Most of my gaming time today was spent in Super Mario Galaxy, where I’m now up to 31 stars. I’m an obsessive collector, trying to get all the stars from each galaxy before moving on even while plenty of other new galaxies have been unlocked, so it’s taking me a bit longer than normal.

The most notable part of SMG is in just how much sheer variety there is between the different galaxies, and even when you’re redoing the same galaxy for another star, you’re taking a different path that usually requires a different approach. It keeps things fresh, and you’re never bored because you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

There are also comets, which have you redo a previous level but with a new twist on it (e.g., a time limit, lower maximum health, you have to race a clone…), and ‘? block’ galaxies which are much heavier on precision platforming skills. I’ve been able to beat all of them so far, but reportedly some of the late-game comets are pretty challenging.

Boss fights are also interesting in that they all need their own different tactics, but figuring them out is always intuitive. So far I’ve never had the problem like in other games where you can only weaken the boss by performing some weird series of steps that’s completely non-obvious.

The only problem so far is that the camera works just fine in most stages, except water stages. In one galaxy, you have to lure a torpedo over to hit a weight in a cage, except that after you’ve gotten close enough to get the torpedo to fire, you have to turn around and head for that cage, but the camera is slow to turn with you, so you’re swimming blindly under time pressure. I’ve never really liked the water stages in Mario games to begin with, though…