"It looks awful" is one hell of a snap judgment. It doesn't look terrible. Really, it looks like a decent attempt at bringing Mario to UE4. Some of the textures need some work, and the lighting could use some tweaks. That said, the lighting is reminiscent of 75%+ restored island later in the game, so it isn't nearly as off as it could be otherwise. I appreciate that NPCs were included to add some life to the display, and it was otherwise something I think would work very well provided the textures were augmented just a bit more.
Besides objects not reacting quite right and the water effect being a bit questionable, I think it would be really interesting to see Super Mario Sunshine brought to life with this style.
As a fan of the original (hell, I still have my copy sitting by my Gamecube), I see no fatal flaws here that wouldn't be remedied by a couple days of reworking what's already there.
