Super Mario Sunshine: Not gay just sunny. I review the game, Super Mario Sunshine. A good title, 'nuf said.
Sequels suck. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care that you’re a high-class engineer and I’m only a game-reviewer, you have to heed this statement: sequels suck. Take the movie Mortal Kombat…a descent movie for it’s time…now look at the sequel, “Annihilation.” You have to ask yourself, what kind of sadistic god would allow suck a monstrosity to exist? That movie was beyond awful; I can not yet find words to describe it, so the only logical explanation for its existence is that it is not of this earth but was rather sent to us as a sign of hostility from aliens in the future. Sequels suck.
When this game was first released, let me tell you, I was pretty damn nervous that it too was a tool of the hostile future aliens to try to destroy our race before we become too powerful. Let’s face it; Mario 64 marked a turning point in platforming gameplay with its three spatial dimensions, where could Mario Sunshine possibly even hope to match it? Where else but what Nintendo is famous for: Innovation.
Nintendo was first established by Socrates in ancient Greece. Socrates was one of the great innovators of his time. However, Nintendo was too far ahead of the times and he ditched the project to take-up philosophy. Galileo, one of the greatest innovators of all time soon took it up and led the company into the beast of a gaming corporation it is today. Even now, in the 21st century, Galileo’s tradition of developing nifty gaming add-ons and innovations persists. Nintendo continually releases gaming wonders: the wii and the DS, as well as many gaming blunders: the e-reader, the gameglove (god save us)…Nintendo’s innovative tact is exactly what is used here to make Super Mario Sunshine unlike any Mario game to date. What makes Sunshine so different? Water.
The game Super Mario Sunshine sets itself aside from every other Mario game to date in its usage of water. In the game, main character Mario soon adopts a spray tank called FLUDD which he uses to spray enemies, clean, hover, speed across water, or even rocket into the air. While this innovation is, indeed, a breath of clean air (hah, clean…water joke) to a series with nowhere to go, it did seem repetitive at times (especially in the game’s many “clean the area” missions). The main villain of the game is a mysterious shadow form of Mario fittingly named, “Shadow Mario.” While this at first seems promisingly different, it is revealed soon enough that the real mastermind behind all that transpires is a very familiar foe. Soon enough, the game turns into a “save the beauty” sim as Peach is captured by Shadow Mario. The level design is wonderful, most gamers may be turned-off due to a lack of variety since the entire game takes place in one tropical environment, but, in fact, this is not a problem as there is still a great many different environments to explore including a quaint town, a harbor, an amusement park, a haunted hotel, a tropical beach, a deep-sea chasm, a Cliffside bay, and more. Besides, I go to a college where there are a total of 30 women; the only type of variety that I can complain about is sexual variety…
All of this adds-up in the end to create one beast of a fun Mario title. While it does seem slightly removed from the typical Mario game, the fun factor is high enough here to override this fact. HeadshotJackal’s rating:
I give this game 7/10. It is a fun, worthy successor to its predecessor, Mario 64. However, the clean the area missions got a little old after the eighty-first time…