Frustration and extreme difficulty in some levels keep it from entering the real of "Mario classics"
So I bought the game, and it was good during the first two hours, it was like a new version of Mario 64 but, a little bit harder (or at least, that's what I thought); The game more or less takes the principles of Mario 64, and the main objective of the game is collect items called "shines" (they are the equivalent to the Mario 64 stars), and by collecting this shines you will get access to new levels, most of these levels are huge and impressive to look at, everything is colorful and very detailed, more impressive yet is that fact that you don't get to see to many square objects or characters in the game. It really looks like there was a lot of time spent on creating every single model of the game and the result is one of the prettiest games on the gamecube. The audio is great too, the soundtrack is good and fits with the tropical island feel of the game. You will get to hear some revamped version of classic songs from other Mario games, and that's a great touch for long-term Mario fans.
Well, if everything is good in this game why am I giving it only 8.0? The real problem with Super Mario Sunshine is its difficulty, Mario games are supposed to be the kind of game that everyone can play an enjoy but, can you enjoy climbing through a big and confusing structure surrounded by enemies that If you are hit by only one of them you will fall into the ocean and have to do all over again? And if finally you get to the top of the structure, you find some insane places that are so difficult to reach and on top of that by some reason the game gives you a time limit to get there (some times the blocks you are stepping in disappear because they were activated by a time switch) and if you fail you fall into the ocean and have to do everything again from the beginning, there were some parts of the game where I died more then 25 times (yeah, I was counting) trying to get only one shine, and I am not a kid I've been playing videogames for years, now imagine the harm this kind of difficulty could bring to a 7 years old boy. This game could've been fantastic but its unforgiving difficulty kept it from that and as an extra added lethal doses of frustration in it.
For my conclusion I think that the end the game has more good things than bad, So if you are a Mario fan or if you like platform games, then Mario sunshine is a good choice, just remember you are going to have to deal with a good amount of frustration when playing it.