Written By Shaun McCracken
Ah, the Mario series/fanchise. It's pretty much the one thing you can count
on to not only give you an entertaining game, but innovative game designs as well.
In fact, there has been only a couple of misfires in the plummer's 20+ history, and it
really wasn't Nintendo's fault (Mario Is Missing is one of them). With the release
of each new Nintendo system, there has always been a Mario game avaliable at or
around launch, and usually has brought over a whole new way we think about games.
But for some reason, we had to wait almost one year before we got an actual Mario
game on the Gamecube. Was it worth the wait? Does it bring something new? Does it
improve on existing designs? Read on.
Super Mario Sunshine may be one of the weaker offerings in the Mario series,
simply because the idea just isn't as strong or compelling as past efforts. I
will admit that meeting Peach for cake in Mario 64 was about as ridiculous as
you can get in terms of story, but it involves another kidnapping. Here, you're
on vacation to a place never mentioned before in the entire history of the series,
Delfino Island, and your biggest problem is cleaning up the crap that was left
behind from someone who looks like you. In a way, the whole plot is reverse of
Sega's Jet Grind Radio. Instead of marking your territory, you clean up a mess
you haven't even made. While the storyline and plot is about as thin as a Doritio,
the gameplay elements are very much welcome and entertaining, as they always have
been.
Mario is now eqipped with a spray cannon called FLUDD, which is innovative at
first, but is something that is guarunteed never to make a return in the next
Mario game. You basically use this thing to clean up the grafitti and to reach
places normal jumping can not get you to. Aside from this gimmick, you have the
same moves as you did in Mario 64. The double jump, the sidways jump and the pound.
It's all there. These come together for some interesting gameplay elements, but
also manage to become tedious as well. Of course, you can blame the camera more
for that. For some reason, SMS does not have a good camera. Why is it Zelda can
provide great camera angles, but the Mario games can't? While the camera is not
nearly as distracting or attrocious as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle's, it can be
at fault for missed jumps. The overall control scheme is fairly tight and easy
to grasp, but when the world you move around in is not nearly as dynamic as the
controls, frustration can occur. Especially in the special levels.
Speaking of which, along with the seven or so stages you play in, which range
from different shorelines, to a haunted hotel and an amusement park, you have
these special stages that are more challenging and demanding than the actual
game itself. You are placed into these stages that are set up almost like a classic
2-D Mario stage, except there are some 3-D elements. The first few I came across
were not that tough, but some of the later ones are brutal. The way the special
stages are designed makes me wish that this could have been a seperate game itself.
I would like to see a Mario game go back to it's 2-D design roots, and mix 3-D
elements within that. It could be fun, who knows.
The graphics of SMS are not terribly overwhelming. The textures on land are
pretty bright, and kind of blurry and lacking of detail. Perhaps this would have
been a better game to use the cel-shading technique on. The water, on the other
hand, looks great. It has the specular effects that should have been implemented
in Wave Race Blue Storm. The Mario character model is modeled very well, and has
very smooth animations. There are also a lot of reflection effects as well as lighting
effects to be seen, as well as an overuse of heat distortion. Also, SMS has a
great draw-distance. The framerate stays constant most of the time, where the only
real drop-off that occured was when I went near the three tilting mirrors, and
I can imagine it takes some power to get those reflections to work as well as
they do.
The sound consists of island music and Mario sound-bites. I never liked the
way Mario sounded after Mario 64. I remember the old Super Mario Bros. cartoons
back in the late 80's, and he sounded like he was from Brooklyn. I'm not sure
if I'm the only one bothered by this, but I just can't stand Mario's squealing
a lot of the time. The island music is decent, but not really memorable. The
remixed SMB theme works well for the special stages, though.
Many have come down hard on this game simply because it never really advanced
passed Mario 64. In a way, they are right. But the gameplay design is still so
much better than other games I have played. It still managed to be addictive, frustrating
and fun, despite the poorly concieved storyline. SMS is pretty much Mario not only
taking a vacation from his tireless duties, but kind of a vacation from his series
as well. We're just along for the ride.
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Super Mario Sunshine
