I still think that the real 3D Mario will be announced and released this year.

[AstroGamer]

JazzB1987 said:

What you aim for in a specific level has nothing to do with linearity.   Mario 64 or sunshine. Open areas. No time limit thus you can do whatever is possible for as long as you can.  You can start a level with the intention to get star 1 but then by coincidence you e.g collect 100 coins and another star shows up and you finish the level without doing what you actually wanted to do. (happened alot to me)

The Mario 3D series on the other hand has 1 goal. Reach the end of the map and on your way try to collect some stars. You walk from the lower part of the map to the top part. Or from left to right etc. Untill you reach the end.

You can compare this to this:




But in case of mario it looks like this (the linearity is nowhere near the level of shooters but its a huge downgrade nontheless)

Mario 64                                                                                          Mario 3D Land.

Imho a big part here plays the stupid time limit.  Nobody dies because of the time limit it seems its just there to prevent you from enjoying the game/visuals/artstyle/level music etc.  Its way to much time to actually die and not enough time to enjoy the level as much as possible.
I love to just do nothing and watch mario do stuff like this:

But that stupid time limit makes it impossible.

If they would remove that time limit the game could be so much better. And if you really insist on the time limit make a second playthrough with time limit.

It isn't really fair to compare the first level of Super mario 3D Land to Hazy Mazy Cave, the most complex level in the game. The thing is that save for the time limit, the only real difference is that Mario 64 kicks you out of the level before you can get back to the additional stars  and 3D World allows you to get them in one run. If Mario 64 didn't kick you out, it would have a much simpler game. 3D Land's levels are on average just as large as 64 levels and 3D World levels are even larger.