EASILY the best looking game I have EVER seen.

Yeah... Or I just think this is the best looking game I've ever seen because.. I think it's the best looking game I've ever seen?

Aesthetics for me is not about pushing polygons or looking realistic. It's about having a cohesive, consistent and extremely appealing look. This is the most awesome display of delightful design and imagery presented in the most solid and confident way I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. I have a PS3, I have a 360. Take a gander at my gamercard if you want to see my reference model.

I think that's pretty fair. It's obviously not the best use of gaming technology I've ever seen.. but there's no reason that this can't be someone's favorite look in a videogame. Personally, I'm not too keen on the setting. I wish Mario would get back to basics and stop going on these wacky vacations of his.

Regardless.. while I disagree with most of your best x ever statements, I just hope it's good and delivers the platforms first real must have platform game. It would be wonderful if Mario could bring his genre back a little. Platforming has really lost its relevance which is a shame, because even when it's extremely well done (Sands of Time, Tomb Raider, etc) it's often over looked.

I think if people are being absolutely honest with their best x ever statements, then it's pretty rare for two people to sincerely agree. Those kinds of extremities are bound to be just as individual as they are *intense*, so to speak.

I'm right there with you if you're implying that Sunshine's setting was a bit poo, but I'm honestly quite confident that this game has plenty of slices from classic Mario locales - ghost houses, castles, lava bits, gigantic mushrooms, water/floating logs etc - to make it feel perfectly at home in the "real" line of Mario Games. So many design decisions here are obviously made with the gameplay in mind, and the concept of gravity, weightlessness and freedom is taken to another level that wouldn't be possible without altering the familiar world in some way.

I can see how it rubs someone the wrong way if the space angle is decidedly un-mario-y to the person in question, but for me, since we've been collecting stars since ages back, it just represents a breach of another confining *wall*, entering another new dimension, just like the step into 3D with Mario 64 was.


As for platforming being brought back, that'd be nice. I think a lot of people consider platforming to simply be a thing of the past, a genre born from limitations rather than a deliberate set of mechanics. Of course, everything is always born from limitations rather than possibilities, but the notion that it's worth going back to is alien to a lot of people.

It's also a genre that is very difficult to tackle with the gritty/realistic mindset, which is obviously the way everything has to be engaged these days, and anything going in another direction will immediately be dismissed as kiddy stuff.