Go Go Ackman! said:
I don't know why people shit on SMS so much. I had the chance to play mario 64 not long ago, and SMS is a huge improvement in every regard. THe graphics are amazing, the environments are ingenius, and I enjoyed every second of all but one of the worlds.
Just what do people have against this game? Too difficult? Ninja Gaiden is frustratingly hard and people kiss it's ass constantly.
The lack of variety in level design compared to past mario games. In past marios, you'd have snlow levels, jungles, rivers, everything. Especially in Mario 64: there was a LOT of variety in the themes of the levels. in Super MArio Sunshine, it's just tropical. That's one reason why some people hate it.
Another reason is because of the blue coins. Now, you don't need to even TOUCH the blue coins, and you can beat the game. Some people are perfectionists who always feel compelled to get everything in a game, and they blame their frustrations with the blue coins on nintendo.
I, personally, did not put of the blue coin collecting as a separate objective, but I implemented it into the game; as I completed the various shine objectives, I also spent time searching for blue coins. The fact that I did it spread out, while a lot of people played the game so they first completed the shine objectives, and then collected the couple hundred blue coins, it became rather frustrating and repetitive, quickly. I found that my way of doing it, by getting the blue coins while simultaneously completing the shine objectives, removed much of the tediousness that people complain about in regards to the coins.
The way in which you unlocked the levels was completely linear, too. Unlike Super Mario 64, where you had a handfull of doors that openned depending on how many stars you had (and then you had the two keyed areas which were only unlockable via completing the bowser stages, of course), in Sunshine, you had to complete the seventh shine objective of each level in order to beat the game. You HAD to go through seven shines on each level, and you unlocked only one level at a time. The path in which you unlocked stages was rather linear in comparison to Mario 64.
Sunshine also failed to bring a sense of freshness to the table. Many people, after six years of waiting, were hoping for a fresh mario experience that was on par with Mario 64 in terms of how revolutionary it was. People were rather disappointed when they found out that Sunshine was Mario 64-2, which I fail to understand considering the media and previews of the game well before it's release pretty much confirmed that that is what Sunshine was.
Regarding the Shine objectives, a lot of people found them to be less clever than those found in Mario 64. Especially the red coin objectives. In Mario 64, the 8 coins were spread all over a level, but in Sunshine, they were confined to a specific area in each level. People wanted to have to search for the coins throughout the levels. I guess Nintendo made it this way because they already had blue coins spread throughout each level, so making the red coin shines the same way would seem a little repetitive.
Some people felt that the platforming elements were ruined because of the FLUDD device, in Sunshine.
In the end, I guess people were expecting more variety in the levels, less linearity, more classical platforming ideas such as powerups that affected the character, not his or her gadgetry. I think people forgot how revolutionary Mario 64 was, and they hoped for a similar revolution from Sunshine.