I'm sorry, but since Sunshine came up I gotsta throw in my two cents. ;)
I found Super Mario Sunshine to be a very fun, open, enjoyable game with a fresh approach to the series - tropical themes. I had fun using FLUDD and enjoyed the musical tracks and controls of the game very muchly, and I even would go so far as to say that it is my favorite 3D Mario game, and one of my all-time favorite Mario games. It was very clever how the island started out drab and dull-looking early on in the game, but as you collected more stars, the sky became brighter, the town became more lively, and the music even sounded somewhat crisper, a nice touch indeed.
On the other hand, I found the motion control to be a poor addition to Mario Galaxy (and most games in general), and I found that the spinning attack and purple star things pretty much overtook the rest of Mario's technique arsenal to make the rest of his abilities pretty worthless. His new suits are lame and unmemorable, and if you get hit like once you lose it and have to go back and get another one. Likewise, the flame suit and ice suit are practically worthless since you only get those for a limited time. The worlds are small and confusing to run around on with motion control because you easily lose your 'bearings' for a few seconds, like hitting an invisible wall in Star Fox and being redirected the other way, lol. I felt that everything was very gimmicky, and I hated that you didn't have control over the camera because you can't look around at the world and actually see what Mario sees, it's a step backwards and is totally unimmersive, unlike Sunshine where you could actually zoom in over Mario's shoulder when he used the FLUDD - a technique with such a nice touch that Capcom pretty much implemented the same feature into Resident Evil 4 to much applaud. I just felt like, it wasn't a Mario game at all. Yeah I can get past having new characters added like Princess Roselina and the new star people, but it seems like this is more like NiGHTS than anything - spinning around and flying to different places, then shooting at stuff to slow it down or having a friend slow the stuff down for you. That's really all this game is. Whatever happened to Mario & Luigi 2-player games Nintendo? Why haven't we ever seen you take things a step forward and introduce Mario and Luigi co-op? Well, why do that now when you can implement baby features like star-paralysis now, and build up the hype for a mario and luigi co-op game and make more money in the future? It's gimmicky, that's all there is to it. Also the music, or somewhat lack thereof in Galaxy is disappointing, it didn't rally my emotions quite like the upbeat tunes of Isle Delfino did.
Now I will say, there are a few things I did enjoy about Galaxy. 1) The graphics - they aren't the most impressive thing you've ever seen and they do look a bit oversaturated with light (because of the sun), but the textures and models both look very crisp and clean, and you can tell they have made an improvement over Sunshine in that respect. 2) The cutscenes that help move the story along, as well as some of the dialogue the characters use, helps add more substance to the Mario series. I liked running around the Mushroom Kingdom at the beginning of the game, it's too bad Nintendo didn't make Mushroom Kingdom a fully fleshed-out area to explore as a treat to us longtime fans (whom most of us are.) 3) I like how, sometimes they would take advantage of the spherical 'planets' by having stuff hidden in craters and other unobvious places, so that you would have to actually take the time to examine planets thoroughly to discover helpful items and secrets. 4) There's actually some voice-acting here, and perhaps they will make better use of this in future Mario games.
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