplishment (but I don't always have the patience to do so).
If you have a Wii U, this is a must own, as this game is worth picking up. It's a game that I thought would disappoint at first, but was very surprisingly pleased to play.