Super Mario Sunshine (GameCube)

Reviewed by

Jeff Gerstmann

on 08/26/2002

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Page 2

As you proceed through the game, you'll find other nozzles that can take the place of your hover nozzle. The rocket nozzle blasts you high into the sky but won't let you hover, and the propeller nozzle lets you launch yourself along the surface of the ground or water but never really plays a meaningful role unless you're bent on finding every last shine. You'll also eventually get to ride on Mario's dinosaurlike sidekick, Yoshi, but unfortunately he seems like he was thrown in as an afterthought. Yoshi is only useful for his strange ability to spit fruit juice all over the place, which in turn is used for only one required puzzle and a handful of optional ones.

Needless to say, you spend most of your time in Super Mario Sunshine controlling Mario. But you'll also have to spend time controlling the game's camera. Actually, much of the game's difficulty comes from having to keep the camera in check while performing Mario's otherwise simple tasks. The game is slow to auto-correct the camera angle when you change direction, and as a result, you really have to stay on top of the C stick to make sure you can see what you need to see. In addition to circling the perspective around Mario, you can also use the camera control to zoom in or out on the action. This can be helpful if your back is up against a wall, but sometimes even the camera controls can't help you there, and you'll be left looking at the back of a wall texture while a silhouette of Mario gives you a general idea of where he is on the screen.

Sometimes the game is more frustrating than fun.

Unfortunately, you won't see silhouettes of any nearby platforms or other important objects, making this solution completely worthless. The manual talks about the camera automatically opening a porthole of sorts when you're up against walls so you can still see the action, but it rarely does this, instead using the porthole effect in places where you'd never need it. While the camera tends to let you direct the action, it acts up quite a bit in tight spots--you can swing the camera to wherever you like, but the minute you let go of the C stick, it quickly spins back around to its default position, which can be inconvenient. The game's camera problems are particularly noticeable in the episode that takes you behind the amusement park's Ferris wheel and the game's final boss fight.

Unlike the camera, the graphics of Super Mario Sunshine seem much more polished. The entire game has a very stylized look to it that's excellent from an artistic standpoint, and, more often than not, Super Mario Sunshine is also a pretty great-looking game from a technical standpoint. It usually runs at a solid and smooth frame rate, the characters are colorful and well modeled, and the character animation is well done. Many of the game's textures also look pretty good. But when you get close to some of the textures, they start to look really low-res and blocky. The game is colorful, but some sections of game appear almost washed-out--this is probably a deliberate effect used to convey the sunny nature of Isle Delfino, but it really doesn't work terribly well in some spots. The game's water effects are amazing when seen in the ocean surrounding the island and other bodies of water found throughout the game, and the water puddles left by the cannon make for some nice reflection effects.

Other impressive effects abound, like the heat shimmer you'll see when looking at distant objects. The game slows down in a few spots, but with the rather annoying exception of the game's final boss level, which slows down in a fairly crucial spot, the slowdown doesn't get in the way of the action. The game's levels are really large, and the graphics are rendered with an impressive draw distance that really gives you a clear view of all the surrounding action. Unfortunately, the game's full motion video, which is used for the occasional story sequence, is quite bad. The character models and locations in these FMV sequences really don't look much better than their in-game equivalents.

Super Mario Sunshine has a lot going for it, but it could have been better.

Super Mario Sunshine's FMV also houses some of the lousiest voice-over work to be found on the GameCube. None of the voices fit particularly well. Princess Peach sounds too ditzy, Mario is limited to grunts and other nonverbal communications, and the game's bad guys are completely miscast and downright disappointing. The rest of the game's audio fares a lot better, though. The standard collection of hoots and hollers come from Mario as he scoots and hops through the game, and you'll like the sound of his shoes tapping against various types of surfaces. It would have been nice to hear all the island inhabitants speak their lines, but given the combination of the poor voice work used throughout the rest of the game and the generally poor wording used in most of the game's conversations, it's probably for the best that the characters remain mostly silent. Most of the game's music is good, but none of it really stands out. The updated version of the classic Mario theme that plays during the obstacle course levels seems like a forced tie to Mario's past.

The Mario series has almost always been nothing short of incredible. If you've been playing video games for even a few years and have tried to come up with a list of the best games ever made, chances are you placed at least two or three Mario games high on that list. But Super Mario Sunshine has trouble living up to that legacy. On its own merits, Super Mario Sunshine is a solid game with a really distinctive look and some great moments, but it also has its fair share of shortcomings. While the game isn't overly difficult, too many of the game's goals are the sort that make you think, "Well, at least I'll never have to do that again," immediately after completing them. While some gamers will be able to look past or even embrace the fact that Super Mario Sunshine sticks extremely close to Super Mario 64's formula, others will find that the game suffers from a lack of innovation. The game's technical issues and often-gimmicky design are still tougher to ignore, and they combine to make the game seem surprisingly unpolished and somewhat rushed at times. In the end, though, there's enough in Super Mario Sunshine to warrant a purchase, particularly when you consider that there really aren't any decent platformers to be found on the GameCube and that this really is the only new Mario game out there.