- Fun game
- Different scenery than most mario games
- Fun unique mechanic with flood
- Some of the levels & usages of flood are very heavy and poor, making some levels a chore to play
- Other than that, very fun

I grew up with Super Mario Sunshine so it’s incredibly nostalgic for me. Even though I know it has flaws I love this game and play it every year.

I have a lot I could say but I’ll keep it brief. I love that every level almost has a little story going on as you progress through it. I love that the levels feel like they’re actual places on the island and that they have a bunch of NPCs to talk. In fact there are some NPCs in this game that if you talk to them in every episode in a level they almost have a character arc it’s super cool and the fact that you can completely miss it if you don’t talk to the characters for fun is a real shame cause there was clearly work put into the dialogue.

Gameplay wise I always have fun playing it. FLUDD is fun to use to navigate levels and fight enemies. I even don’t mind collecting blue coins cause to me it’s just a fun thing to collect to earn more shine sprites even if you don’t need any of them to finish the game.

I know the game can be glitchy at times but I kinda like some of the glitches. I’ve played this game so much that it’s fun to glitch or exploit my way into levels early. For instance this time when I played through the game I tackled all 7 levels episode 1 first before moving on to episode 2 then I’d play all the levels episode 2 before moving onto 3 and I did that all the way till the end.

Now if you’ve played the game you’d know that you need to beat episode 4 of Pinna Park to unlock Sirena Beach. But using some glitches I was able to get into Sirena Beach whenever I wanted! Even getting into Pianta Village early is easy with a well timed triple jump!

I know the game isn’t for everyone but it was my first ever console game, so I have have very strong feelings towards it and it will probably always be my favourite Nintendo game.

mario sunshine ended up being one of my least favorite types of games - one that has a ton of stuff i really enjoyed, yet bogs itself down with so much dumb shit that i end up hating it. i don't mean that in the sense of "oh there's one level that made me so pissed that it poisoned my experience" i mean that it's genuinely frustrating how this game takes such an incredible concept and just drowns it in shit.

first off, i fucking love fludd. it adds so much to the way mario controls that i barely realize he's missing shit like long jumping. hovering, squirting water on the ground and sliding on it, tap spraying the shit out of shadow mario... it's so damn cool, dude. mario sunshine is at its best when you're actually able to do some sick ass platforming and use fludd to its fullest potential.

so why the fuck does the game insist on limiting your use of fludd as much as it possibly can? whether it be through fluddless platforming levels or other stupid ass gimmick shines where you're playing slots instead of actually bing bing wahooing around, sunshine fucking neuters their gimmick by making sure you're hardly ever using it. this is where sunshine just falls flat on its ass - without fludd, you realize that mario controls like utter dogshit. the left stick is so sensitive that barely tapping it will make him sprint right off the edge of a level, sometimes he'll just clip through shit or become way more slippery than he usually is, and with no way to correct your jumps it really brings to light how much the game relies on fludd.

what's worse is that this game gets fucking demolished by the way it's structured - instead of having free reign over which shines you can get to complete the game, it makes you play through every single level up to shadow mario. this means that you're required to hit at least like, 70% of the game's horrible levels. sand bird, goopy inferno, the chuckster level, bum-ass ricco harbor red coins, all of these are required to beat the fucking game. it's not like mario 64 where you have relative free reign over the order in which you do shit. over and over this game just shoots itself in the foot by making you go through some of its worst section and not letting you just fucking. play the levels you want to play.

there are a few other gripes i have too. blue coins are fucking stupid and there's not really any way to easily track which ones you have, so im never gonna feel incentivized to go for 100%. also, since so many levels have multiple stupid gimmick/fluddless shines, a lot of them don't really live up to their potential as Platforming Levels. like, most stages will usually have one section where You Gotta Platform, and the rest is just filler space to find red/blue coins.

and this is all a god damn shame, because there's parts of sunshine that i really like! even though there's not as much platforming as i would have liked, i think every stage still hits it out of the park (except maybe pianta village). they all manage to be fun and unique despite their similar island theming. the soundtrack is top notch, the aesthetic is great, i love all the wacky-ass enemy designs and it makes me sad that we'll probably never see them again. i 100% understand why people love this game, and it makes me sad that i find it so frustrating that i can't love it the same way. i promise i'm not trying to be a contrarian hater in this review, it genuinely pains me that there was so much dumbo shit that held me back from loving this game.

La notion de "genres" dans les arts en est une particulière, ne serait-ce que par son application. Dans un esprit de catégorisation pseudo-simple, on attribut des sous-titres, des étiquettes à ce qui est créé au-delà du ressenti, au-delà des idées véhiculées, développées. Pourquoi s'attarder sur la profondeur, alors qu'on pourrait plutôt observer les codes, les éléments de surface qui reviennent d'oeuvres en oeuvres ? C'est après que les sous-genres apparaissent pour catégoriser d'autres catégories, ce qui peut parfois amener des oeuvres hybrides, combinant différentes étiquettes.

Pourquoi ne pas alors parler de ce qu'une oeuvre propose, de ce qu'elle nous fait sentir ?
Super Mario Sunshine est, en théorie, non seulement un collect-a-thon dans le sens que c'est un jeu de plateforme en trois dimensions axé sur la collection d'objets disparates qui permettent de progresser et de débloquer plus de contenu, mais aussi un "jeu de plateforme de Mario en 3D ouvert", selon Nintendo, dans la même lignée que Mario 64 avec Super Mario Odyssée comme héritier.
Ce que ces étiquettes techniques ne parviennent pas à saisir, c'est que Super Mario Sunshine n'est pas exactement un jeu de plateforme dans le sens classique du terme. Certes, n'importe quel speedrunner du jeu vous éblouira avec les actions, les sauts, les glitchs exploités dans l'hilarité et la précision ; ce jeu encourage la vitesse, la fluidité, la maîtrise de sa physique brisée et inconstante.
Pourtant, derrière cette maîtrise, cette vitesse se cache aussi une aventure estivale fortement scénarisée, une aventure lors de laquelle Mario se retrouve à connecter avec des habitant-es insulaires qui ont leur propre histoire à raconter, leurs relations établies.
Pourquoi ne pas parler des enfants Piantas des Collines Bianco qui finissent coincé-es entre les murs et qui sont alors châtié-es par leur mère dans l'épisode 8 ?
Pourquoi ne pas relever le fait que les deux frères Piantas à la peau brun-chocolat du Port Ricco gagnent en puissance au fil des épisodes, offrant raccourcis, mais aussi, dans l'épisode 8, un accès direct à une pièce bleue chacun ?
Pourquoi ne pas rire de l'absurdité d'un père de famille effrayé par tous les manèges du Parc Pinna, grande roue incluse ?

Mario Sunshine est bourré de défauts dans ses épisodes, dans ses défis souvent ridiculement difficiles, dans sa physique hasardeuse, dans son système de progression même, qui requière qu'on finisse les épisodes 7 des sept niveaux du jeu pour accéder à la fin, enlevant de la valeur à tous les soleils...
Et pourtant, derrière un jeu vidéo empreint de décisions douteuses, on retrouve une expérience unique en son genre, qui mise plus sur l'immersion dans un monde coloré et déjanté plutôt que l'avènement du siècle en terme de jouabilité.

Ne plongez pas dans cette mer azure à la recherche de défis inoubliables pour leur complexité et satisfaction, mais plutôt pour sa richesse scénaristique et littéraire, pour prendre congé de l'hiver ou d'une période fraîche et ainsi voyager sur une île paradisiaque qu'on guérit de la pollution amenée par un empire totalitaire...
Oh putain le jeu est une allégorie sur les conséquences de l'impérialisme sur les populations locales.

Narrative: 3 - Gameplay: 4 - Visuals: 3 - Soundtrack: 5 - Time: 3.5
Stars: 3.5

My journey with Super Mario's three-dimensional platformers is coming to an end. And so far ahead in the road, I come across some weird game. I mean, what the hell was Nintendo thinking? Everything - from the cutscenes to the gimmick chosen to be the core mechanic - is weird...
And kind of cool.

The plot with Bowser Jr. in his dramatic search for his misplaced mother is absurd and so funny. FLUDD is a nice gadget-side-kick (character?), but where's the mouth? The screw are eyes? And don't get me started with the islanders and that water-type mammal-shaped Island. And, by the way, I hope to God that Delphino Island and its inhabitants aren't some sort of reference to Brazil or Latin America. At the same time, the carnivalesque soundtrack sure points towards that. Regardless of my doubts, their design is just awkward. None of that takes us off the solid gameplay.

When I saw some bad criticism about the second half of the game, I was surprised and kind of suspicious. I mean, we all know that Nintendo can drop the ball with new consoles or IPs, but to think they would mess up one of their main franchises would shock me. Well, it was not exactly like that. I see the frustration that comes with some of the clunkiness of the controls, and some levels can get irritating, but in the end, it's all good fun and solid game design. There are challenges, and I won't lie: I'll die cursing Pinata Village (and praising Sirena Beach).

In the end, I'm glad that Nintendo took some weird directions with this one. I feel that it can hold its ground with no shame side-by-side with all the other three-dimensional Super Marios.

Next - and final - stop: Super Mario Galaxy.

Sunshine's a game I have a lot of childhood nostalgia for, but I can also kind of see why I never actually beat it as a kid. It's just fun to be in Sunshine's world and environments, the unique summertime vibe that Nintendo's never really tried to recapture in the same way that Sunshine did (maybe besides something like Wii Sports Resort), and a lot of that charm is what really carries the game for me. But on the other hand, Sunshine starts to fizzle out too much by the last several hours as later stages begin to just repeat bosses or goals like collecting red coins or platforming challenges that just aren't satisfying or fun to do. A part of the problem is that movement feels great and snappy when Mario has FLUDD on him generally, but there's issues with the physics here especially on slopes that can be just baffling with how much Mario will be flung off in certain directions if the game doesn't agree with whatever you're doing. The stages that take away FLUDD, your last resort for either saving a bad jump or reaching that last little bit before a platform, really exemplify how too snappy Mario is here compared to how he controlled in 64.

I do vastly prefer this game over 64 because for the most part I still was having a good time and the style carries so much of Sunshine even at its worst, but it's also a game that can feel a little too bloated and overambitious and that's when it becomes harder to look past the more janky aspects of its controls and mechanics. I feel really bad for anyone going for completion on this one because of how much more tedious stuff like blue coins are here in comparison to how relatively simple 64 was.

I can't believe I defended this game back in 2002. As a platformer maybe I can give it a 3 out of 5 but as a Mario game, it is a 2 out of 5. The controls are not as tight as they should be. Mario is constantly slipping around, hard to make him look straight. It controls worse in the stages without Fludd. Fludd is annoying the entire game, some moves are hidden and not explained in game or manual. Jump sometimes does not work. Visual look is nice and bosses look nice but the controls and repetition of stars, the fact that you can't approach stars in any order really bring this game down, but mainly, the poor controls. No desire to get all the stars.

I remember enjoy this enough back on the gamecube, but it felt really far removed from the Mario I knew and loved at the time. I struggled to get to grips with the main idea, and although overall I thought it was alright, it was probably one of my least favourite Super Mario games at the time.

Now we've had many years and many more Mario's since, and the decent port on the Switch, I definitely appreciate this one a lot more. Its not without its bad parts, but they are far outweighed by the good, that I give it the benefit of the doubt.

Some of the levels are tight and work perfectly with the Fludd backpack, whereas others are maybe not so well done but work despite that. I did get a little impatient with some of the more traditional style levels, as they could be quite tricky. I only really went for the bare minimum of shines with this playthrough, as even though I enjoyed it, I know that some of the latter stages can be quite difficult and I did not want to sour the fun experience I have had revisiting Isle Delfino.

I know my score is pretty much irrelevant, but I did struggle over whether to give this 4 or 5, but thought I'd meet in the middle, given that I had a very good time for the most part.

A piece of broken glass in Nintendo's jewellery box.

The physics and Mario himself are constantly fighting against you, struggle and screaming at every turn to get you to switch the game off and play something else.

The visuals and the warm, mysterious tropical atmosphere are perfect, but that's as far as my praise goes. It's nothing more than mildly annoying to play at best, and downright maddening at worst.