One of these days Alice...

Each chapter of this game seems to try hard to break from formula, making it impossible to guess what's coming next. For example, getting the next star crystal after the train trip was easy enough but the trip itself was the challenge.

First I had to get the mob boss' daughter back, but that was easy enough, to get the train ticket. Then once on the train Mario received a note about an impending stick explosion if he did not get off the train, what followed was a long line of false leads as Mario and a wanna be detective tried to figure the mystery out. The detective first went to racial profiling and suspected the rich Bobomb family also on the train, then a gluttonous passenger, a stowaway ghost, and finally correctly suspected a famous actor on the train (who was actually the ghost who impersonated Mario before).

After the sleuthing Mario had to navigate through a unusually large train station to close a bridge preventing the train from continuing. Along the way he also got the super jump ability, which will open up more hidden areas later.

Finally on the last day of the train ride all the passengers except for Mario were kidnapped by hundreds of smoke monsters and Mario had to fight a huge gestalt smoke monster boss fight on the top of the train just before it arrived at it's destination. Once there the crystal was easy to get like I said, and Mario even picked up a green set of clothes to make him look like Luigi (who the detective mistook him for the whole time).

Peach meanwhile finds out that the bad guy's base she is trapped in is actually on the moon (you would think the 1/3 gravity would be a tip off) and that the need her in some way to release the demon held behind the 1000 ear door. Unfortunately the computer that was helping her because it was in love was formatted.

Bowser's segment was taking again from the classic 2D Mario games and was dungeon level (compleat with rotating fire bars). In the end he some hoe finds the Rawk's dressing room and proceeds to pound him.

So now Mario has to get to the moon some how to get the last crystal star and rescue Peach, I'm betting the large cannon in the snow town on the map will have somethign to do with that...