Still Nintendo's (And possibly the world's) best platforming plumber!
The gaming is the usaul platforming from every Mario game and some maneuvers are adopted from Super Mario 64, the best title on the N64. It also plays and feels very similiar because it is similiar. This time you have got a water pump hose thing you might call who's named Fludd, using the R trigger he shoots water from. This might not be the most classic Mario, but Fludd is used pretty well and you have to use him (Or it) to get pass the colorful enviroments Mario is famous for. Instead of the wing, metal, and invisible caps from the first game, you have nozzles for Fludd that have different functions such as the Rocket nozzle, which shoots you high in the air or the Hover Nozzle, which lets you hover distances. The new Turbo nozzle, however isn't used all that much and was a pretty cool nozzle to have fun with though! And lastly, you have your standard default nozzle which sprays water at foes. It feels same as the N64 Mario because you have this world and these subworlds which can be accessed as you progress through the game. In Mario 64, you would collect Stars to open the various doors to the subworlds, this time you would collect Shine Sprites and fix goop problems in the main world, Delfino Plaza. As Mario unlocks levels, he can solve this subworld's various problems and then collect Shine Sprites like that. Usaully, each subworld contains mini stages in which the Mario clone dude steals your water pack and then you have to get through blocky obstacles to get the Shine sprite at the end of the mini-stage, this is classic Mario platforming that is available. Its different every single time, diffrent types of blocks like moving blocks, dissolving sand blocks, and blocks that try to knock you off. There are different maneuvers you MUST learn in order to finish the game such as wall jumps, somersaults, and triple jumps which has a quick learning curve to it mainly because there is a boss 5 minutes into the game. This is definitely a harder Mario adventure than the N64 version. The camera can defintely can take some time to get used to though, if you are used to games that require the C stick like FPS's or something, your fine. But if not, then expect some camera angle changing especially the Ferris wheel level, but there is a cheap way to do that level so that doesn't count. Sometimes the camera has a tendency to whip right back around where you don't want it, but it really doesn't affect the gameplay unless you are playing the above level the hard way. The graphics look great considering how much detail went into the character models , they have never seemed to look any better, the texturing of the charcters look really good too and as a result, seem real. The animations of the characters look pretty nice as well. The only real problem with the enviroments is that they look washed out and lack polygonal texture. The lighting and water effects were impressive as the island gets from dark to sunny gradually looks pretty good! The sounds were entirely new and don't have much music from the other Mario games ever created. They also fit the levels they were in pretty well like lets say Delfino Plaza itself, it really sounds like its a little plaza where Piantas hang out and live in. The clicking of Mario's shoes on the tile floor sounded pretty good as well. Unfortunatly there were a few shortcomings in the stage bckroung music, Gelato Beach and Ricco Harbor sound like remixes of each other. Also the voice acting kind of sounded bad especially of Fludd and an important boss in the game. The only voices that actually sounded fine were Peach and Mario. The replay value is high because there are some really memorable moments you can experience over and over again because you play the subworlds as much as you want and getting 120 shines is going to take a really long time to get! The bottom line is that this is still the world's best platforming franchise and Nintendo's mascot still shines with just a few minor shortcomings with gameplay and sound, but other than that, this is the best platformer out there or at least for the Gamecube.