I don't know. I'm in the minority, but I just wasn't blown away by Galaxy. Great game, sure, but I could name several games of this generation and the last that I think are a little better.

The tricky thing about reviewing Galaxy is that it's so technically well-done. It's beautiful, it controls wonderfully, and the various minigames and suits add a lot of variety to the game. But it just doesn't have the heart and soul of games like Smash Brothers Melee, Shadow of the Colossus, or the original Halo, say. There's virtually nothing in the game that you can point to and say "this should have been done better" (the camera is one such thing), but, somehow, all of the wonderful pieces just don't quite fit together into a wonderful whole.

It's the little touches. One of the best parts of SM64 was that levels changed, often in very significant ways and often for the better, based on your actions elsewhere. The first level of SM64 is great when you first play through it - you see Mario in all of his 3D glory, you scale a mountain, and you wrestle a giant bob-omb. But it gets even better after you get the wing cap. Then you're flying everywhere, and I imagine that I'm not the only person who would start up the game solely to fly around that level. Nowhere in Galaxy do you get that kind of freedom - the flight you do get access to is always very limited. The bee suit isn't in many levels, and it's never just in a level as something fun to play around with - it's always in a level as something you need to get the stars. The game never does something like what SM64 does by throwing the wing cap into the lava level. Even when you do find the red cap very late in Galaxy, you can only use it on the hub.

I suppose my biggest gripe is the general lack of freedom. While the planetoid system is interesting and fun, it would've been nice if some of the levels were as big and open as some of the SM64 levels. While there were some that were as expansive, they tended to be water levels or to have other constraints that stopped you from freely moving around them, and they certainly didn't give you almost unrestricted flight to explore them with. With SM64, I was always poking around in corners or trying to get to places that looked just out of reach. With Galaxy, I only rarely felt the desire to do that, and it tended to be impossible. And that's where I find a lot of the magic in games.

Edit: That's not to say that it's not the best game of the year, which it might well be. There's nothing on the PS3 that I'd put up against it, and, while Mass Effect is also a great game, there are more 'little things' with it and one or two big things. Bioshock and Portal remain strong contenders in my book - Portal moreso.

I'm totally with NTogepi, I absolutely love the game and apart from the swim levels the game is perfect.
I haven´t played a game that reallty sucked me in in quite some time. I may like Twilight Princess more overall, because I´m more a Zelda player, but Galaxy did everything right to really entertain me every scond of the game, from races to daredevil fights to rolling on a ball to amazing platforming to the return of the suits and the amazing music there was so much to do and to expeience.

I don´t really care if it will be game of the year or not, I had lots of fun with it.

I bought this game a few days ago, and it is absolutely amazing, it's hard to believe it's even possible for a game to be this good.

 I'll agree with swimming being bad and the camera being a bit weird sometimes (then again, the cameras in 64 & Sunshine were even worse), but easy? Naw. I have 113 stars and these last 7 stars are agony.

And Mario 64 better? heheheheheh so funny

I agree, Super Mario Galaxy is much much better than I ever thought and hoped it would be. I´m a Nintendofan and very much a retro gamer and my all time favorite games are mainly from the 16bits era. I consider games like Super Metroid and Zelda- A Link to the Past to be the best ever and never thought there would be a game that would rival them.

I have always enjoyed Mario games in the past, I think the 2d Marios are great (Super Mario Bros and Super Mario World in particular) and I really liked Super Mario 64 despite the fact that I think the game has some flaws. However I am totally blown away by Galaxy and it just feels like so much more than "just" a platformer.

In my opinion Super Mario Galaxy is one of the three best games ever, there are just so many things I love about it, the splendid visuals, the FANTASTIC music and the overall gameplay just blows my mind. What´s most amazing about it though is the way that is feels epic, almost like a Zeldagame which I never would have thought possible with a Mario game. I also love the fact that the camera takes an looking from above kind of view and that the camera controlls the game and not (like in Super Mario 64) that you have to adjust the camera towards the game.

I have always loved 2d more than 3d but if games in 3d are made this brilliant than I´m about to change my mind. Super Mario Galaxy are my new alltime favorite alongside Zelda- A Link to the Past and Super Metroid.

I agree the ghost galaxy was one of the poorer ones, but 1. it was still amazing, just not as amazing and 2. the boss battle with bouldergeist is certainly my favourite of the game, and i was glad that one got "recycled" as a daredevil run.
I do admit it was a tad dissapointing having to do Topman tribe and Kamella more than once (3 times in fact) but there is still a lot of bosses in total anyway.
I have recently been figuring out how long i played all my games (using the wii calender) and it took me 48 1/2 hours to get all 242 stars (121 each for Mario/Luigi).

You forgot to mention SSBB as possible contenders to top SMG and it has a platform adventure mode!

The only games that could ever compete with SM64 were developped by Rare, they used to make the best 3d platform games without a plummer in it. So perhaps Banjo-Kazooie 3 will come near to match it but I doubt it. My hopes for the next Kirby are much higher though.

"And when you're not playing. Remember to put it on an altar and pray to the SMG god like the rest of us."

 Very funny, my friend.

 But seriously, we all have an altar with life size Mr Miyamoto poster, with SMG and such placed around. (like demi gods)

Hopefully Ubi Soft will also release a true Rayman game in the future and not only RRR games, Rayman 2 was a great platformer.

I have high hopes for Banjo-Kazooie 3, I think platformers are still Rare's speciality.

And I'd definitely expect a platformer from Nintendo, maybe Donkey Kong, maybe Yoshi, maybe Kirby, maybe Wario...

 However, platforming was almost dead last gen, I hope it will be revitalised now that SMG proved that a game from this genre can be so great!