Mario close to his best

As a big fan of Super Mario Galaxy i had to give its predesessor a try, and i must say that i think they got it right after Sunshine. That is not to say this isn't a good game, ive had alot of fun with it so far and it feels alot like a blend of Mario 64 and Galaxy. But there are a few issues that makes the game harder/annoying for the wrong reasons. For instance, the x-axis camera control is inverted, and you can't change it, might not be a problem for some but its annoying if you are used to pressing right to rotate the view to the right and not the other way around, but i guess you get used to it. Another issue i had was with lava, in Mario 64 when you hit lava you would fly high into the air, taking damage but being able to stear to a safe palce to land your scorched behind, but in Sunshine when you hit lava there is only one thing you can do, pray. Because here you get no high air jump and no control over Mario at all, not even being able to use FLUDD to clear the ground for you. You just bounce up and down, moving forward slightly in the complete opposite direction that you fell into the lava, taking damage every time you bounce until you get to safe ground, if there is any... This can lead to countless of annoying deaths. Thankfully enough its only used in one world, as far as i have gotten anyway. One thing i noticed is that the game has a realy wierd dificulty curve, you could do a chapter that might take you alot of tries before you are able to make it, and then the next one might take you about a minute to complete, and it happens more than once throughout the game. Quite a few times in the game you will have to run through obstacle courses without help from FLUDD to get to a Shine Sprite, this game's equivalent to Stars, and these parts are where the game really feels alot like Galaxy and are alot of fun, and hard at times, but the good kind of hard. There are also always 1ups to be found so that dying while trying to complete the course you wont lose too many lives. The music is nice and catchy, as it is in most Mario games, however it doesn't feel very memorable for some reason. I myself can only remember one song and thats mainly because you hear it so often. Overall i think its a very fun game, i don't think its as good as Galaxy, but this is its predesessor after all. I would have to say that if you like Galaxy and/or Mario 64 and haven't tried this, i think you should give it a shot.Read full review