|
I find it comforting that Mario’s water-pack is yellow; much like Kazooie added a splash of red to the brown, blue, and yellow Banjo, the water-pack contributes to the sequence of primary colors in a way that makes Mario feel aesthetically complete. The last time Mario looked this complete was Super Mario World -- and that was only when he was wearing a cape.
Whether you like the look of the water-pack or not -- and whatever issues you may have with Mario’s short sleeves -- you must admit that the game looks good. I’ve heard many people dismissing the graphics as “upgraded Super Mario 64,” and I couldn’t dis/agree more. While certainly Super Mario 64 was the basis for this game -- as it will be the basis for many 3D platformers to come -- in the graphics department, there is simply so much more going on. When standing still, Mario breathes in a realistic manner. Isle Delfino’s chubby inhabitants all jiggle and quake as they walk. The Toads jump with anxiety. When Princess Peach says she’s worried, she truly looks worried. Roof tiles gleam under the sun with a mother-of-pearl kind of sheen. Clouds move slowly across the sky. Durians are studded with a spiky texture. The basket you kick them into is textured like a basket.
This says nothing about the water, perhaps Super Mario Sunshine’s most notable graphical feature. In short, the water looks marvelous. The surface of still water has a “chipped” and waving look that delights from all camera angles. As the pressure runs out, the even spray from Mario’s water-pack sputters and bubbles. Using the turbo nozzle kicks up a foamy wake. Slow-moving freighters displace geometric ripples. Doused grass darkens; little splashes accompany each footstep.
Complimenting the water is the goop it washes away. When Mario slides through the goop (sometimes taking frustrating amounts of damage), his clothes and skin become realistically stained. When a giant Piranha Plant spits a muddy spiked ball down a hill, it leaves wide trails of the brown, shiny liquid. A look into the sludge reveals a distorted reflection of Mario. If you’re too close to that sludge, Mario might be yelling, “Ma-ma!” in that Italian-Mickey-Mouse voice.
(Aside: Mario’s voice has to go. I’m sorry. I clench my teeth in rage when I read a review of Paper Mario that includes a comment along the lines of, “Why didn’t they include Mario’s voice?”)
Those who dismiss the game’s “clean-up” theme as “kiddy” should really give the first level a shot. I don’t consider myself the most cheerful of people; nevertheless, I found it pleasing to reveal the pastel green grass beneath the fecal-brown sludge. Hours of play later, I had learned such techniques as the standing-spinning-spray, which can clear a large area in a small time. Sometimes, when clearing out a field of sludge, a large hill, or mountain, or house, or person will pop up. These surprise moments bring a smile to your face -- in addition to spurring you on in your quest.
Halfway through the game, that primal videogame urge might just get to you: that urge to keep moving forward, keep uncovering cool stuff. If you’ve played a real-time strategy game or two or three in your time, you may find yourself especially determined. If you often send unnecessary scouts through Fog of War because you can’t stand to have one insignificant corner of your map unrevealed, you, especially, will develop grudges against the pesky birds who insist on dropping goop on the pastel hillscape you just busted your overalled ass clearing. When those little bubble-creatures keep popping up in the middle of a sea of sludge, causing you to get quicker on your aiming finger, well, if you’re a shooter fan, you’ll feel a certain degree of satisfaction in pushing back the evil, in remaining untouched.
The satisfaction Super Mario Sunshine evokes is perhaps more precious than whatever Christmas memories you may have of Super Mario World. After fighting with the camera for an hour to climb a single stretch of fence, being shocked six times in one minute by two electric koopas, if you’re a puzzle gamer, when the answer finally occurs to you, you feel good.
Now, what kind of gamer am I? I wonder, as I write this. What satisfies me most in Super Mario Sunshine? I suppose I’m a bit of an RPG fan. I like stories.
And Super Mario Sunshine’s story is nothing short of perfect. It’s not literature, of course. It’s not just another Bowser-kidnaps-the-princess story, either. Some say it’s a little too complicated for a Mario game. Others say it’s a little too silly for a “serious” game. In my review, I won’t even bother mentioning any details aside from the fact that it made me feel warm inside to see a smooth FMV of Shadow Mario with Princess Peach under his arm, jumping into the cockpit of a giant turtle-shaped boat headed for an amusement park on an island, as three Toads stand by, jumping and shouting.
That, to me, is satisfaction: a Mario story, taken to the next, polished, pastel level.
There’s a reason this excites me: I’m a die-hard fan of Mario games. Super Mario Bros. 3 is my favorite game ever. I still play Super Mario RPG regularly. Knowing this, I can tell you what satisfies me most about Super Mario Sunshine: the special stages.
At certain points in certain levels, you trigger a switch that opens a door for a limited time. You wall-jump or somersault your way into that door, to be treated to a cut-scene: Shadow Mario steals your water-pack. You are reduced to lonely old “little Mario,” in trousers and a red (short-sleeved) shirt. The background: blackness, maybe with a few distorted sprites. The objective: reach the Shine at the end of an obstacle course of moving/sinking/rotating/dissolving/spinning platforms. The music: an a capella, finger-snapping, hand-clapping rendition of the original Super Mario Bros. theme song.
If you hold the C-stick down in these stages, the camera will rotate, long, far, and free. There’s nothing to get in its way.
Some of these stages are simple. Some of the require you to run, slide, slide, slide, stomp, stop, turn, and slide, slide, slide before the platform dissolves beneath you. Some of them require you to ride rotating cubes for upwards of two uninterrupted minutes. The slightest mistake means an instant falling death.
I wish they’d make a whole game out of this.
Oh, they did. It’s called Super Mario Bros.
Or Super Mario Bros. 3.
These levels are, to me, the technical high point of the game. The vocal Super Mario Brothers theme that plays in each of these levels is far and away the best piece of music in the game (not to say the rest isn’t good in a catchy, cartoonish way). The psychedelic backgrounds find their way into your dreams. The square watermelon-shaped platforms are too funky to believe. The breakable blocks and hidden one-ups are brilliantly placed.
Each time you come out of one of these levels, you feel like you’re playing an RPG, and you’ve just leveled-up.
Well, at least that’s how it was for me. With each secret level I completed, my skills multiplied. At one point, I loudly questioned the value of wall-jumping off a razor-thin vertical platform, flipping over a chasm, and catching onto a tightrope. Three minutes after the completion of this Herculean task, I found myself chasing Shadow Mario up a sheer rock face and down a waterfall. In earlier levels, Shadow Mario had always had a good ten-second lead on me; now I was three steps behind him all the way. In my satisfaction, I thanked the secret level I’d just completed for my newfound skills in manipulating Mario.
These secret levels feel like a 2D platform game, with shadings of Super Mario 64’s Bowser levels, and splashes of Crash Bandicoot’s linearity. It is at these moments during Super Mario Sunshine that we get the distinct impression that the 2D side-scrolling platformer has truly moved into the third dimension.
We did not get this impression from Super Mario 64. Why not?
Because Super Mario 64 wasn’t trying to give us that impression. It was trying to create something entirely new.
Super Mario Sunshine is treading on familiar ground. As far as mascot games go, something entirely new is neither possible nor necessary at this point. All Sunshine needs to do is skillfully manipulate the elements set in place by its predecessor. In doing this, it gets a little confused, and hearkens back to older games; though wholly satisfactory and technically brilliant, I think it would be better for the platform game as a whole if developers concentrated on one thing at a time.
These special stages, the inventive water-pack-centric gameplay, the menacing foe of Shadow Mario, the tripped-out bosses: all of these things call to mind a game of long ago, and give me a distinct impression:
Super Mario 64 is to Super Mario World as Super Mario Bros. was to Donkey Kong.
Super Mario Sunshine, then, is Yoshi’s Island to Super Mario 64’s Super Mario World.
I know some people who love Yoshi’s Island over Super Mario Bros. 3.
I am not one of those people. That’s not to say I don’t love Yoshi’s Island in my own way. I just don’t love it as much as I love Super Mario Bros. 3.
Super Mario Bros. 3, if you remember, was not “something entirely new” -- it merely skillfully manipulated the elements of its predecessors (SMB1 and SMB2).
If I seem a little disappointed in this review, it’s only because I had hoped Sunshine would be Super Mario Bros. 3 to 64’s Super Mario Bros. 2.
If we were to compare platform games to movies, we could say that Super Mario 64 is the equivalent of Technicolor. We now understand all of the ingredients for a 3D platform game. Mario 64 introduced them to us. Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Jak and Daxter, and Rayman 2 tooled around with those ingredients; they entertained well enough, yet lacked the certain inspiration that would qualify them as “the next level.”
The central question of this review, then, is this: Is Super Mario Sunshine “The Next Level”?
The answer is a little tougher than you’d think. I can only come to the following conclusion:
Despite its sometimes frustrating camera and its sometimes wacked-out collision detection, Super Mario Sunshine offers gamers the ability to ride a flesh-colored Yoshi that spits a stream of fluorescent purple fruit juice at fat island-dwelling creatures, who then proceed to make blubbering sounds as they shake themselves dry. That alone, my friends, may well be enough to supply game designers with ideas for the next six years and beyond.
Tim Rogers
|
