I believe Super Mario Galaxy will win game of the year because it's a rare game type and the only truly great game on the Wii unless you count MP3. CoD4, Orange Box, Halo 3, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Ratchet, Uncharted, etc might be better games to a lot of people, but I'm sure if it's done by votes Galaxy will be the winner at a lot of magazines.
That said, I don't think it's game of the year. There's no reason for me to replay the game. As others have said, the game is too easy in general, and the tasks of collecting are tedious. I did really enjoy the later levels, but many of those would be easier with Luigi's higher jump anyway.
Luigi's level is probably one of my favorites because it forces you to plan your path and make a ton of near flawless moves without screwing up once. I will say the long jump did help me, but I agree it's not needed as someone else said. I think the ultimate challenge would be getting all 150 in that level (as mario, since i just saw that video above). Talk about one of the hardest tasks in videogame history.
To sum up the problems with the game:
1. Generally too easy.
2. Camera issues and not being able to shift it much of the time.
3. Swimming. Ugh.
4. Fireballs mean you can no longer spin. Shooting fireballs with spin move is not cool. I'd much rather take the shooting star bits ability away. Also, why is that suit only temporary the entire game?
5. Bee suit. Come on. It's too slow and boring.
6. Spring suit: talk about frustrating just to move.
7. Hardly any replay value. Only the later levels prove difficult. Forcing you to replay the entire game without a higher difficulty or anything to collect besides the same exact stuff you just spent hours collecting just to get to that last level is very tedious.
8. Multiplayer is a nice bonus, but not true multiplayer.
9. Ice suit also only temporary. Why not let you keep a few things for longer periods other than the crappy Bee Suit and Spring Suit?
10. Depth perception is difficult at times. Hard to tell where you are going to land. But then, I didn't play Super Mario 64 or Sunshine for those reasons. And yes, I do plan to play them eventually. I have come around to accepting 3-d platformers, although I look forward to going to New Super Mario Bros. and Super Paper Mario.
The main theme song is fantastic. I'm not sure if it was in the previous 3-d games that I missed, since much of the other music seems to be rehashed (and I appreciate all the Super Mario Bros. 3 music, and Super Mario World spliced in. It was fitting since those games are what Galaxy is to its previous 2 games as well I hear), but I'm not sure why the music is so commended otherwise.
In conclusion, it's one of the best games I have played this year for sure, and probably one of the best I've played in a long time. That said, there's no reason to replay it. I guess that's more of a mario problem in general really. At least the previous games increased the difficulty the 2nd time through, though! I enjoyed replaying Ratchet a lot more because of the increased difficulty and the surprise that you get all new weapon upgrades. If Ratchet had online and splitscreen multiplayer (deathmatch at least), I'd say flat out that it was a better game than Galaxy (and the graphical bonus is nice, because there are a lot of "wow" moments with Rachet and not too many with Galaxy after the first few levels). I'd also say that although CoD4 was a lot shorter, it's single player was more exciting and it has multi-player that's awesome.
Hopefully I'll get time with some of the other games. I probably won't have enough time to play through Bioshock and Orange Box when I upgrade my PC, but I'll get to try Rock Band at least.
, Mass Effects throws you into a huge world, Uncharted redefines the word: Interactive Movie. All of them may be not as perfect but they are not so small.
