Good, but no SM:64
The Mario i always knew was a short plumber surrounded by mushrooms and jumping on Goombas heads, and recieving a nice big cake at the end of the day, well that was the ultimate mario experience i got in Mario 64.
This is a good game, the graphics are beautiful, the water looks drinkable, the gameplay is solid, and it is fairly long.
Surely you should know the story by now, Mario is on vacation and is framed for doing graffiti on Isle Defino. Basically Mario has to collect the stars and clean up the town.
There are some nice touches, everyone can speak which is good (except for mario of course...) and even Yoshi makes an appearence where you can finally jump on his back and ride him, although he dies when he touched water, on a water based game..?
There are some elements i would like changed though, for instance, the way he swims. They should have kept the way he swam in the original, this time, you have to keep pressing different buttons underwater to descend and ascend, making swimming quite confusing and fiddly.
Overall, this is a good game, it should last you quite a long time, as any game should, but i wouldn't like to keep playing it over and over again. Unfortunately, this just didn't give me the mario experince, as you basically just had to squirt you cannon at enemies, but i enjoyed it anyway.
If you like Mario games, definately check it out anyway.