Sunshine is like the polar opposite of 64. This game feels AMAZING to control. It's no coincidence that my favourite parts are the pure platforming sections without Fludd.

The actual content itself is heavily padded though, which is likely due to the fact there's now a measly 7 levels, instead of 64's 15. Every stage has 2 red coin missions, every stage has 30 blue coins to collect (a total of 24 of the 120 shine sprites are from collecting freaking blue coins), every single level has a "chase shadow Mario" mission. Bosses get repeated. Despite each stage having 10 missions (including 2 "hidden" missions, which 90% of the time is just "replay the platforming stage again but this time collect even more red coins), the amount of actual unique ideas here is shockingly low.

Collecting 100 coins in every stage is also back, which is fine, but for some reason collecting that shine will exit you out of the level, meaning unlike in the past game you can't do that mission along with another mission, making it a direct quality of life degrade.

The worst part of all this is that some of the blue coins require a lot of fun or otherwise unused areas and mechanics of the game. If they just fleshed out the good blue coins and made them shines, while removing all the bad ones, it would have improved the game massively.

The game is mostly okay, it just feels like there's 25% good content that is copy/pasted four times to make a full game.

A deeply emotional and harrowing journey.

I'm actually amazed by how creative the storytelling can get in this game, each story with it's own unique style and wonderfully implemented mechanics. The Halloween story was my favorite by far, but I also felt a weird sense of realness and relatability on the fish decapitation story. The main story itself is cleverly narrated and has this sense of grief all over it, just accompanied by the stellar writing and swift, simple gameplay.

It made me shiver with its atmosphere and got my eyes teared up at several times with it's gut-punching narrative. One of the best "short games" I've ever played.

An absolutely revolutionary 3D game that is still more than playable in 2020, although its age shows in its horrible camera and less than precise controls (seriously sometimes I just wanted to turn around from a standstill and Mario decided to best way to do that was to do run half a circle to face the other way, which can be really annoying on the many tight platforms).

So much about the game is just iconic, like the catchy music or colourful and varied levels. Even the hub world is famous in video gaming. It truly feels like care was put into it.

Its got insane replayability thanks to its pick up and play nature.

There's lots of secrets to find, both in the castle and in the levels.

Outside of the controls and camera, my main complaint comes from how often missions are repeated. The haunted house level 3 missions where you fight Big Boo. That's half the damn missions for that level. That's probably the biggest example in the game, but some levels definitely feel like they pad out the content like that.

The fact that extra lives reset upon closing the game is also a weird thing. It's not the biggest deal since game over only puts you back to the start of the castle, I just don't get why it happens.

It's a 10/10 game for its time that still holds up today, but can be a bit frustrating at times thanks to its aged technical aspects. Of course without any nostalgia it's hard to say how much I would have put up with.

Had a great time playing this game, as someone who at first was a little on the back foot, is actually really fun.

The skyscraper idea was really good, because every single floor had it's own thematic and sometimes narrative, and probably the best thing about it really, some unique set-pieces were build around it.

The actual gameplay is alright, the controls are a bit wacky, mashing A and the variety of ghosts and bosses got redundant after a while, but since you're always changing the settings is never boring, is nice to do it, the secrets also add an interesting layer.