As I've been playing the 3D Mario games, I've always felt that they have fantastic ideas on paper, yet fail to fully explore them through gameplay. While 64 laid a fantastic foundation, it has aged very poorly as time as gone on. Sunshine implemented some creative mechanics and had lots of visual personalities, but it felt severely unfinished and allowed for no actual expression through gameplay. Galaxy melds the best of both worlds by creating a fun platforming experience with lots of freedom on what to do and when to do it.

The experience still isn't perfect, though, with some wonky controls in certain sections, as well as Mario not feeling nearly as fluid as previous games, capped off with another annoying fixed camera system for the majority of the game. Nevertheless, Galaxy is a great game and is certainly worth playing.