Super Mario Sunshine

Without hesitation, I can say that SMS doesn't live up to either the hype it received pre-release or to the legacy that the world-famous Mario franchise has established. That's not to say that Super Mario Sunshine is a particularly bad game. But what I am saying is that pales in comparison to the platformers released this gen, and that it's reliance on both stale platformer conventions from the N64 days and a gimmick that that gets stale quickly leave SMS as little more than an above-average game.

The story involves Mario going on a vacation in Delfino island, only to find out that he's been framed for polluting the island with sludge. So with a strage water gun on his back, Mario sets out to clean up the mess and find out whodunnit. Of course, the Princess gets captured and Mario has to fight Bowser again. While the whole saving the princess angle is great when it's parodied and joked at in games like Mario and Luigi, here it's just tired.

When not exploring the village like-hub, Mario is in one of some 10 themed worlds collecting shines (stars basically). The worlds are all based on vacation themes like beach resorts and amusement parks. Like Super Mario 64, you'll be given a one line description on how to get one of 10 stars in a level and then you get it. Like SM64, you need a certain number of stars to open new levels so you can collect the stars in there. Unlike SM64, where many of the star-hunts were fairly entertaining, here they come off as chores. A lot of missions involve using that water gun to spray stuff, and that's all there is to it. The water gun has various functions such as water rockets designed to suck the fun out of platform jumping. Using the gun to clean sewage is kind of neat at first

That's not to say that spraying water on sewage isn't fun at first, it's actually kind of entertaining. But the novelty does wear thin. It also doesn't help that the second half of the game is quite a drag. The missions become tedious chores. Even the final battle with Bowser is dumb. That's not to say that everything in the game is bad. Every now and then, you'll have a mission where your backpack is stolen and you have to rely solely on Mario's jumping skills to cross an obstacle course (with most courses actually being a tribute to past Mario games). Challenging but fun, these provide the game's highpoints.

The game's graphics are mostly solid, with decent looking characters and areas. The game does feature fantastic water effects that are used for most of the game. As far as sound goes, there's some decent tracks, and some really crummy voice acting. People often say that Nintendo shouldn't use voice acting in their games (like with Wind Waker). The truth is they should, it's just that they shouldn't use bad voice acting.

SMS, on it's own, is a decent game with a few solid moments, it's just that a lot of the game is dull and boring. After playing a platformer like Ratchet and Clank, it's hard to go back to a game that clings on to bland gimmicks over satisfying gameplay to make itself stand out. The game takes 20 hours to finish, and while you could try and collect every star and so on, that's far too tedious of a chore, and you probably won't be willing enough to take a stab at it.