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[Piers]

From what I recall...

• FLUDD is fun to use and augments well with Mario's controls
• Neat cohesion on a tropical island, maybe a bit restrctive on level themes though
• Delfino Plaza was nicely thought out. Compact and really fun to explore.
• Spraying away gunk feels satisfying, and one of few games to do third-person aiming before RE4.
• Interesting use to use water to refill FLUDD, takes advantage of setting. Never feels annoying to refill.
• Very cool way for Mario to deal with water -- FLUDD's rocket boosting.

• Have to do Shrines in specific order.
• Course is often arbritarily locked to one single Shine.
• Lot of the side Shines can be frustrating to get to, let alone beat.
• Voice acting where it wasn't needed. Introduction of dumb Bowser Jr. Mama Peach.
• Yoshi wasn't implemented very well. Awkward to use and activate.
• Physics can get wonky in areas, unfortunetly when you also have to be careful.
• Fighting the camera for what you want it to show vs what it wants you to see.
• Beat Shadow Mario in all courses to unlock final stage. Like first point, also a specific order.

Ultimately think it's kind of an iffy 3D Mario that like Wind Waker, was effed by being rushed and Miyamoto wanting to reset the whole thing.

 

[AndrewDean84xX]

I liked it a lot. Hoping to be able to replay it on the Switch somehow via VC or something, someday.

 

[MaLDo]

Annoying camera that needed to be constantly baby-sat. Weird intro movie. Other than that, pretty good. Would like to give it another shot with a better camera, and a better controller. I hated the GC controller, specifically the triggers. Bad shape, bad motion. I had to stop playing due to induced joint pain.

Played with Dolphin at 4K, 60 fps, fixed camera control, 360 controller and widescreen hack, is my favourite main Mario game.

I love to slide with my belly on the wet floor like a penguin

 

[Cindres]

I still love it, real good memories. Thought it had a super nice setting and thought FLUDD added an interesting dimension, though admittedly those fun platform sessions without it were great.

My main complaint is the lack of level diversity, because they're all supposed to be relatively close to the main hub area I guess? They're all these outdoor sunny areas that might as well all be part of the same section.

Then again I guess all the Mario Galaxy levels are planets...

 

[bionic77]

Overall a really great game.

Had more jank than we are used to in a Nintendo Mario game. I remember a section or two when the camera was just horrible and I think one of the boss fights (maybe last one) was eh.

Probably not a top tier Mario game but still one of the best 3D platformers. Had a lot of really fun moments (the FLUDD less levels, bouncing on the ropes, etc).

 

[Weltall Zero]

Worst 3D Mario game for sure, which still means it's a very good game, in absolute terms.

 

[Raw64life]

The worst 3D Mario, but still better than 98% of videogames released during that generation.

 

[NorthernSpade]

It's a fantastic game, the only real problems I had with it were that the camera could be wonky at times, and the blue coin stuff felt like an obvious attempt to pad out the game.

The controls were great, setting is amazing (Loved that they went with a universal summer island), and the music is top-notch.

I like it way better than 64 for sure, but not as much as the Galaxy games.

 

[DarknessTear]

I love it, and I do want to replay it right now but I'm keeping my Mario playing at 0 until Odyssey.

 

[KHlover]

Easily the worst Mario game I ever played. Annoying gimmick, badly designed levels, not enough bosses, coins, horrible attempt at a story, awful final Bowser... a legit 5/10 in my book.

 

[m_shortpants]

Loved the gameplay, the music, the levels.

Nothing but great memories from it.

 

[Mael]

To be clear there is nothing apathetic about multiple long posts full of what I would refer to as hyperbole and backhanded comments to others. That is not apathy.

I'm apathetic of the game, not the topic.
I could write you posts about enter the matrix and that shit is the definition of game striving for apathy.

I don't think it failed to capture what made 64 great, on top of successfully capturing its own unique design. Also blue coins is an easy defense depending on how much you like platformers that do collecting similar to Rare's entries.

No, that shit is really indefensible.
I like the Rare collectathon.
Heck I could write you great things about DK64.
Most of the coins are pointless timewaster, they're not even in places of interests like how BotW would put Korrok seeds.
To boot they're included in your count of shines so if you don't want to deal with a shitty level somewhere you can mitigate that with blue coins (or 100 coins shines)...
Except that unlike 100 coins shines, these suckers requires you to go to a special shop out of the way making another BS you have to deal with.
It's a very boring game with boring levels, again the best parts of the game is included in the Galaxy games.
the more i think about the more it's really filler the game.
The story is the very definition of filler and inconsequential (what does Mario do between saving Peach or a country or something? He goes on vacation where hijinks ensues).
The levels are filled with filler content like blue coins or red coins shines.
Boss battles are mostly filler with a dark clone of Mario (because fuck if we're going to design something interesting for 9 different boss battles) that turns out is a mini version of an existing design.

 

[Sylfurd]

The hub is fantastic, the water effects are great and it got these impressive looking mirrors

https://youtu.be/AY2UHSYMVyo?t=48

 

[Milennia]

Got this game on launch and have adored it ever since, honestly my favorite 3D Mario

 

[Branduil]

It's the worst mainline Mario game. It's certainly still mostly fun, especially the FLUDD-less levels, but it has a number of design problems, and is shockingly rough around the edges for a Nintendo game.

 

[VDenter]

No, that shit is really indefensible.
I like the Rare collectathon.
Heck I could write you great things about DK64.

I would love to hear what the worst 3D platformer ever made (DK64) has over Sunshine?
If you want to talk about games that really failed to live up to the their predecessors DK64 is the ultimate example of this.The next closest thing would probably be the Sonic Adventure games.

 

[Yoshi]

It is the game with the best game mechanics imo. Super fluid, fast-paced, full control over everything. It is basically perfect in terms of handling and the joy of interacting with the main character. Level design is a mixed bag though. Good, but not up to series standards.

 

[Guess Who]

Sunshine would be a 7.5/10 game if it didn't have the Mario brand attached. People forgive it for a lot of shit they wouldn't tolerate in another game.

 

[Mael]

I would love to hear what the worst 3D platformer ever made (DK64) has over Sunshine?
If you want to talk about games that really failed to live up to the their predecessors DK64 is the ultimate example of this.The next closest thing would probably be the Sonic Adventure games.

that would be Sonic Heroes or Shadow the Hedgehog (along with Sonic 06).
DK64 manages to spur exploration much more than Sunshine for example.
It's certainly not as polished as sunshine technically but there's way less shitty boring filler stuffs inside.
And also you don't have copy/pasted content like blue/red coins counting toward the final number of star/shine/gold banana.
If you have to get a golden banana in DK64 you KNOW that you're going to do something, not just a stupid hunt for small hard to find items spread in huge levels that are boring to traverse.
Heck I'll take DK64 underwater controls over Sunshine's any day too.

All in all I'd even go so far as to say DK64 is much much better.
At least in isolation it doesn't throw you BS challenges with horrible controls like the Pachinko level and a few others.

 

[Mass Effect]

I... really don't like it... Played it on Dolphin with several improvements and just wasn't a fan. It made me remember why I never originally picked up the game back when I got a Gamecube (got it years later though).

Constantly fighting with the camera.

Fluud was cool at first, but grew tiring.

While I liked the tropical setting, a lot of the levels felt weak design-wise. Many of them felt too small.

Those awful blue coins didn't help the game either.

Every other 3D Mario is better.

 

[JudgmentJay]

I played it for the first time last year. I thought it was pretty good. 8/10.

 

[iswasdoes]

Worst 3d mario game
Better than 95% of other 3d platformers

 

[AzureFlame]

fraustrating but i loved it.

 

[Lucumo]

Never understood the hate it tends to get, it might not be Mario 64, but I loved the crap outta it when I played it through first.

Pretty much this. It was really fun.

 

[Azoor]

Sunshine is my favorite Mario game, I love the theme and how cheerful the game is at times. Yes, I like it more than 64 and Galaxy, although I'm not a huge fan of the Galaxy games in genral.

 

[Megatron]

Mario games usually have a wide variety of level types and power-ups, along with fun character designs.

Sunshine has you essentially using 1 power-up the whole game, through samey looking environments, and the Piantas are the worst character design in a Mario game.

It's the only mainline Mario game I couldn't bring myself to finish.

I actually liked that about it. All Mario games seem to check the same boxes: Desert World, Snow World, Underground world, etc. It was refreshing to see them take on one theme and stick to it. Not every game has to be the same.

Sunshine was awesome. Loved it.

 

[Yautja_Warrior]

I really liked Sunshine to be honest, it's not the best 3D Mario game but it's still really good.

 

[MugiwaraCole]

Amazing game. Wish i could replay it, but I sold my copy with my Wii a few years ago.

 

[ronaldthump]

I really enjoyed it. Blue coins is stupid but the game is a lot of fun. Loved the water/ink interactivity at the time.

 

[Boogiepop]

The key here is: Do NOT go for 100%. The game is a mix of a great game and a terrible one, and most of the bad comes when you stray from just going through the game (IE optional crap like Pachinko, or most of the final stars in each world, and of course the blue coins, which become a real nightmarish pain when you attempt to get all of them). There's still some bad mixed in there (like, the final world and boss just... isn't finished), but I feel like you'll get a solid experience just playing through to hit the credits and nothing else.

 

[Griss]

The worst 3D Mario platformer but still a very good game. It's just wildly uneven, with some game design in there (the ghost hotel for example) that would never see the light of day in other Mario games.

Add in some poor visual design by Nintendo's standards (the Pianta are disasterous) and some annoying music and you've got something that falls short of other Marios.

Doesn't help that they took the very best parts of the game, the ones everyone loved, and basically span them off into their own game and called it Mario Galaxy.

The key here is: Do NOT go for 100%. The game is a mix of a great game and a terrible one, and most of the bad comes when you stray from just going through the game (IE optional crap like Pachinko, or most of the final stars in each world, and of course the blue coins, which become a real nightmarish pain when you attempt to get all of them). There's still some bad mixed in there (like, the final world and boss just... isn't finished), but I feel like you'll get a solid experience just playing through to hit the credits and nothing else.

Good advice.

I would love to hear what the worst 3D platformer ever made (DK64) has over Sunshine?
If you want to talk about games that really failed to live up to the their predecessors DK64 is the ultimate example of this.The next closest thing would probably be the Sonic Adventure games.

I tried DK64 for the first time the other day. Was trying to figure out if it was the lack of nostalgia and poor poly count pissing me off or if it just really was one of the worst 3d platformers ever put together. I was shocked how awful it was.

 

[BasilZero]

I remember hating it when I first played it but after three playthroughs I love it!

Biggest thing I didn't like back then was Mario losing the ability to punch and kick like in Mario 64

But ya it's a fantastic game imo due to the level designs and yes even the story

Bad parts were the voice acting for bowser, the setting being limited to the location.

Wish it would get a HD remaster

 

[Zelias]

It's a pretty good game, just a poor Mario game in comparison to what came before and after.

The FLUDD-less sections are ace though.

 

[jstripes]

I dislike it because it caused "___ GET!" to become a thing.

 

[xboxster]

It's a fine game, but I hate trying to go for 100%. I missed two key things from Mario 64:

The way Mario handles.
The freedom to tackle stars however I want.

FLUDD feels almost like a crutch to fix the way platforming. I appreciate the levels where they take FLUDD away, but it only helps highlight how bad Mario handles.

 

[dickroach]

I like it a lot.
the blue coins were a mistake, though. really wish there was another couple of levels instead

 

[obijkenobi]

It's good because it's a 3D Mario game and they're all good, but it's missing something for me. Half of the worlds are enjoyable and memorable such as the harbour and the hotel, whilst the other half just seem to drag on like the beach and village.

Then there's the blue coins. Sunshine is the only 3D Mario I haven't 100%'d as I can't be bothered to do the chore of hunting down all 240 of them as I look back and forth at an online guide telling me where they are. The game could really do with a WW style remake, whereby they scrap the blue coins and put in 24 shines somewhere.

Sums up how I feel about this game. Hell, if a remaster would at least tell you how many blue coins exist in each stage....

 

[spazchicken]

I enjoyed it. I don't understand the hate it gets from some. It's a legit evolution of Mario 64.

 

[VDenter]

that would be Sonic Heroes or Shadow the Hedgehog (along with Sonic 06).
DK64 manages to spur exploration much more than Sunshine for example.
It's certainly not as polished as sunshine technically but there's way less shitty boring filler stuffs inside.
And also you don't have copy/pasted content like blue/red coins counting toward the final number of star/shine/gold banana.
If you have to get a golden banana in DK64 you KNOW that you're going to do something, not just a stupid hunt for small hard to find items spread in huge levels that are boring to traverse.
Heck I'll take DK64 underwater controls over Sunshine's any day too.

All in all I'd even go so far as to say DK64 is much much better.
At least in isolation it doesn't throw you BS challenges with horrible controls like the Pachinko level and a few others.

Obviously the Sonic Adventure games are better than the ones you mentioned. I just did not count them since i barely consider them to be functional games. The SA games were far more disappointing in terms of what they had to live up to. While the rest of them are just shit and nothing more.As for DK64. The whole game is one giant filler quest. It is basically exactly like the blue coin collecting the difference being you had to do them through the entire game instead of them being optional like they are in Sunshine and taking up only 1/4th of the game.

The Pachinko level is terrible but it is optional like every single other bad part in the game.

 

[Lionel Richie]

Fuck everything Yoshi related thing in this game and fuck some blue coins too. Otherwise it's a pretty good time.

 

[Schnauzer]

The only mario game I got bored of and didn't complete.

 

[Drillary Clinton]

Great game. One of my favorites Mario titles.

 

[Yagami_Sama]

I really like the game back on the day it was released for Game Cube.It follows the Mario 64 formula. There are some times that the camera screw things up, but is not that frequent.

The only thing I dislike on this game are the blue coins. It was pretty frustrating reach the end of the game and it was missing 2.

 

[LordKasual]

conceptually it was more interesting to me than Mario Galaxy tbh

the water / paint effects were amazing for the time, Mario and his new abilities were quite fun to control, and it could get pretty challenging

honestly i'll always enjoy the main character in a platformer progressively gaining new abilities than getting a bunch of one-use powerups for specific levels.

The Rocket attachment in Sunshine was amazing.

 

[BlueBadger]

I really loved it, personally. Lots of nostalgia for me, and I thought the world was really fun and colourful. I was too young to realize how much hate it was getting, and I still don't fully understand why. It's probably not the greatest idea to compare it to Mario 64 anyway. That's bound to lead to disappointment, considering how iconic it was. I don't think it's as good as Mario 64, no. But I had a lot of fun with it.

It was fucking hard though. I'm not sure if that was just my young age or if it really is just a hard game lol.

 

[Mael]

Obviously the Sonic Adventure games are better than the ones you mentioned. I just did not count them since i barely consider them to be functional games. The SA games were far more disappointing in terms of what they had to live up to.

Not really, Sonic Adv and Sonic Adv2 were not that disappointing.
They looked great and played mostly well, not the highs from the past but nothing too bad.
Certainly enough to pass as good transitions to 3D.
Heroes was the 1st 3rd party Sonic game and it sucked really badly especially in comparison to the old ones.
Shadow was even worse.

While the rest of them are just shit and nothing more.As for DK64. The whole game is one giant filler quest. It is basically exactly like the blue coin collecting the difference being you had to do them through the entire game instead of them being optional like they are in Sunshine and taking up only 1/4th of the game.

The game's goal is reaching the level bosses and finding golden bananas.
The game signpost the area well enough that just blindly engaging the game with the correct character will lead you to fun challenges for the golden bananas.
I do not consider the bananas to be optional because they're the meat of the game and while you can do them in nearly any order you want they're still fun to get.
In Sunshine most of the shines are an absolute shore to get and the levels aren't fun to traverse. That's mostly due to enemies being absolutely pointless (to solve that issue Galaxy had a more restricting game world) and the traversal requiring the fludd made the platforming trivial.
Heck the game is so bad at making a case for the fludd that it regularly take it from you for some challenges.
And as another poster pointed out the filler isn't 1/4th of the game, far from it.
With the way the game is designed you HAVE TO engage with blue coins/red coins and other shitty content.
The only real filler content you have to engage in DK64 is the crown/weapon plan and by the time it's required the game is over anyway.
Rare kinda had a problem with finishing their games at the time.
Between this and the end part of JetForceGemini :/

The Pachinko level is terrible but it is optional like every single other bad part in the game.

The bosses aren't optional, most shines aren't optional.
the last level and last boss aren't optional.
Heck I'd like to see a walkthrough of the game without touching blue coins or filler content if that's even possible.
You have to engage with the filler if you want to go anywhere in that game.
Heck even the later levels are either shit or filler.
The Hotel level for example is a great concept with shitty tasks to complete to progress.
Noki bay is another example of bad content flush with filler that you have to slog through.

 

[jipewithin]

Was my first game on game cube and really enjoyed it.

 

[yanipheonu]

Fun, but flawed game. That camera really was awful.

Sunshine actually seems like a good candidate for an updated port where the fix the camera issues and cleaned up a few other things.

 

[ec0ec0]

why do some people insist in telling others how bad sunshine is, when you have so many posters saying that it's really fun or outright saying that it's the best mario game?

That doesn't mean that sunhine is the best 3d mario game by any means, but shows that there must be something trully great about the game, despide de game's flaws.

again, this is my take on sunshine (the bad, the good, how to play)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179014027&postcount=313

 

[Mael]

why do some people insist in telling others how bad sunshine is, when you have so many posters saying that it's really fun or outright saying that it's the best mario game?

That doesn't mean that sunhine is the best 3d mario game by any means, but shows that there must be something trully great about the game, despide de game's flaws.

again, this is my take on sunshine (the bad, the good, how to play)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179014027&postcount=313

While your take is interesting, it is not more (or less) valuable than the posters saying otherwise.
Last time we had a thread about fucking Other M, we could find plenty of people being a apologetic to this turd on a coaster.
Heck make a thread right now about Triforce heroes and you'll find people singing praises about it too.
Now if we're talking about the popularity of Mario Sunshine, it's the 2nd least popular 3D Mario Nintendo released.
Collectively gamers found it the 2nd least interesting 3D Mario game worth buying.
How do I know that?
It sold 6.31M, only Mario 3D World sold less than that.
"Bbbb but it was on the failed Gamecube!"
1st party software are made to spur hardware sales, if a game console fails it's because the software on it is less appealing than not buying the console.
and we're talking Mario here, it's flagship of Nintendo and their most important IP with the highest sellers.
A Mario game failing is not the fault of marketing (because marketing has little job to do selling that kind of product) but more a rejection from the market.