I put in more than my share of hours into Super Mario Sunshine here. I'm on the case.

I'd say this is one of the tougher Mario games I've played. I'm sure you've heard of the challenge levels where you basically die a lot. Well, not me, but everyone else. I love them, though. Get a pack of friends to watch or trade attempts with, and watch the tension rise as you miss the jump, and barely make a saving wall bounce. Heart attack.

The control is just fine - the jet pack and 360 jump come quickly and are easily abuseable for getting to difficult, hard-to-reach areas. I still miss the running lunge, though. Oh, and when Rick said Yoshi was easy to control, that was all lies. You can't turn him much at all after he's airborne. His 'juice' looks delightfully close to vomit, which is amusing as all heck when you spew it all over the townies.

The levels seem to be about 1.5 times the size of the Mario 64 levels, but there aren't quite as many as there are in Mario 64. Where's the token snow level? Man! Back on the upside, though, there are INSANELY fun bonus areas, like the corrosive river run or the giant pachinko machine.

Some areas, the first time they hit you, look so insanely pretty and appear to be a 300 kg army surplus barrel of fun that, well, I just got a big goofy grin of absolute joy on my face as I dove right in and wallowed in the genuine Miyamoto-brand bliss. It's pretty, hot dammit!

There's no question about buying the game, I think. I recommend when it comes stateside rather than importing, though. If you understand a little Japanese, there's zero kanji characters, so you can manage reading it if your vocabulary is alright. It's not like you're missing out when the fat orange thing tells you that there are squid in the harbor or whatever, though.