Platform	GameCube
Specifications

Mario Sunshine has a Fight Club-esque air about it. To "talk about it" in terms of specific events would not be right, but it`s becoming so good that it`s now hard -not- to talk about it in such a way, but that`s what i`m going to try to do.

First off, it`s only right to mention that Mario is not without its problems. Handling of Mario is ,at first, a little tricky, and the water cannon is frustrating to use at first. Sometimes Mario won`t do the jump that you think you`ve pressed to do , leading to missing a platform or ,in somecases, falling to your doom. Practice yeilds dividends though, and soon you`ll be squirting all and sundry and leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

So far though, the game does seem to be harder than Mario 64 - and it`ll be interesting to see how far Nintendo have pushed the difficulty later on in the game.

Much was made of the low res textures on wall and many comments were made regarding how the game looked like an N64 release when the first screen shots were made available - but, in the final version, this is far from the mark. Still shots on the web do not do the game justice. Smooth, vibrant, and yet again, a tour de force in character design.
Levels sprawl on for an age - witness from the heights of the first level that you can see down to the dock area. Beautiful. The water effects are fantastic - this has to be the only game that has made thirsty and want to use the lav every five minutes.

Gameplay wise - wow. Just -WOW-. So far, i`ve been exploring, squirting, riding, jumping, racing, climbing, balancing, and even managed to squeeze in a trip to the funfair. There is so much to do in SMS - it`s obscene. There looks to be a lot of secret little areas and fenced off coves that, as of yet, are out of the reach of Mario at the moment... only time will tell what lies with in. A player could easily get distracted just running around the first village spraying the locals, collection fruit, running through the tunnel system, or simply getting high up in the hills so you can view the town.


Boss battles have been nothing short of spectacular - with 4 boss fights that have left me gasping with delight and grinning like a village idiot. The draw to see what is around the next corner is incredible.

The storyline isn`t too bad either, with.... well, just see for yourselves really. A little hackneyed for sure, but hey! this is the world of Mario - I doubt anyone is expecting an Iain Banks novel!