Six years after the release of Mario 64, Mario returns in a 3D adventure once again. Although much of the last six years have been spent racing, partying, and playing various sports, Mario decides to go on vacation with Peach, Toadsworth (the chancellor, I think), and a bunch of other nameless Toads. Encouraged by a commercial, Mario decides to visit tropical Isle Delfino... but when he gets there, he finds his trip won't be as relaxing as he had hoped. Someone has spread graffiti all over the island, scattering the guardian Shine Sprites (think Mario 64's Power Stars) in the process. What's worse, the perpetrator looks just like Mario. Mario is found guilty of this crime, and is charged with cleaning it up before he can leave the island. Thus, we have Mario Sunshine... which is not a kidsie game, despite the name.

This game is rated on a scale of 1 - 10, 10 being best. Does Mario Sunshine live up to the expectations of Mario 64's sequel, or is it all wet? Read on to find out!

Story: 7

Not bad for an adventure game, and better than the average Mario storyline. The story is a bit more complex than the intro to this Review suggests, but I can't say more without giving away... stuff. One thing I didn't like is that the Star Sprites, which you are seeking out, don't have any direct power. In Mario 64, for example, you need to collect Power Stars to gain access to new courses; when you get 70, you can go to the final boss. In Mario Sunshine, the number of Shine Sprites you receive makes no difference; instead, you need to collect certain Shines to reach the next course and, at the end, the final boss. As a result, the Shines are only loosely part of the story.

Graphics: 10

This was to be expected. Mario games have always excelled in the graphics department. Although somewhat outdated now, Mario 64 had amazing graphics at the time of its release. Mario Sunshine is the same way. Everything looks great, especially the water... Nintendo clearly put a lot of effort into the water effects in this game. I'm trying to think of some graphical thing to complain about, but I just can't. I'm sure in the future games will have better graphics even than this, but they can't get too much better before you won't be able to tell that the game is on your TV screen.

Sound: 8

By and large, the music in this game is pleasant. It's not the best soundtrack I've heard, but there are some memorable tunes. I appreciate the effort Nintendo made by giving every course its own music... it was not like that six years ago. A point off for the annoying beeping you hear when you're low on health, which makes me really want to get some coins to recover. That's not always easy to do, so for the sake of my ears I often want to just kill myself. I haven't actually done that yet, but one of these days... Oh yeah, and the music you hear when you die, which is a modified version of the death music in Mario 1, is very obnoxious... grr...

Characters: 9

If you're looking for old favorites like Goomba and Koopa Troopa, you'll be disappointed (though Koopa Troopa does appear in mechanical form). However, some of Mario's old foes do make appearances, like Bob-omb, Piranha Plant, Blooper, and even Rocky Wrench, who hasn't been seen since Mario 3. There are a bunch of new enemies as well, but returning favorites remain a sizeable percentage of the enemies you'll see since, like in Mario 64, there are far less enemies walking around than in Mario's early platformers. I feel that Nintendo did a good job of balancing the old against the new, even though I know some gamers will want to see more old characters making an appearance. On the good guy front, I don't know why Peach has Toadsworth with her rather than the Toad we all know and, maybe in one or two cases, love... but I love how, when you talk to him, it sounds like he's saying "yada blahblahblahblah". The locals are cute, and I like how some of them appear in more than one course. Yoshi's return as a rideable character is welcome as well. I have some issues with the main villain, but not enough to lower the score.

Moves: 8

Moves are very important in adventure games, since they'll determine what kind of things you'll be able to accomplish. Mario Sunshine does a pretty good job in the moves department. All of Mario's jumps from his last adventure are back, and he also has a new Spin Jump, which is good for height when you don't have room for a triple jump. It also cleans Mario when he's muddy, although I don't think being muddy hurts you at all. Mario does lose a few moves, like the simple Punch and Kick, but he more than makes up for it with FLUDD, the water pump he wears on his back. FLUDD has several nozzels, each of which does different things. The main nozzel lets you attack enemies and clean up gunk. The Hover Nozzel increases the height of Mario's jump a bit, and greatly increases how far he can jump. The Rocket Nozzel lets Mario blast very high into the air, although he does not get much distance out of the jump. Finally, the Turbo Nozzel lets Mario move very quickly.

The variety of moves is very good, but I took off points for a few annoyances. Mario's somersault and Spin Jump can be difficult to pull off, and it is important to do so since the game often requires you to jump to the best of Mario's ability. However, Wall Kick is much easier to use than in Mario 64 (it's also used much more often). I was disappointed that you can't have all four FLUDD nozzels at once; when you pick up the Rocket Nozzel, you lose the Hover Nozzel. It would be best if you could have all four at once, maybe you could find Turbo and Rocket later in the game; this would give you even more moves at any given time, and would give you a reason to revisit early courses which may require one of the new nozzels. Finally, the Turbo Nozzel is hardly used, although all of Mario's other moves will come in handy.

Gameplay: 3

Surprised by the low score? So am I. Nintendo made a good effort with this game, but they really blew it with the camera. Mario 64's camera took a lot of criticism, but I'd take that over this one any day. The camera in this game is completely manual, which means you need to adjust it yourself while moving along. Sometimes your view of Mario will get blocked by walls, trees, or characters, and it can be very difficult to get a view that allows you to clearly see both Mario and where you want to get to. The L button is supposed to center the camera behind Mario, but when you are unable to fix the camera yourself, L is often unable to help as well. The result is a lot of frustration and some guessing when you need to move while off-camera. An automatic camera that lets you adjust the view if you wish would have been much better.

That's the biggest problem in terms of gameplay. Another fairly big problem is also graphical in nature. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell exactly where an object is... in other words, an object would look the same on a flat screen whether it's high up or close by, in either case it looks large. It would be easier to land on these objects if you could see Mario's shadow, but you can only see it when you're right above the ground, when you won't have time to change your landing place. This can cause problems when you need to land on a small object, like a thin wire suspended in the air. Even though it may not be realistic, I would have liked Mario's shadow to appear much more often so I'd know for sure whether he's over the target or not. The way it is now, I feel like many of my jumps are leaps of faith, not good when you need to land a lot of jumps in a row to reach a Shine or blue coin (which leads to Shines).

Another problem is this game's requirements. In Mario 64, there are 120 Power Stars, and you need 70. Only one of those is required, you can pick the other 69. In Mario Sunshine, you must collect 50 given Shines. The other 70 Shines are completely optional. The result is that if you find yourself unable to collect one of the 50 Shines, you could find it impossible to beat the game. In fact, you could, in theory, have 116 Shines and still not be allowed to fight the final boss... or you could beat the game with only 50 Shines, and never get more than half of them.

I have mixed feelings about the division of the game into Episodes. When you enter a course in search of a Shine, you must pick an Episode (each course has eight). You can't reach Episode 2 until completing Episode 1, which means if you can't find the first Shine in a course you can't even try to find the next seven. On occassion you'll be able to see a Shine from a future Episode, but you must actually be in that Episode to collect it. Like in Mario 64, collecting a Shine will cause you to leave the course. As a result, this game is less free-flowing than games like Banjo-Kazooie, where you can collect all ten Jiggies in a course on one play, if you wish and can stay alive long enough. However, the course layout changes a little bit in each Episode, which makes exploring the course and finding all the blue coins a lot more interesting. Overall I'd say the Episode system is good.

I was pleasantly surprised with the water usage in this game. Before buying this game, I was worried that I'd constantly be running out of water and would always have to be searching out a way to refill rather than for a Shine. Happily, FLUDD can hold a lot more water than it looks like it can, so you can shoot and hover just about as much as you want. There's water all over the place, so you're bound to be near some sometime between, say, half full and empty. The Turbo Nozzle is a water guzzler, but you don't need to use it much anyway.

Terrain: 8

All of the courses are on a tropical island, so to a certain extent the worlds are similar. However, Nintendo did a good job of giving each world its own theme. Worlds include a village, carnival, and resort hotel, all things you might see on a tropical island, yet unique in their own way. Nice job.

Difficulty: 6

Mario Sunshine is a lot harder than Mario 64, that's for sure. That means both getting enough Shines to beat the game, and getting all the Shines. Some Shines are difficult to find, others are difficult to reach, and then of course you have the "fun" ones where both are difficult. I don't mind the hike in difficulty, but some of the Shines seem unfairly difficult, enough to be annoying. In one course, you need to collect eight red coins; although that in itself is rather difficult, the hardest challenge is collecting the Shine once it appears. As a result, I had to collect all eight red coins several times.

Mario games usually have a good difficulty curve. That is, the first course is pretty easy, the second course is a bit harder, and so on to the last course, which can be rather tricky to say the least. Although part of it may have been due to my lack of understanding of the controls, I didn't feel that the first course was especially easy. In fact, I found that the second course was the hardest, at least for me, and the fifth course was the easiest. The mini-course which leads to the final boss wasn't any harder than what I'd had to do for some of the required Shines, although it was still tricky.

Length: 6

Although the worlds in this game are huge, there are only seven of them (eight if you count the central area, which has a lot of hidden stuff of its own). The result is a game about the same size as Mario 64. This game will probably take longer, but only because it's harder. Even though the courses change a bit depending on the Episode, the game doesn't seem that long... Donkey Kong 64 seems a lot longer. While I won't say this game is short, I was expecting a longer game since Nintendo had six years to prepare. That's the longest span Mario has ever gone between adventures.

Replay Value: 4

Once you beat the final boss, you'll probably have a long ways to go to get 120 Shines. While you could already have 119, you may have as few as 50... I had around 80 myself. Getting 120 Shines could easily double your total play time or more, since the remaining ones will be well hidden. However, completing the game does not seem to open up any secrets and, to be honest, I kind of felt cheated when I completed the game, since it required so much extra work to collect all the Shines, yet the reward was minimal. As a result, there is little reason to continue playing once you've found all the Shines, and Mario Sunshine could start to get dusty. Sure, fans of the game will want to pull it out again once they've forgotten where all the blue coins are, but there's no particular reason to replay this game that you wouldn't find in just about any other adventure.

Fun Factor!: 7

A terrible camera adds a lot of frustration, some unfair difficulty can make the game annoying at times, and there aren't enough courses to make the game last as long as I feel it should. All this means I can't give one of my highest ratings. However, the game looks so good and has so much to find that, unless you have a personal grudge against bad cameras, I'd say you're bound to like this game.

Recommendation: Although I feel Mario Sunshine fails as the near-perfect sequel to Mario 64, there is a lot of room to not be quite that good while still presenting a great playing experience. Mario Sunshine does just that, and if you have a GameCube I'd say you have a lot of explaining to do if you don't get this game as soon as you can. If you are waiting for a smash hit before buying the Cube, this game is not quite it... but lovers of Mario, adventures, and GameCube should add this to their collection.

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