Almost 12 years later, Super Mario Galaxy still stands as the best 3D platformer ever made.

[Hieroph]

Almost 2 years later, Knack 2 still stands as the best 3D platformer ever made.

Seriously tho, it's been only 9 years since Super Mario Galaxy 2.

 

[Xtortion]

Always preferred Galaxy 2. Galaxy 1 has it all in the aesthetics department, but the levels always felt a bit too segmented for my liking. Many of levels are a string of unrelated tasks (collect launch star fragments, find a key, light up all the panels, defeat all the enemies, etc) rather than a continuous journey.

 

[Undeniablybiased]

Well, yeah. That's the idea. It's not about designing a game to be replayable, it's designing it to maximize the effect of the first playthrough. The best games are the ones that instill the player with moments of epiphany, one after the other. Once you have learned, there is no way to unlearn so that you can re-experience the game as it was the first time you played it.

That's the unfortunate consequence of a truly great game; it gets reduced to an interactive painting once you have extracted all the knowledge from it, unless it has some additional factor going for it, such as the case with Celeste: it's a pixel-perfect platformer, in addition to being Galaxy-esque in the sense that every level and every collectible is merely a showcase for a mechanic, or an application of a mechanic. That's it. That's what gaming is about, to me. The Witness is the best execution of this concept in this decade, yet I had absolutely zero desire to replay the game. It can still offer some kind of fun in the sense that I've forgotten the solutions to puzzles, those that are hard to do even if you know what to do. Those can still offer some sort of entertainment, but it's far from the first time experience because the aha-moment is lost forever.

Do you remember how great it felt when you took a leap of faith from the top of the Deku Tree, dived down, and pierced through the spider web. Holy shit, it actually worked! The whole dungeon is just a setup for that moment of discovery. Once you've had that aha moment, the dungeon has served its purpose and is no longer that interesting anymore. The solution? Move on to new games! Mario Odyssey and Zelda BotW failed in this crucial aspect, that's why I'm so disappointed in them.

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There's a loooot to unpack here. Player psychology, the difference between mental and physical stimuli, genre expectations, mastery vs content tourism. I don't really want to get into this discussion since I know it's just going to end with both of us agreeing to disagree. So I'll just say, the stuff you're talking about, that isn't how I enjoy or play games. I straight up do not value the stuff you're talking about as much as you do, so we just disagree on a fundamental level.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

There's a loooot to unpack here. Player psychology, the difference between mental and physical stimuli, genre expectations, mastery vs content tourism. I don't really want to get into this discussion since I know it's just going to end with both of us agreeing to disagree. So I'll just say, the stuff you're talking about, that isn't how I enjoy or play games. I straight up do not value the stuff you're talking about as much as you do, so we just disagree on a fundamental level.

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content tourism, thats what I was thinking of. I can't imagine this menailty tackling Bayonetta or Metal Slug X or Street Fighter Alpha 2 or Rainbow Six Siege, or basically any game that encourages mastery of the mechanics. Do you play one match of Mortal Kombat 11, and think "oh, well, done that now. What's next?" Do you bumble your way through a Hitman 2 level, with alerts and failures, beat it that one time, and move on? Do you kinda cruise through Halo 3 on Normal, see all the levels, and never try to dig into Heroic mode or Legendary or anything? I cannot see playing video games very long like that, or very passionately.

 

[Polioliolio]

That would be Mario 64 or Mario Odyssey.

The first Galaxy isn't even the best Mario Galaxy game.

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I enjoyed my time with Odyssey, but found it pretty forgettable in the end. The soundtrack, in my opinion, is rather low tier for Mario games too. Eh.

 

[Sulik2]

This thread has me wondering something. How many actual new 3D platformers have even been made in the last 12 years? 3 marios, two grow homes, two knacks, yooka lelee and then what else? I legit can't think of anymore pure 3D platformers then that. Maybe bubsy 3d. Lots of action games have 3D platforming elements but the genre itself seems mostly dead.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

This thread has me wondering something. How many actual new 3D platformers have even been made in the last 12 years? 3 marios, two grow homes, two knacks, yooka lelee and then what else? I legit can't think of anymore pure 3D platformers then that. Maybe bubsy 3d. Lots of action games have 3D platforming elements but the genre itself seems mostly dead.

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Astro Bot is great if you have PSVR

 

[SmartWaffles]

This thread has me wondering something. How many actual new 3D platformers have even been made in the last 12 years? 3 marios, two grow homes, two knacks, yooka lelee and then what else? I legit can't think of anymore pure 3D platformers then that. Maybe bubsy 3d. Lots of action games have 3D platforming elements but the genre itself seems mostly dead.

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If we are talking strictly about good or somewhat good ones then A Hat in Time, Astro Bot, Hob, ReCore (Definitive Edition only).

 

[RingoGaSuki]

I enjoyed my time with Odyssey, but found it pretty forgettable in the end. The soundtrack, in my opinion, is rather low tier for Mario games too. Eh.

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I felt this too. I got 45 hours and 600 moons in, enjoyed my time with it but didn't feel like it was special at all. Music in particular was very poor, nothing grand like Galaxy brought.

 

[Captain of Outer Space]

I'd put up Jak & Daxter as the best 3D platformer over Galaxy, which just suffers from a terrible lives system that undermines the greatness of the rest of the game. I'd love to see a Galaxy duology on Switch that gets rid of the lives.

 

[diakyu]

OP, there's no 2 after Super Mario Galaxy in the title?

 

[Danthrax]

I played Super Mario Galaxy for the first time a couple years ago and it has trash controls. I often would be trying to run around a little planet and Mario would get confused and just start running in tight circles — even though I was holding the same direction on the control stick. Where's the polish, there? Why didn't they polish that shit out?

The platforming really isn't that great, either. I had a lot more fun with Super Mario 3D World in that respect.

 

[ghibli99]

I preferred 2 overall, but both games combine Voltron-style to make up the GOAT pairing of that generation for me. Unarguably my two favorite games on the Wii.