The space station is a far poorer hub world than the castle in Super Mario 64, but it's also less emphasized than the castle. Of course, this was almost completely removed from Galaxy 2, a change for the better. However, if this is your big complaint about Galaxy, you're doing it wrong. This game has the most insane and brilliant level design ever in a platformer. And it BORED you? I'm confused by the existence of this opinion. There are deeper, more important games out there to be sure, but Super Mario Galaxy is the most fun you can have playing a game released this generation.
Yes, the first Mario Galaxy bored me, as did Galaxy 2 to a much less extent. The opening worlds of the first Galaxy are
profoundly slow; tedious; and boring (
especially the worlds that use the Bee suit). The game's boss fights are also some of the lamest I've ever seen in a 3D game. I also felt that the new, extremely-linear level design was far less appealing to me than the exploration-based design of Super Mario 64, where you could go almost anywhere in a world and just
stumble into objectives to accomplish. I also felt like neither Galaxy game
really did anything interesting with their gravity mechanic. Sure, you could run around the planetoids and there was a bit of a gravity effect, but it wasn't like either game really
did anything with that other than having you walk upside-down every once in a while. It was basically Mario 64 in an extremely linear fashion, and that's not terribly interesting to me.
And don't get me started on the tacked-on motion controls that frustrated me to no end, or the completely pointless Starbits that made unlocking things such a chore.
I just don't like the first Mario Galaxy game, and I only somewhat like the second Galaxy game due to how it uses Yoshi and its quicker pace.
And I think considering I stated that Xenoblade should have been the #1 Wii 1st Party game, I did
not find Mario Galaxy to be "the most fun you can have playing a game released this generation." And if we're including the other platforms, Mario Galaxy 1 is at
best somewhere around the mid 40s on my list of top games this generation, and it's probably not even
that high.