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Going on vacation while your brother
is trapped in a haunted house… that’s just cold:
Pop quiz: Mario and Princess Peach are flying to a luxurious
tropical island populated by people who resemble morbidly
obese Smurfs for a much deserved vacation. He:
A) Finally gets laid
B) Gets hijacked along the way
by radical members of the Kupa Cult who fly his plane into
Hyrule Castle
C) Wears something other than
overalls
D) None of the above
If you answered D, then you’ve
obviously come to grips with the fact that this is Nintendo
we’re dealing with here. Nothing controversial ever
happens and Mario never changes into anything other than his
overalls, not counting the frog suit from Super Mario 3. I
realize that this is a game intended for children as well
as adults, and I understand that it’s Nintendo’s
poster child playing the lead role. However, I reserve the
right to rip on it whenever I can. Why? Because I’m
doing the review and you’re not.
First, this isn’t a bad game. It’s actually pretty
good. However, it’s by no means spectacular or even
particularly innovative. However, fanboys the world over will
be breaking out their torches and pitchforks if I expose the
bad parts of this game. Therefore, I’ll be sure to do
that first and in excruciating detail. I’m such a bastard…
Do what?
Have you ever read the instruction manuals for games? No,
really. I know you’ve all checked out the button setup
for most games, but have you actually read the manual? Sometimes
they can be downright entertaining or even laugh out loud
funny if they were constructed with any degree of care at
all. However, this is not the case with Mario Shine. The manual
gets its point across just fine, but it was obviously written
by a spider monkey that was told he would get no dinner unless
a lobotomized infant could understand it.
No, I’m not being too harsh here. This manual is dry.
Dry, and constantly stating the obvious to the point of becoming
painful to read. The “tips” section is particularly
offensive, with gems like this one. “Struggle through
obstacles to reach Blue Coins.” No shit? Damn and here
I thought you just had to stand there and wish really hard.
Do children really need to be told that they have to get off
their virtual butts and work to get these key items? Have
we, as a race, become so lazy that we expect our video games
to play themselves? Apparently so, because this and other
such tips actually managed to make it into the printed version
of the manual. What a sad, sad day it is when a kid has to
be spoon fed the very basic tenants of a video game. You see
that thing? Go get it.
Say what?
The dialog sucks. There, I said what everyone over the age
of five was already thinking. The only way you could possibly
find the dialog in Mario Sunshine to be entertaining or engaging
in the least is if you also happen to be a rabid fan of Dragon
Ball Z. By comparison to that steaming pile of a show, the
trite, pointless words in this game read like a New York Times
best seller.
Picking up where the “tips” in the manual left
off, the denizens of Dolphino Island (which is shaped like
a dolphin... get it? Excuse me while I throw up.) offer you
the most basic and annoying advice I’ve seen in a game
in a very long time. The only redeeming thing about this dialog
is that it’s typed and not spoken.
This brings me to another annoyance with the game. Apparently,
at some point in his life, Mario lost his nards. He must have,
because I can think of no other reason for a male character
to sound that high pitched. Honestly, he makes Jiminy Cricket
sound studly. The only thing making him sound manly at all
is the fact that Princess Peach’s voice is so shrill
it could shatter diamonds.
Story? What story?
So here’s the idea. Mario and Peach are heading to the
damned dolphin shaped island. They watch a commercial for
the island as they approach and at the sight to the seafood
in this commercial, Mario promptly creams himself and slips
into an afterglow induced stupor. I’m not making this
part up either. Watch the intro and tell me he didn’t
cream himself. So, they get to the island and there’s
gooey crap all over the damn place. The implications of this,
given the previous scene, are staggering. Thankfully however,
this is where the semen references stop, as the gang sees
some guy that looks like Mario run off with a giant phallic
symbol of a paint brush that’s dripping with the gooey
stuff. OK, so maybe they didn’t stop completely. Mario
finds a talking water pump called “Flood”. This
little sucker shoots water which is your primary weapon in
the game and also the means by which you clean up the gooey
mess left behind by that guy’s long, thick, virile,
positively bulbous paint brush. Mario is promptly arrested
(not for what you’re thinking, you perv) and sentenced
to clean up the whole island. It’s a frame job and he’s
got to clear his name by catching that guy who did it who
just happens to look like him… blah, blah, blah…
Has this story been done to death? Yes.
Pumping, gushing, and soaking wet:
No, it’s not the latest porn video, it’s Flood.
Basically, Flood likes to pump himself vigorously and squirt
his contents all over walls, enemies, and innocent people
alike. Thankfully, his content is water. This does not really
excuse the fact though that Flood basically acts like a giant,
strap on prosthetic penis with which Mario can piss on whatever
he chooses and that has a near bottomless bladder. All you
guys out there, switch to the aiming mode and tell me that
using Flood doesn’t remind you of practicing your aim
while taking a piss in the woods. You know it does.
The real travesty here is that Flood is what everyone is
calling so revolutionary about this game. You’re spraying
water on crap and washing away gooey stuff. Wow that’s
so impressive… Really… I mean I bet it took so
much computing power to simulate the joys of having a penis
and a full bladder. I would bet you money that if the truth
were told, the developers came up with this game while peeing
their names, in Kanji, into the snow atop Mount Fuji.
Slippery when wet:
Hell, it seems that things in this game are slippery when
dry too. Even the sand is slippery. The controls make it feel
like you’re skating on glass even when you’re
jumping through the air. It’s not impossible to control,
not by any means, but it is very, very frustrating at times.
Easier than Anna Nicole Smith…
Easy? Oh yeah it’s easy. Even if you manage to die,
you can always go back to the central, enemy devoid hub of
the game and stock up on extra lives. This supply of extra
lives is replenished every time you come back to the level
too, so with an hour’s worth of work you can rack up
fifty extra lives. Life is cheap on Dolphino Island it would
seem.
…And twice as ugly:
OK maybe not twice as ugly. I mean Anna Nicole is uglier than
the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man, and that was so ugly you
could hardly tell it was Pac-Man. Still though, this game
is far from breathtaking. Yes, it is colorful, but the textures
are all very low quality, polygon edges stick out like sore
thumbs, and there is nothing pleasant at all about the populace
of Dolphino Island. I’m sorry, but it looks like they
took Mario 64, buffed up the graphics engine a little, and
made a new game with it. I’m so far from impressed by
the graphics in this game, that I’m downright apathetic.
However!
Here’s the truly wicked part about Mario Sunshine…
under all the annoyances, it’s actually quite good.
There is something in the simplicity, coupled with the obsessive
compulsive nature of collecting Blue Coins and Shine Sprites
that makes it amazingly addictive. After spending much time
with this game, I found myself thinking, in the middle of
other games mind you, “… I need some shine…”
You see, this game will make you a Shine junky. You’ll
do anything for your next hit of Shine. Even things that involve
lava and animate ball-and-chains that think they’re
dogs. This game manages to be staggeringly fun, despite it
annoying the living hell out of you with most of everything
it throws at the screen. I would have to liken it to Poke’Mon
in this way. Yes, I have played the original Poke’ games
for the GameBoy Color… and for being deathly cute and
sugar coated to the point of inducing diabetic shock, there
was a nice chunk of a quality, chewy game under it all. I
was very shocked, as I am by Mario Sunshine. Pleasantly so.
-K'Tok
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