Super Mario Sunshine

Super Mario Sunshine is most definitely the best Mario game out there. Great graphics, Storyline, gameplay, and even replay value combine to make Super Mario Sunshine One of Miyamoto's best works, I would have to say. This is the perfect sequel of Mario games, and with a few flaws, this game will be enjoyed to people of ages.

This game was sort of a let-down. I had fun at first, but after awhile I noticed that there were two types of levels:

1) Those that are extremely easy (though it might take awhile to figure out what you need to do). 2) Those that are extremely tedious. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're hard, it just means that you need to do them over and over and over again until you get lucky enough that Mario doesn't slip, slide, or fall the wrong way. Almost all of the obstacle course levels are like this.

It's one of those games that derives almost all of its difficulty from the fact that you're trying to control a 3-D environment with a 2-D interface. Most gamers would call that poor design.

Probably the most annoying thing about the gameplay is the backward-loop high jump. It never happens when you're counting on it, and it often does happen when you really don't want it to. After you've spent 10 minutes climbing a wall, and you fall all the way down to the bottom again simply because Mario decided he didn't want to do a backward high-jump this time, you just feel like turning it off. I did many times. I only came back because I figured it would get better. It never did.

I found myself saying after just about every level: "I'm glad I'll never have to do that level again."

Except for the gameplay, this game is excellent. Good graphics, somewhat good story, and it's a big game -- there's a lot to do.

Nintendo just keeps delivering the goods. While this may debate-ably fall slightly short of later outings like Super Mario Galaxy, this game seemed to make for bigger and better things in the 3D Mario gaming sector. Mario Sunshine came out on a system which it helped boost install-bases for: The Nintendo GameCube, which would remain Nintendo's worst-performing home-console, sitting at 22 million + units, until the Wii-U under-performed the GameCube in 2016 (13.5 million+ total). It's amazing that Mario Sunshine managed to sell over 6 million units worldwide, because this game is one of the best Mario games in the character's 32 years of history. Even an under-performing console doesn't keep quality games down from getting the attention they deserve.

This game was effectively the true successor to Mario 64, and it shares a lot of the same sound effects, jumping mechanics and feels like what would have happened if that game got polished up and thrown into a different environment to the Castle. In this case Mario is at Isle Delfino and the setting is an emphasized tropical and sunny paradise that feels like everything basically takes place at, or near the beach. The only time the beach aesthetic doesn't come into play is when you enter the areas where Shadow Mario takes your squirt nozzle away. Some of the time those levels feel like they could be outside the world of the game itself, like in the far reaches of space.

Taking everything into account, Mario Sunshine is a fine piece from Nintendo's massive gaming library. Give this one a shot; it deserves it.

SMS is definitely a gorgeous game to look at and a perfect game to get you in a summertime mood. The perfect blue skies, glorious sunshine and beautiful water effects make you just want to pass through the screen and into the Isle of Delfino in the game itself. Mario vacations in this sunny resort only to find it's covered in pollution when he arrives. So now it's up to him to clean it up across the various levels and worlds.

It's one of those games that you can just keep on playing over the years and even put aside for a while before going back to it. It doesn't really have the same charm in the winter months however. The music, the graphics, the humor are all cute and colorful. It makes for perfect escapism.

However, the designers have simply tried to cram in too many controls on the Gamecube pad and, as a result, it's a very hard game to control. Many levels and missions require precision manoeuvring and can often take several minutes of painstaking balance and ascension only for it all to be undone, as Mario plummets several hundred feet, by a tiny little flaw in your button-bashing. It will seriously drive you C-R-A-Z-Y.

Had it not been for this, I would probably have stuck with SMS to the end, but I had to just be done with it once and for all, otherwise I would have chucked my Gamecube at the wall.

Graphics A Sound A Gameplay C Lasting Appeal B

Nowhere near as good as Luigi's Mansion, the game's puzzles are so repetitive and frustrating much of the game's fun is taken away. The camera angles are nearly impossible and Mario's moves are hard to learn. Spraying off graffiti, hanging on hooks that are nearly impossible to grab onto, balancing on tightropes, talking to Delfino residents and some of them punching you all the way across the town, a bunch of new, useless moves and even the music is pretty annoying after a while. Granted, the game is not entirely bad, it never gets boring just very, very frustrating. Maybe it's just me but I think Nintendo didn't put as much effort and thought into this game as they have with so many others.

Overall rating: 4/10