Super Mario Galaxy the BEST 3D Mario Ever? Yes or No?!

[archbrix]

I love the direction Galaxy went, with a camera you don't have to tend to as much as SM64. As far as ground-breaking, however, SM64 wins that hands down. And Sunshine... far inferior to both IMO.

The thing is, SM64 felt almost like combining a Mario game with an exploration game. You never had a "hub" level design in Mario before. You never went into the same level over and over again. Everything was always level to level in SMB1 through 3 and SMW. I didn't care much for the fact that there are far less worlds and just more things to do in each one as part of the gameplay as opposed to more independent levels like the old games. But SM64 being the first with this design was forgivable to me. Now with Galaxy they still use this 'go back into the same world multiple times and do slightly different things' to expand the gameplay.

I think they should design future 3D Mario games with level structure like the old ones had; that's what made them Super Mario games, and leave the 3D exploration to Zelda.