The only vacation in this game is the one the developers took when designing the gameplay.
The introduction to the game tells us that, Mario, Princess Peach, her friend (Grandfather?) Toadsworth and a group of Mushroom Retainers are taking a well-deserved vacation; and their destination is the tropical Isle Delfino. While Mario is daydreaming over the wide variety of food they offer on the island, and Toadsworth imagines relaxing on the beach, Princess Peach notices something strange in the video presentation they're viewing for Isle Delfino's luxurious resort facilities: A dark silhouette of Mario holding a Paintbrush can be seen jumping around in the background. As the airplane they were traveling on lands, Mario is immediately thrown into jail on the charges that he has defaced the entire island of Delfino, causing the Shine Sprites to go into hiding - and the Shine Sprites are what keep Isle Delfino sunny and tropical year-round. With the Shine Sprites gone, the island has been plunged into darkness. Mario is then released from Jail on a court-order that he must clean up the entire island in hopes that the Shine Sprites may one day return.
Yeah. Immediately, Super Mario Sunshine lets you know one thing loud and clear: This isn't the Mushroom Kingdom anymore. There are no Goombas, there are no Koopa Troopers, and no longer can you be content just in knowing that the Princess has been Kidnapped and that's it, as Super Mario Sunshine throws more plot at you than every single Mario platformer before it combined. And this, perhaps, leads to one of the game's biggest shortcomings - but I'll discuss that later. Obviously, the biggest problem with these cutscenes is the characters in which they involve: Mario and Company have been designed with the idea that they never actually speak dialogue. Mario, Bowser, and Peach have voices that seem more useful in small, sound-effect-like quips - not entire lines of dialogue. For the most part, Mario DOES keep quiet for the majority of the game, thankfully, but the same cannot be said for anyone else. In short, these cutscenes are difficult to watch for this reason alone.
Especially scenes with Princess Peach. As if her voice actress didn't make her annoying enough to listen to (no offense to Jen Taylor), the development team of Super Mario Sunshine has completely ignored previous Mario titles (most notably the RPGs) and re-invented Princess Peach as nothing more than a very, extremely, painfully dumb blonde. Most of all of her dialogue consists of screaming "Mariooooo!" and echoing everyone else's dialogue except in the form of a question. While it could be worse (Princess Peach isn't bubbly or over-excited like a cheerleader), that does not mean that Peach in Super Mario Sunshine is good, either. I'm no female rights activist (I'm not even female, for that matter), but I prefer a Princess Peach that actually shows some semblance of intelligence; in Super Mario Sunshine, it is clear to the player immediately that, when concerning Peach, the lights are on, but nobody is home. To say she is portrayed as "vastly inept and completely and utterly helpless" is one of the biggest understatements of the year. She is about as intelligent as a sack of hammers.
As you start your adventure, you are plopped down in Delfino Plaza with a new toy: The F.L.U.D.D. (Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device) Worn on the back like a backpack, Mario uses the glorified squirt gun to wash away all the nasty paint-like-goop graffiti that covers the island. In addition to the spray nozzle, tapping the X button switches to the secondary nozzle function, which is, by default, a hover maneuver - useful for tricky jumps that require precise timing. In addition to the Hover Nozzle, you can collect Turbo and Rocket Nozzles to replace the Hover Nozzle. The Turbo Nozzle allows you to move at high-speeds (and even glide across the surface of the water), whereas the Rocket Nozzle propels you upwards several hundred feet into the sky. Unfortunately, unlike most powerups in the Mario series, the FLUDD is almost always stuck firmly to Mario's back. It hardly feels special, and doesn't even really feel that well utilized, despite it being used quite often. Controlling Mario otherwise is a breeze. One thing I love about Super Mario Sunshine is just how tight the controls are. If you were bothered by Super Mario 64's sense of weight and momentum Mario had when moving, you'll love Mario Sunshine: Although not at all realistic, Mario stops on a dime. His acceleration is quick and direct and there is not a single second of lag between any button press or analog stick movement. It is quick and tight, and makes the acrobatic moves inherited from Super Mario 64 feel all the more spectacular while simultaneously being vastly easier to execute.
Delfino Plaza acts like the Mushroom Kingdom Castle in Mario 64 in the sense that it is your hub world: All of Sunshine's levels can be accessed from Delfino Plaza, assuming you know where to look. Unfortunately, rather than unlocking new stages by collecting Shine Sprites (as you did with Mario 64's Power Stars), new levels are usually unlocked depending on where you are in the plot, although plot advancement seems largely based on how many missions you've beaten. Generally, when a new level is opened up for play, you do not get to choose what level it is that opens - it is pre-determined by the game based on where the storyline goes next, or what skills you learned in the previous level. This makes the game less open-ended in favor of a tighter, more comprehensive plot.
The same can be said for levels. While level designs themselves are still, generally, the same giant Mario 64-style playground levels, how you explore them and why you explore them are severely limited for plot-centric reasons; each stage in the game is divided into "Episodes", and each Episode follows a general plot thread that is unique to that level. Because of this, the open-ended nature of the levels themselves have been removed, so that you cannot acquire Shines out of order (and ruin the plot progression of the game); each mission usually has one Shine Sprite and one Shine Sprite alone to collect. This is unfortunate, because one of the most fun aspects of Super Mario 64 was exploring levels at your own pace; discovering Power Stars in secret locations you weren't supposed to access yet. You can still explore Sunshine's massive stages, but there is very little reason to do so unless you're sight-seeing or hunting down the elusive blue coins. This also means that you cannot access the last and final stage in the game until you have cleared nearly every level in the game: Unlike Super Mario 64, which let you finish only the levels you wanted to finish (around 60% minimum) in order to see the final boss, Super Mario Sunshine forces you to clear 90% of the game before the final stage opens up.
Levels themselves are fairly bland. The game shares one unified visual design concept: Tropical Island. This makes sense within the confines of the game plot, but does not make for an interesting videogame. Locations are not varied at all, as every location must look like it takes place on the same island. In truth, the level themes are so bland I actually have a difficult time even remembering what the stages themselves are called. Level designs themselves are equally as non-memorable. It doesn't matter where you go - a haunted hotel, a beach, a tropical jungle, or a small village - the level designs themselves don't do enough to really set themselves apart from one another. This is all compounded by the music in the game, which is just as bland and uninteresting as the levels themselves. To further put you to sleep, forgettable level objectives are added to the missions. Generally speaking, each level in Mario Sunshine is comprised of about 6-8 episodes. Roughly half of these episodes are simply repeats of objectives you've already cleared, be it in the current level you're playing or from all levels themselves. For example: In every level in the game, you must race Piantissimo to a certain location at least once - sometimes twice. You must also generally face a mission where you must collect 8 red coins in rapid succession. Boss fights are infrequent, but also repeated: There are around five bosses in the game total, and certain bosses like Gooper Blooper must be fought more than once. This is unfortunately terrible, as all of this adds up to a very bland experience, and perhaps the biggest shortcoming of the game: It's just not very fun to play.
Yoshi makes a tragic appearance as well. In an unfortunate bit of circumstance, the Yoshi that live on Isle Delfino have developed a fatal allergic reaction to water. Now, run that through your head a few times: On a tiny tropical island, surrounded by an ocean, and containing tons of streams, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, a breed of animal exists that dies instantaneously if they touch water. Speaking in terms of evolutionary theory, this should not be at all possible, especially when you consider that in the past, Yoshi has never seemed harmed by water in the slightest degree. Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2, and even the Post-Sunshine Super Mario 64 DS all show Yoshi swimming around as if nothing at all was wrong. Even worse still is the fact that Yoshi in Super Mario Sunshine offers very little gameplay benefit. Besides his flutter jump (which is made useless in the face of FLUDD's superior hover nozzle), Yoshi barely runs faster than Mario and jumps a little higher. The only real use Yoshi has is that, while Mario cannot use FLUDD while on Yoshi, Yoshi can spit fruit juice from his mouth. Yes, you heard me correctly: Yoshi vomits as an attack. If this juice touches an enemy, it doesn't kill them: It turns them into a floating platform that Mario can stand on. Unfortunately, this skill is only ever really needed one time in the entire game. Additionally, there is one type of "Super Paint" that can only be cleared by spraying it with Yoshi's Juice (Maybe it's the stomach acid, I don't know). When you factor in the cumbersome process of even finding a Yoshi to mount (finding and bringing a specific fruit to a Yoshi egg in order to make it hatch), you're not going to like Yoshi in Mario Sunshine at all, especially considering Nintendo still insists on using the voice samples from Yoshi Story. I am in no way a fan of Yoshi sounding like one of the characters of "Alvin and the Chipmunks" after inhaling a helium balloon. Hearing that voice is akin to nails on a chalkboard, for me.
Perhaps the biggest, most memorable and fun aspect of Super Mario Sunshine are the "bonus" levels. For one "Episode", Mario is relieved of the FLUDD and has to go back to his roots: psychedelic, simplistic stages that emphasize pure platforming skill over everything else. The closest relation these levels have to anything is Super Monkey Ball; and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say an entire game made up of nothing but these levels would not go unappreciated. They take the most skill and each one has completely new and unique challenges, and waiting for you at the end of each is a Shine Sprite. Once you clear one of these "Challenge Stages", you can go back to it again, and this time you are given the added benefit of keeping the FLUDD - but now you must race against the clock to collect 8 red coins before time runs out. These levels really utilize all of Mario's skills and will be the source of much frustration for many gamers - but it's a good frustration. It's the same frustration you felt back on the NES when playing Super Mario Brothers 3. It's just a shame they don't make up more of the game; they barely account for 1/3rd of the gameplay.
Visually, Mario Sunshine is a mixed bag. Despite early builds of the game running at a full 60fps, the retail version of Super Mario Sunshine has been restricted to 30fps in favor of a draw distance that goes on forever; You can climb to the highest point in any level and look and see everything in any direction you look; the entire level can be visible at any one time and the game never skips a beat. An additional visual trick gives you the impression that you can even see beyond the boundaries of the level you're in, further onwards to levels you have yet to even visit. In terms of models, cutscenes look good enough, but in-game, things aren't so hot. Maybe it's because of how far away the camera is from Mario, but he looks rather blocky and low polygon - until the camera zooms in far enough, where the low-quality Mario model is then switched for the higher quality version. Another minor complaint about player models - Nintendo has applied a shader to all the characters in the game to make them appear as if (and this is what it looks like to me) they were all made out balloons; there's a weird reflective shine to them. Doesn't look right, to me. Textures on levels themselves are adequate, but not spectacular - they do the job, but are very simplistic and basic, and often times blurry. The game still looks passable, but not as good as it could look. On the plus side, Nintendo spent a LOT of time on the water effects in this game, and they look flat-out gorgeous. Even now, years after the game was released, the water in Mario Sunshine stands on a pedestal as some of the most beautiful water seen in a videogame this generation.
And, even though voice acting and music might be bland, sound design otherwise is not. If you hook this game up to a good enough sound system, you'll be blown away at how good this sounds for a Mario game. Sound quality is amazing - far better than you'd expect from a game like this. From the sound of crashing waves, to the birds chirping, and even the music the residents of Isle Delfino hum, it's all absolutely stunning.
It is unfortunate the rest of the game isn't stunning at all. What we're left with is a game that, while somewhat enjoyable, sometimes, is simply missing that amazing sense polish we've come to expect from Nintendo titles. It feels rushed, uneven, and just isn't very interesting or memorable. It's as if the development team behind Super Mario Sunshine doesn't understand the core elements that have drawn so many to the Mario series over the years; and while some people might enjoy that change of pace, the game as a whole is hurt by just plain poor game design. The game at it's core is more or less passable, but Nintendo didn't build it's company on games that were merely "good enough".