Super Mario Sunshine is a GOOD game. One of the best platformers of the GC, PS2, XBox generation. It's predecessor Mario 64 is one of my top 3 games of all time (this is not nostalgia speaking as I downloaded 64 on the Virtual Console and STILL think no other 3D platformer can touch it). When you're following up a mind blowing, genre defining masterpiece, being just good isn't good enough.
Here were my 2 biggest gripes with Sunshine:
BIG Gripe #1 - Too much collecting. I know Mario 64 pioneered the "collect X pieces of crap" formula but, here's the difference: most of the time in 64 you were doing some fun task (racing a penguin, fighting a caterpillar, flying through rings). Sure it had a "collect 8 red coins" and a "collect 100 coins" star in each level but those were by far the weakest parts of it. Mario sunshine on the other hand had 2 or 3 (or more! I can't quite remember) "collect the coins" shines per level PLUS harder 100 coin shines PLUS other shines were the whole task was to FIND crap. Add in the incredibly tedious blue coin hunt and you have a game that eventually becomes a chore. I did not rest until I had 120 stars in M64 but I had no problems quitting Sunshine after only finding around 90 shines.
BIG Gripe #2 - Not enough freedom. I LOVED how in Mario 64, with very few exceptions, you could jump into a level and try to find any one of the 7 stars, not just the one for which a hint was provided. Consequently I HATED how in Sunshine most (if not all) of the time you were FORCED to go after a single particular shine because the level layouts changed and would only allow that single route. Ugh. Give me back my freedom to solve problems and find my own path to stars.
Other smaller gripes: Camera in the theme park level, most useless and unwieldy incarnation of Yoshi ever, abysmally bad cutscenes and an anticlimactic final battle.
To be honest, the most common complaints I hear about sunshine like it not being set in the mushroom kingdom, having to use a water pack and lack of variety in level settings did not bother me at all.
Like I said, it's STILL a good game, just disappointing. Among my Gamecube sequels to classic N64 games I would EASILY pick Wind Waker with all its flaws over Mario Sunshine.
I'm still almost peeing my pants in anticipation of Galaxy.
