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Super Mario Sunshine is a better game than Mario Odyssey, if you ask me
- Thread starter JustTom
- Start date
Nah but it's better than 3D World and if i'm being brutally honest it's better than the first Mario Galaxy.
I love how the OP says that Mario Odyssey is "rushed" in a thread about Mario Sunshine... one of the few major Nintendo games to actually be rushed.
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Although I agree with some of your points, I disagree with your conclusion. Sunshine is easily the weakest 3D Mario game in my opinion.
- The graphics have unconsistent shadows and flat lighting, making it difficult to judge distances and Marios placement in the level.
- The music is by far the overall worst of the 3D Mario games. This is subjective of course, but there's some weird arrangements.
- The controls are problematic with an absolutely awful camera.
- The cutscenes and voice-acting are trash.
And that's not even mentioning some of the bad level design.
- The graphics have unconsistent shadows and flat lighting, making it difficult to judge distances and Marios placement in the level.
- The music is by far the overall worst of the 3D Mario games. This is subjective of course, but there's some weird arrangements.
- The controls are problematic with an absolutely awful camera.
- The cutscenes and voice-acting are trash.
And that's not even mentioning some of the bad level design.
Odyssey isn't quite as good as it could have been (hopefully we get a sequel ala SMG2), but it's definitely better than Sunshine.
I enjoy sunshine more too. Odyssey is lower tier for me. Its just not fun. The production values are god tier as are the controls but levels are total snore and so is the collecting 90% of the easy moons. Barely any actual platforming.
Sunshine isn't even good on its own merits, much less better than Odyssey. Sunshine is a buggy, tedious mess with miserable level design.
I'm convinced that a large part of this board's Nintendo fans grew up on GameCube games. There's no other way I can explain the shockingly bad takes surrounding blatantly unfinished games like Sunshine and Wind Waker.
There's a difference between direction and execution. Mario Odyssey is a top quality, insanely polished children's game. I would probably have more fun replaying Sunshine, despite its flaws and technical issues.
That's because it's true.
I'm gonna blow your mind when I tell you all Mario games are for children.
I retrospect the biggest mistake Nintendo made with Odyssey was making it not a have a similar star mission structure as 64/Sunshine and the Galaxy games.
I could blame all those people screaming for years that "BK did it better!" Because of that now every objective starts to feel like the 100 coin missions in Odyssey. I would much rather the world itself change significantly with each star objective like in the previous 3D Mario games. I also think they should have let you done some of these worlds out of order as there is no reason to limit the player to do them in such a linear way. Especially since some of the later worlds aren't even harder than the earlier ones.
I do think earlier 3D Mario games definitely had the better structure. Odyssey has problems and i wouldn't call it worse than Sunshine but Sunshine definitely has some advantages and is a fantastic game in it's own right, far better than often given credit for. It's much better than the mechanically milk-toast 3D World, which felt like a snooze fest.
I could blame all those people screaming for years that "BK did it better!" Because of that now every objective starts to feel like the 100 coin missions in Odyssey. I would much rather the world itself change significantly with each star objective like in the previous 3D Mario games. I also think they should have let you done some of these worlds out of order as there is no reason to limit the player to do them in such a linear way. Especially since some of the later worlds aren't even harder than the earlier ones.
I do think earlier 3D Mario games definitely had the better structure. Odyssey has problems and i wouldn't call it worse than Sunshine but Sunshine definitely has some advantages and is a fantastic game in it's own right, far better than often given credit for. It's much better than the mechanically milk-toast 3D World, which felt like a snooze fest.
I definitely agree with you about the graphics TC, it blows my mind how great the game looks.
One way I like to put it is.
Mario Sunshine is a great game... just not a great Mario game.
One way I like to put it is.
Mario Sunshine is a great game... just not a great Mario game.
I don't think the point is to collect all 900 Moons in Odyssey, the point is the abundance of them. To go in basically any direction and have something to do. You only need like what, 250 to finish the game? Less than that?
I don't think it's fair to call them padding, there's a good reason to have so many of them.
But yeah I can't agree about Sunshine being better, I can't even agree that it's a good game. It has some of the worst level design of any 3D Mario and outright feels unfinished in areas.
The abundance of Moons is also a good comparison to Sunshine's rigid structure where you can't finish the game without first getting to a certain Shine in each level. Would you rather have plenty of choice or no choice? Wasn't choice the point of Mario 64's hub in the first place?
I don't think it's fair to call them padding, there's a good reason to have so many of them.
But yeah I can't agree about Sunshine being better, I can't even agree that it's a good game. It has some of the worst level design of any 3D Mario and outright feels unfinished in areas.
The abundance of Moons is also a good comparison to Sunshine's rigid structure where you can't finish the game without first getting to a certain Shine in each level. Would you rather have plenty of choice or no choice? Wasn't choice the point of Mario 64's hub in the first place?
one thing is for sure, it was a lot more of a joy replay after a first playthrough than odyssey.
when I think of going through all those areas in Odyssey a 2nd time I am like "hell no, that's too much of a time sink"
with Sunshine I just wanted to re-see, re-play and re-do everything. Maybe because the world hubs were a lot tighter, more compact and there was always good challenge somewhere, the no-Fludd areas were a ton of fun.
er... if it's not the point.. then why put it in the first place?
you know, you can call a spade a spade: it's bloated to hell and back to give people more bang for their buck and get that plus 90 metacritic score, that's all there is to it and there's nothing wrong about it.
when I think of going through all those areas in Odyssey a 2nd time I am like "hell no, that's too much of a time sink"
with Sunshine I just wanted to re-see, re-play and re-do everything. Maybe because the world hubs were a lot tighter, more compact and there was always good challenge somewhere, the no-Fludd areas were a ton of fun.
er... if it's not the point.. then why put it in the first place?
you know, you can call a spade a spade: it's bloated to hell and back to give people more bang for their buck and get that plus 90 metacritic score, that's all there is to it and there's nothing wrong about it.
Well, nobody asked you!
...
Real answer time. I really enjoy Super Mario Sunshine. I really like FLUDD. I didn't mind it being different from Mario 64, even back in the day. It's a great game with flaws.
It's not better than Odyssey, tho. I much prefer the Cappy moveset to using FLUDD.
Not a huge fan of Capturing tho. It's okay.
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Real answer time. I really enjoy Super Mario Sunshine. I really like FLUDD. I didn't mind it being different from Mario 64, even back in the day. It's a great game with flaws.
It's not better than Odyssey, tho. I much prefer the Cappy moveset to using FLUDD.
Not a huge fan of Capturing tho. It's okay.
I feel like I explained that. Levels are larger than ever and the point is no longer about 6 objectives per level, it's about exploring every nook cranny and finding something everywhere. If you want to put yourself through the effort of finding all of them then you can but I don't believe that's the point of the game.
The complexity is what determines if something is specifically made for children to enjoy, because for an adult this exercise is painfully obvious and offers no satisfaction upon completion:
whereas this one is an interesting challenge, especially when you impose extra conditions such as to solve it as fast as possible or to solve it in the least amount of moves, then it becomes an insanely deep and mentally stimulating intellectual exercise:
Both objects have the appearance of a "childish toy" but only one of them has lasting appeal (depth) and the capacity to entertain adults (complexity).
If Sunshine had been released in this era it would have received the QOL updates it needed. As things stand, it's a 3D Mario that managed to irritate me in some of the most basic ways 3D Sonics do. For any of its flaws, Odyssey does not do this.
Suoer mario sunshine is hot garbage and is the only mario game that feels like if it was made by someone like the sonic team instead of ead.
Odyssey is absolutely fucking great, i never mind that some parts were easy to be quite frank.
Also i want to add, apart from the buggy mess and terrible camera controls the gane has, i absolutely hate the whole game is a summer theme , with the same sounding music everywhere, the terrible enemy designs, isla delphino and all the stages looking exactly the same...
And lets not add it has the absolute worst final level ever conceived in a mario game.
Odyssey is absolutely fucking great, i never mind that some parts were easy to be quite frank.
Also i want to add, apart from the buggy mess and terrible camera controls the gane has, i absolutely hate the whole game is a summer theme , with the same sounding music everywhere, the terrible enemy designs, isla delphino and all the stages looking exactly the same...
And lets not add it has the absolute worst final level ever conceived in a mario game.
The complexity is what determines if something is specifically made for children to enjoy, because for an adult this exercise is painfully obvious and offers no satisfaction upon completion:
whereas this one is an interesting challenge, especially when you impose extra conditions such as to solve it as fast as possible or to solve it in the least amount of moves, then it becomes an insanely deep and mentally stimulating intellectual exercise:
Both objects have the appearance of a "childish toy" but only one of them has lasting appeal (depth) and the capacity to entertain adults (complexity).
Most of Sunshine's challenges are very easy to solve, though. Not exactly intellectually stimulating. They are generally more frustrating because of issues with the camera and level design, not because they are especially complex. Unless you think sitting on a boat and waiting for it to take Yoshi to an island has lasting appeal...
Where have the Sunshine lovers gone? Expected better Era!
Sunshine is secretly the best 3D Mario adventure*, never mind it bettering Odyssey. The weirdly cheerful, yet nightmarish holiday setting make for a highly atmospheric, singular experience. FLUDD was an inspired design choice, combining wonderfully with the tricky level design. Sunshine probably has the most acrobatic and rewarding platforming of any Mario yet. The FLUDD-less secret levels also showed Nintendo at its most imaginative. Yes the game isn't quite as balanced as 64, Galaxy or Odyssey, but it's not nearly as rough as legend has it.
Glad you revisited the game OP, Sunshine is ripe for a remaster so maybe other deniers can also have their light bulb moment ;)
*not including 3D World here
Sunshine is secretly the best 3D Mario adventure*, never mind it bettering Odyssey. The weirdly cheerful, yet nightmarish holiday setting make for a highly atmospheric, singular experience. FLUDD was an inspired design choice, combining wonderfully with the tricky level design. Sunshine probably has the most acrobatic and rewarding platforming of any Mario yet. The FLUDD-less secret levels also showed Nintendo at its most imaginative. Yes the game isn't quite as balanced as 64, Galaxy or Odyssey, but it's not nearly as rough as legend has it.
Glad you revisited the game OP, Sunshine is ripe for a remaster so maybe other deniers can also have their light bulb moment ;)
*not including 3D World here
I feel like this goes both ways. The majority of Sunshine's complaints on this board stem from blue coins and a small handful of levels - just about all of which aren't actually necessary for completion. You don't need a single shine from Delfino Plaza or any blue coins to beat the game.
I haven't played Sunshine since the GC days, but you said "all 3D Marios"
Going through some Youtube clips you can see though that there's alot going on even in the first area of the first level in Sunshine, in terms of gameplay possibilities. I can spot at least 5 distinct ways of climbing to the roof of the first house. There's so much going on in terms of things for your mind to process as you look around. The act of climbing up the house and finding a blue coin or whatnot is easy, but still the situation is infinitely more interesting to approach than the things you find in Odyssey because the level design is so one-dimensional and there is literally only 1 move you use as Mario when platforming (jump, throw cappy, jump on cappy, dive out)
Then there's also the fact that water is a resource in the game, so thinking about ways to optimize your platforming such that you conserve as much water as possible is a constant thought process. It's very much like how in BotW you constantly need to evaluate whether you have enough stamina to climb a cliff so you look for paths leading up to see which one is the best suited. In the case you do have enough stamina, you still ponder whether you can use it to jump and get up faster or slowly walk up which is the more stamina conservative, so there's always a tradeoff present because if you jump too many times you risk not having enough stamina to make the climb. It's these types of thought processes and things in your environment that your mind is processing that makes Sunshine's level design more engaging than Odyssey's.
Indeed but you do lose the non linear approach to Sunshine's progression that Mario 64 had. You can still jump from level to level but a lot of the Shines are mandatory this time. You have choice in both Odyssey and 64, in the case of the latter you can avoid entire levels if you want.
I agree the blue coin argument is overblown as it's only really for Completionists
False. Read a lot of the complains.
I havent even touched the blue coins shit, but i think sms only saving grace are the fludless levels. The camera is bad, the game is a buggy mess (only mario game were i went through the floor, and i dont mean only once), the levels, thematically and design wise are bland, the music is always the same, the enemy design is terrible and there are not enough enemies, the yoshi parts are trash, the story and cutscenes are an absolute disaster (and im glad koizumi learned a better way of making stories and cutscenes in a mario game with galaxy and oddysey, instead of going the Miyamoto way), theres zero variety, and thats funny with the awful small number of worlds, lot of objectives are atrocious (pachinko, watermelon beach, and the list goes on...), it has the worst final level of any mario game ever conveived...
The game is not good and a remaster wouldnt even save its life, because they would need to basically create a new game to solve all its problems.
Look, i can understand people loving wind waker even when also unfinished, because for all of its faults, it does incredible things. Playing without any nosltagia googles (like i did with sunshine, that i played like 5 years after its released) i saw the spark of a fantasitc game when i played windwaker.
But mario sunshine never does anything incredible, is in the same levels of sonic adventures games of medicore to terrible and i wouldnt be surprised if a venn diagram showed the correlation between sonic adventure game fans and super mario sunshine game fans.
My original point is the idea that Odyssey is somehow more for children than previous Mario games is false. There is nothing inherently more complex or adult-aimed about the other Mario games compared to Odyssey. It's a pointless argument because all of these games are designed to be accessible from 5 year olds to 50 year olds and there is nothing wrong with that.
I don't agree either that Mario has significantly less options in Odyssey or things like FLUDD and water management make it a better game. More is not necessarily better. Mario has less movement options in Super Mario 64 compared to Sunshine but the game is designed infinitely better to compliment his toolset and it's overall the superior game.
Levels like this are an example of the problems that plague Sunshine's design. You are constantly fighting against the game, rather than having a dialogue with it.
There are many areas in Odyssey where you can optimize your route with different pathways and techniques; one look at its speedrunning community would tell you that. You're simplifying Odyssey greatly, especially because Sunshine's areas are generally small and not very complex at all. Most of the time it's just a matter of traveling across a relatively harmless terrain until you get to a challenge room or boss battle. One of the best Sunshine missions is actually the third Shine in Pianta Village where FLUDD is taken away and you have to navigate the burning village with nothing but your platforming. The level takes advantage of its multilayered setup and offers some challenging segments without relying on awkward FLUDD puzzles or overly punishing platforming sections with bad camera movement.
I enjoyed and beat sunshine back in 2002. Had a few rage moment stages and red coin bullshit though. But I loved the beautiful water effects and the whole summer vibe it gave off.
OP
OP
I dont know how to feel if I take this statement in combination with your avatar... :D
This is the thing, im not undertsanding some mebers here saying "oh, but i just looked at a video of mario sunshine and i found 5 different ways to go to the top of the house". Did they even played Oddysey then? becuase that is in ALL the levels of that game. You dont even need to see speedrunners doing it, yu can find all this ways when doing the race challenges. Its a marvel seeing the way people move across with such a fludity and liberty through the skyscrapers of new donk, sometimes even looking like they are spiderman webslinging from building to building (with huge jumps and using the hat instead of webs of course).
HELL! theres even a whole mode fbuild specially to show the amaing movement liberties through levels with the luigi balloons.
And people here are telling me that levels are more engaiging in sunshine when the only thing you are doing in the levels is moving to a shine area, one of the shitty boss fights the game has or trying to find a more interesting secret level? Using the fludd in various ways doesnt make it more engaiging.
Sunshine has a lot of filler (blue coins), Odyssey has a lot too but the blue coins are a just the worst. The level variety is lacking and it's just too short. Odyssey is a LOT better, sorry
It's a shame people can not compare games without inevitably shitting on the one they like less. I personally like all of the 3D Mario games and have trouble ranking them, and so when people act like Sunshine or Odyssey are "horrible abominations" or some other form of typical game forum hyperbole, I cannot help but shake my head.
Also, Nostalgia is a hell'ava drug - I guarantee in 5-ish years people who grew up with Odyssey will make threads about how much better it is that Galaxy 3.
Also, Nostalgia is a hell'ava drug - I guarantee in 5-ish years people who grew up with Odyssey will make threads about how much better it is that Galaxy 3.
Your third point doesn't make sense, because sure, it's a great looking game, but comparing them today, Odyssey looks better. But sure, it was certainly more visually stunning back on release, if that's what you mean.
Your first and second points are the same thing: The game is too easy. And I agree with you!
I love Sunshine because it's challenging, and although I understand the criticism, I didn't have much problem with the game. Sunshine requires you to actually be skilled, so if you're aren't, you're gonna feel it's very unfair, has crappy camera, etc. But it still has superb controls and therefore can never be compared to real crap, like Sonic 2006 and so on.
Which game do I prefer in the end? It's hard to say, because I think all the 3D Marios are some of the best in the industry. For me, the big flaw of Sunshine is the low number of levels, and how they're all summer/vacation themed. There just isn't much variation when it comes to the environment. Meanwhile, that's Odyssey's very strength: Lots of levels and styles and ideas, so there's always something new going on, even though it's a very easy game.
Both are also THE best controlling games in the series.
I guess when I replay Odyssey in 5 years, I'll be able to say which of the games I prefer in the end.
Your first and second points are the same thing: The game is too easy. And I agree with you!
I love Sunshine because it's challenging, and although I understand the criticism, I didn't have much problem with the game. Sunshine requires you to actually be skilled, so if you're aren't, you're gonna feel it's very unfair, has crappy camera, etc. But it still has superb controls and therefore can never be compared to real crap, like Sonic 2006 and so on.
Which game do I prefer in the end? It's hard to say, because I think all the 3D Marios are some of the best in the industry. For me, the big flaw of Sunshine is the low number of levels, and how they're all summer/vacation themed. There just isn't much variation when it comes to the environment. Meanwhile, that's Odyssey's very strength: Lots of levels and styles and ideas, so there's always something new going on, even though it's a very easy game.
Both are also THE best controlling games in the series.
I guess when I replay Odyssey in 5 years, I'll be able to say which of the games I prefer in the end.
