Yeah, as far as the controls go, they take more practice than the other 3D mario games to feel good at. Not sure if that means bad design, because when you do get the feel for the controls, it feels like the 3D mario game you have the most precise control over.
Plus there are just so many options for getting around that you don't have in any others. And it is currently suffering from a lack of 15 years worth of iteration on what games should be. So there are definitely some ideas it has that will seem bad now, but 15 years ago they were normal. Or at least didn't stand out as much. Tough games were supposed to be frustrating back then. It's not a common concept anymore outside of games that are "known" specifically for that. But it used to be way more common back then.
Plus making you waste time as a punishment for failing a challenge was also very common back then, but not so common now. Like falling off a ledge sending you way back to an "earlier part" of a level. Enjoying Mario Sunshine now tends to take more patience than many of us are used to needing, but at the time it was an amount of patience a larger percentage gamers were ready for and accustomed to. It's not that there are less people with that amount of patience now, it's that there are more people that consider themselves gamers now. Because games don't have as lofty a barrier to entry on average as they used to.
The reason Super Mario Sunshine is so divisive 100% comes down to how long it takes before the controls feel good though. Anyone that stuck it out past the first hour or so loves the game. Never met anyone that played it to any extent and came away with it not being in their top 10 games of all time.
Maybe I'm weird, but this game actually looked pretty good, especially at 20 dollars. Ben didn't seem to realise that each time he killed a monster near that door it lost an eye, so he didn't have to solve a puzzle to get past it, just kill the monsters. Actually most of what made the game look bad was that he avoided combat whenever possible, so he was bad at it when he had to do it.
Elite: Dangerous was enough for me, been playing it on a DK 2 for a few months now. I've always had an interest in space games, but never found one worth playing before. As it turns out, it had nothing to do with the games, VR is the only way to play a space game. Honestly even if there was nothing to do in the game, it would be worth 1000$ just sitting in my space ship. But the combat is awesome, especially when you have the ability to look up, not with the controller based "look" mode.... but with your head...
I definitely understand that it's quite a bit of money, but what is even more money is even having a computer that will run it anyway. If you can afford that computer, this is relatively cheap, about the price of a monitor for a computer of that power level. And even if you just want to use the Oculus to simulate an 80 inch curved 3D monitor. 599$ US is already significantly cheaper than what you would pay for that in real life, and that is just one potential use. Plus, 3D on a curved monitor looks pretty awesome, something I would have never known in real life.
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