Best platformer for the GameCube so far

This review is based on the Japanese import version of Super Mario Sunshine and may contain SPOILERS.

Mario finally takes a well deserved vacation... or so he thinks. The setting of the game is a beautiful tropical island called Isle Delfino. Little does Mario know that trouble has been brewing on the island. Someone, disguised as Mario, has covered the place in paint and graffiti. Mario is arrested and sentenced to clean up the island and not allowed to leave until he does.

He has to clean up and collect Shine Sprites which are what keep the island beautiful (I think, I can't really remember why the Shines were important to the island, but they left after the island got covered in paint, so Mario has to recover them).

Mario cleans up with the help of a device made by Gadd Science, Inc - the Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device, or FLUDD for short. It's a water pack that allows Mario to spray the island clean or use as a hover pack. A couple more upgrades (a rocket nozzle and a propeller nozzle) are found for FLUDD later in the game.

The controls are fairly simple to figure out and when you first find FLUDD, it gives you a quick tutorial on how to use it. Here's a rundown of Mario's basic moves:

Analog Stick - move Mario up, down, left, and right on the screen
A button - jump (he can also spin jump, back flip, double jump, triple jump, bounce off walls)
B button - dive/slide, pick up certain items
X button - switch between spray and hover modes (or rocket or propeller, if you have it)
Y button - first person camera mode (you control the camera with the analog stick when in this mode)
R button - use FLUDD depending on what mode it's in
C-stick - control the camera
L button - center the camera behind Mario
Z button - check your map and how many Shines you have collected for each level
Start/Pause - bring up the pause menu
A + L - butt stomp

There are seven levels in the game and each level has 8 "stories" (might be called something else in the US version) to acquire shines. Each story makes use of Mario's abilities and his water pack functions very well. Some stories in the game (called "Junior's Playground" in the US version) have you playing through WITHOUT the aid of the water pack, so you have to rely on Mario's jumping skills alone. Some of these levels will seem impossible and make you want to throw your controller at the TV, but they are all completely possible after losing a few lives and getting the hang of things.

Even though the game was in Japanese for me, I had no problem with the language barrier. It is just one of those games that you can pick up and figure it out easily no matter what language it's in.

The boss battles are what I enjoyed the most about the game. The developers of the game seemed to get very creative with the bosses and what you needed to do to get rid of them.

The music is great! I loved it. The classic Mario Brothers theme song also gets a nice acapella style rendition in the Junior's Playground stages. And I loved how when you go down into the sewers, the Mario Brothers underworld music would play.

Mario's dinosaur pal Yoshi is back! You need Yoshi to get rid of certain obstacles that are in your way and to kill enemies that were once unbeatable. What was kind of annoying about having Yoshi was that he cannot go in non-shallow water and you have to keep him fed with fruit or he'll disappear. And that makes one particular part of the game somewhat difficult (you'll see what part I mean, if you play the game), but it's not that bad once you get the hang of things. Another new twist that they added to Yoshi is that instead of just finding his egg and being able to ride him, you have to find a piece of fruit that he wants and bring it to him before he hatches from his egg. Pretty neat idea, at first, but when you just want to play around, it gets pretty tedious just having to carry the fruit all the way to him.

Despite the few annoyances (Yoshi and some bad camera angles at certain points), overall, Super Mario Sunshine is a great game. And if you have been waiting for a nice, long game to play for the Cube, Mario will definitely keep you busy for a while.