Providing a hot and cold game play experience, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just simply nowhere near as great as the first.
The Highs: Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes back with once again breathtaking graphics equivalent to those of the first (which in my opinion where extraordinary). Yoshi! You can ride around on our favorite green little friend and explore the galaxy as a duo! Sick of Mario? Well fortunately for us during certain parts of the game we are given the option to play as Luigi, which is a nice alternative. Boss battles are also slightly more challenging, but don't get your hopes up because they are still quite easy.
The Lows: The story doesn't have any depth whatsoever, failing to create any emotional connection between the gamer and the game. The plot is almost identical to that of the first and all Mario games for that matter. Big bad Bowser has stolen princess Peach and plans to destroy the world... what else is new? Come on Nintendo show some creativity please... The controls are exactly the same, and the combat is exactly the same, some of the bosses are exactly the same, too much is exactly the same as the first... Not to mention at points the game was ridiculously easy. At one point i got like 5 stars within 20 minutes. Other points in the game were ridiculously hard and took multiple play throughs. Some of the galaxies were also very similar to those of the first, making certain points very boring.
Overall: Quite simply this game is very overrated... Gamespot giving it a 10/10 is absolutely absurd to me. I have played plenty of better games that actually connected on an emotional level and had an interesting story that have been given far less then a 10. Where is the story? Where is the emotion? There isn't any... Just run around from galaxy to galaxy and fetch stars for a fat purple Luma... Pardon my anger. Anyways Super Mario Galaxy 2 gets a very generous 7.5 out of 10...