Super Mario Sunshine

SMS is definitely a gorgeous game to look at and a perfect game to get you in a summertime mood. The perfect blue skies, glorious sunshine and beautiful water effects make you just want to pass through the screen and into the Isle of Delfino in the game itself. Mario vacations in this sunny resort only to find it's covered in pollution when he arrives. So now it's up to him to clean it up across the various levels and worlds.

It's one of those games that you can just keep on playing over the years and even put aside for a while before going back to it. It doesn't really have the same charm in the winter months however. The music, the graphics, the humor are all cute and colorful. It makes for perfect escapism.

However, the designers have simply tried to cram in too many controls on the Gamecube pad and, as a result, it's a very hard game to control. Many levels and missions require precision manoeuvring and can often take several minutes of painstaking balance and ascension only for it all to be undone, as Mario plummets several hundred feet, by a tiny little flaw in your button-bashing. It will seriously drive you C-R-A-Z-Y.

Had it not been for this, I would probably have stuck with SMS to the end, but I had to just be done with it once and for all, otherwise I would have chucked my Gamecube at the wall.

Graphics A Sound A Gameplay C Lasting Appeal B