Super Mario Sunshine (2002)

I played this game about 10 years ago and I absolutely loved it, so I decided to replay it this summer, and... what a disappointment.

The summer theme is fresh and innovative. The plot is another idiotic nonsense, as they have us accustomed. People say "it's just a platformer" but c'mon... The soundtrack is not bad, but weak.

But the gameplay... Well, I give it 3 stars because I simply had fun playing it. I like platformers and this one is not an exception, but I haven't played another platformer with SO MANY flaws. Yeah, I have played worse platformers, but mostly because they were just plain. Let's list the most important flaws:

1. The controls are chaotic. Controlling Mario is like taming a wild horse. Even if you know how do you have to move, Mario can do whatever he wants to.

2. Collectables are absurdly cryptic. Do you miss one blue coin? Good luck, because it can be ANYWHERE in ANY chapter. Maybe you had to soak a wood table in the chapter 3 of this level. If you miss it, you have to inspect ALL chapters... or use a walkthrough. So I used a walkthrough. A lot of them are invisible, hidden after walls, appears from nowhere when you make a nonsense... I don't know a game with worse collectable's exploration. It's even worse to know that they have no use at all.

3. There are just a few levels, and their designs are uninspired. The game has... seven levels, I think, and there is no a great level design work. The "excuse" is that every level has 8 chapters, but most of these chapters are anything special anyway.

4. The level design use to be tortuous. For example, you have to climb a mountain full of tramps. If you fall, you have to climb it again, and again, and again. There is no fun here. A lot of levels have no fun at all, and are just painful.

5. Yoshi. What's the point of add Yoshi when using Yoshi give you anything but a headache. You have to take Yoshi to some point where you could easily arrive without Yoshi, but reaching that point with Yoshi is a medieval torture. If you fail that attempt, you have to find a fruit again, and take it to the Yoshi egg again... and fail again because Yoshi's control is even worse than Mario's.

So... This is a platformer with TONS of flaws. I cannot recommend it. I feel generous giving it 3 stars, but, as I said, I inexplicably had fun with it.

played through Mario all stars, played around 10 hours.

i find this game hard to rate as the things it does correct it does great but the things it has done wrong, it has done terribly. its a game that i want to like but i just can't. it seems the reception of the game is either: "this is amazing!" said by someone who played it a few years back or even months, or people say " this game is infuriating!" said by someone attempting sand bird for the 30th time. i disagree with both of these statements, to start i want to dissect what makes the game good. Its controls feel fluid, the games FLUD system never bothered me and admittedly if i could get a photo of Delfino plaza and frame it.. i would. now i want to talk about the bad. the game has terrible difficulty spikes, un-intuitive level design and horrible level diversity. now i might not have made it to the part where the levels are different but for the first 3 levels they literally all look the same with water being used more to seperate the other two and a windmill. Mario 64 had you playing in a clock then playing in a desert than playing on top of a fortress, while sunshine all takes place in one place. the levels are un-intuitive as you have universal objectives like: FLOD levels, red coin levels and chasing Mario shine's. there's zero diversity in shine/level objectives. the difficulty spikes also make little sense too, if you put your 30 year old hat on the floor and look at it through a younger perspective you can see how someone much younger may not be able to do a lot of the challenges. remember this game is designed for children. i would be disappointing to put this game in and reach the sand level as a 10/11 year old.

overall this game is very difficult to rate. i wouldn't say its a 3 as i believe the things it does right it does amazingly, but the things that it does wrong takes away a lot from the experience, feeling like the beautiful art direction has been wasted.

Super Mario Sunshine provides some of the most interesting mechanics and gameplay styles in any Mario game. While it is well known for being very difficult (especially with the sensitive movements and odd camera) it is one of the most satisfying games to master. Having played through it now at least a half-dozen times, I can truly say it is one of the most enjoyable and replayable Marios out there. If it has any faults, they are minimal (blue coins, trope-ish characters, and poor FMV). Otherwise, the relaxing vacation setting, the complex and well-designed secret levels, and the varied location design, all make this one of the best platform games available today.

4.50/5.00

Full Review: https://watchreadgame.com/super-mario-sunshine-review/