2.5/5 ★ – Lammy's review of Super Mario Galaxy.

Super Mario Galaxy: I have finally played all 3 games in the Mario 3D All Stars collection! Super Mario Galaxy was originally released on the Wii and features Mario doing 3D collectathon things in space as he rescues Peach from Bowser. The main collectables are Stars, similar to Super Mario 64, with boss missions awarding Grand Stars. The levels are arranged similarly to Super Mario Sunshine, meaning that each star is a discrete stage and cannot be accessed from another stage, with the exception of 1 or more Secret stars located within each galaxy. The main gimmicks of the game are the use of the Wiimote as a pointer for motion controls and collection of certain items and the manipulation of gravity and perspective due to being in space. The former gimmick is neat, though I couldn't really engage as intended due to a shoulder issue at the time I played; good news is, the Switch touch screen allowed an alternative, as motion controls could be supplemented by touch controls in the port. The latter gravity gimmick, though, was HORRENDOUS for me. When gravity inverts around Mario, controls will sometimes invert too. It's not consistent, but sometimes the switch will mean you turn around and go back the way you came, or that your holding the stick will move you differently relative to Mario's previous position or the camera. Any time you have to reorient your controls midlevel is rough, which is why so many games use it as a negative status effect, but Galaxy uses it as a mandatory feature. Because it's inconsistent, I never got used to it, and it killed me several times in some of Galaxy's harder time or precision based levels. It's the biggest flaw of the game by far, and is actually enough for me to rate Galaxy the lowest of all 3 games in the collection. It's also the reason that I probably won't ever do Super Luigi Galaxy, the New Game + mode that by expert reports controls worse than the base game but otherwise just replays the game. Galaxy is full of cool worlds and vistas, and the introduction of Rosalina is great, but it's also probably the least replayable of the 3D Mario games IMO. 5/10