I much prefer the aesthetic of Mario Galaxy. Everything isn't obscured and uglified by an overuse of DOF and bloom. Mario himself looks much more alive and "organic" as well. SM3DW characters look like plastic toys. The effects in SM3DW are much nicer, of course, and the models/enviromnents naturally have a higher poly count, but, judging specifically based on videos, I'd say Galaxy wins hands down.

I liked the use of DOF and bloom, it softened potential jaggies. I do prefer Galaxy 1's epic space backdrops over 3D World's plainer ones, however.

Overall, 3D World doesn't have quite the visual impact today that Galaxy had in 2007, simply because the latter shattered people's perceptions of what the Wii was visually capable of, while 3D World doesn't do the same for Wii U.

That said, 3D World is still a beautiful game, at least in my view. There were several times when I stopped and thought, "wow, these are actually some of the best graphics I've ever seen in a video game".

I think DOF is great if used correctly, ala Pikmin 3, but SM3DW takes it a bit too far for my tastes. Bloom I'm just not a very big fan of period. Now that you mention it, I do see a distinct lack of jagies in gameplay videos for 3Dworld. 

I do agree that 3DW is a very nice looking game though, and, considering that most games look 2x as good in person as in videos, I'm sure I won't have much to complain about once I actually get to playing it. Still, the plasticky characters are somewhat of a concern for me, and I'm seeing a bit of the same thing in MK8(not quite as extreme as here, though). Hopefully this won't become a trend for Nintendo HD games.

Galaxy still holds a special place in my heart, and, yes, it did take great advantage of the Wii's power. I can still hardly believe my eyes when I see it running at 60fps.

if you look in 20 feet  front of you in 3d world all you get is dof/blur, it's like not going out with out prescriped  glasses and the bloom is just horrible, look at galaxy 1 & 2 and look t 3d word you can clearly see which one is taking advantage of the hardware it has.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, it's more than 20 feet, and it's always outside the immediate play area.

Galaxy is pushing the Wii much harder than 3D World pushes the Wii U though, you're right about that, the reason is because Nintendo is still getting the hang of the Wii U hardware, while the Wii was similar enough to the Gamecube that a lot of their tools and expertise carried over.

Yeah, even after owning a 360 for years and a Wii U for weeks, Galaxy still wows me visually. Such a beautiful game.

look at the tree in the background, its less then 20 feet and already covered with blur, it's outside the field of play, but its just really ugly.

Personally, I don't think the Depth of Field is that big of a deal.
If used right, it can save on allot of resources as it can hide the uglies from a background that would bring down the entire scene (I.E. Like Sprite based tree's.)
Plus it helps bring a players focus to the forground.

If you notice though, things that are supposed to be round and/or circular, are round and/or circular, thus that tells us the game is using tessellation and not the same levels of Tessellation that's found in the Xbox 360. (I.E. Upgraded Truform based tech or a software based approach, it is much more prevelent here, hinting at fully hardware accelleration.)
If you look at Mario Galaxy 2, you will see what is supposed to be circular actually has flat edges in order to conserve on the geometry budget.


It helps that Nintendo has a fantastic art style that hide's some of the limitations in graphical fidelity thanks to the hardware, they should indeed be praised for that aspect alone.

not really, it just means it's using a high poly count, but when you actually get very close up you can actually see the flaws in the models, here is a pic of a mario model, you can clearly see if you look at the mario model is not perfectly round. but it does look round enough from a certain distance at 720p.

Mario 3D World looks great on any decent HD set, the resolution is the last thing you're thinking about when playing the game.

Generally speaking Nintendo's games look gorgeous in HD, it's all the color and the fact that they don't get bogged down with the same grey/brown palette that so many other game makers are obsessed with.

Playing Wii U reminds me of getting my SNES for the first time back in the day and being so impressed with the vibrancy of the colors of the games.

But I agree EAD Tokyo is likely capable of pushing the Wii U hardware much further. Had to get this game done on time though, because apparently no other Nintendo studio is capable of releasing an HD game on time. My mind still boggles at how much content they managed to squeeze into this game and the fact that its simultaneously satisfying as a single player or multiplayer platformer. EAD Tokyo are just men among boys.