Friday, February 25, 2011

Super Mario Sunshine

About a month ago my computer went down for about 2 weeks. Long story short, a RAM stick died. Seeing as I don’t have cable this left me with reading, taking photos (which I don’t do much of during winter), and playing video games. So I read some and got 100% game completion on Super Mario Sunshine. Here’s a review!

First off, I know the game is rather old. I never got around to actually beating it before this so yea… you can just deal.

Overall Super Mario Sunshine is a rather good game. The controls are fairly decent, if you’ve played Super Mario 64 you’ll get the jumping down in about 3 minutes… the only new one is a spin jump. The FLUDD controls are… interesting. You have your standard spray nozzle, and a specialty nozzle. The specialty nozzles are a hover nozzle(which is the most useful), a rocket nozzle used to reach high places, and a dash nozzle which has about 3-4 uses in the entire game. Yes, the dash nozzle is that useless. The biggest change is that Mario can no longer punch. Evidently holding onto the FLUDD controls tires out his arms too much or something.

The voice acting is kind of sketchy. Mario doesn’t actually talk, although he does make his standard noises when hurt. I hear a lot of complaints about FLUDD, but honestly its supposed to sound like a computer voice. In that aspect I actually think it’s the 2nd best done voice in the game, although it talks too damn much when it does talk. The mushroom people and most of the random NPCs don’t talk usually other then some kind of “hello”. Princess Peach is amazingly badly done. She’s supposed to be an adult and she sounds like she’s about 8!

**********SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!***********




Baby Bowser has probably the best voice in the game, he sounds like a kid but still menacing. He also seems to have the intelligence of a kid, seriously… Peach being his mama? Which is a nice surprise.

Bowser on the other hand has the worst voice in the game in my opinion. He’s the giant koopa of doom, he’s supposed to be deep voiced, have his menacing laugh. Vicious, dangerous. DIE MARIO DIE! If you played Mario 64 I am sure you remember his laugh whenever you entered one of his levels. But NO!!!!! He sounds old and tired. He doesn’t even roar! I get that he is supposed to play father figure for his son kind of in this game at the end. But he is still the main Mario villain and instead of “THE PRINCESS IS MINE! EAT FLAME!!!!!” he splashes his bathwater at you!



***************END SPOILER********************

The music is good, nothing too terribly memorable but it matches the setting of the game and what you’re doing at the time. It’s Nintendo, so this is kind of a given.


My only real complaint, aside from the voice acting, is the blue coins and some of the mini-games to get Shines.

Most of the mini-games are rather fun, nothing I’d play again just for the hell of it, but they’re not bad. A couple of them though are damn horribly involved to get to and harder then the final boss level! There’s one in the main level hub that will take you at least 5 minutes just to get to, and when you do you need to have at least 30 lives because you will die in it that much.

The blue coins are another issue. There are 240 blue coins in the game, you can exchange 10 coins for “that”… that of course being a Shine. I’m used to hunting for items. Some of my favorite games are Metroid and Zelda, both of which revolve around finding hidden items. If I hadn’t had a game guide I would’ve never found some of them they’re hidden in such exoteric spots. In one world for example half the world is a beach… there are 3 Shine paintings under the sand… each holding a blue coin. You are not going to find them without some kind of guide. In another level you have to hose down a certain fruit basket to get a blue coin. Again… who is going to think to water the fruit basket?

Overall, not a bad game. No where near the best Mario game. But if you have a Wii it might be worth picking up, just remember to find a guide online if you want to get all the blue coins, and hence Shines.

This has been Gwen. Your pissed off, ranting redhead. And I prefer when all Bowser did was laugh and roar.

No comments:

Post a Comment