Super Mario Odyssey

Ah a new year has gone by and a new Mario game has arrived. Featuring many different kingdoms to explore it certain lives up to its title. The game begins quickly with a snappy cut to Mario facing down Bowser once again on board one of his flying ships. It seems he wishes to marry Peach this time and he is prepared to stop our heroic plumber who falls below the clouds after losing his favorite hat. Luckily he has never had trouble with falling from a great height and quickly recovers to meet a ghost named Cappy. They decide to team up to start fighting back by scouring kingdoms for moons. Thus setting the stage for the player to explore many different locations.

The game starts out in the Cap Kingdom which mostly consists of learning about Mario’s old and new moves.The biggest addition is his ability to throw his hat like a frisbee. Which does give him some range along with a few different styles of throw that use the motion controls in the Switch controller. Although locking onto enemies using one remote is effective I never felt like they were needed to progress at any point. But those moves aren’t even the best part with the new ability of taking over enemies being the true highlight. Which is first shown off with Mario becoming a frog. Which lets him jump really high. Each new controllable enemy has a unique aspect that’ll always earn you a few extra moons. Like being able to stack goombas or turning into a bullet bill to fly over a gap. This is really just a cool way to mix up standard jumping with something a bit different every 5 minutes.

So we now have a base for how Mario controls. Now we need to know how each kingdom is set up. The first kingdom is really just a tutorial to get new players used to the controls before showing the player how the game really works. In the Cascade Kingdom it starts to open up to show off the open ended nature of every level. Mario gets plopped down at the start and an important moon gets highlighted to show off where the player needs to go to continue the story. But it is really easy to get distracted by the many side moons that are hidden in each area. Every moon I’ve collected so far has not been some huge task that must be completed. Instead most are mini challenges that must be solved. Like finding a hidden area in a 2D Mario section or beating a mid boss. Most can be quickly located but some do require beating unique areas that will test your skills of a certain captured enemy or maybe just your platforming skills.

Since I brought up bosses near the end of that last paragraph this seems like a good time to note some meh experiences in an otherwise stellar video game. The Broodals have a great setup of being evil wedding planners that have come to stop Mario. Yet they really feel like boring mid bosses fitted in between unique boss fights in every kingdom. Every fight is certainly slightly different but they all just come down to hitting them with the hat in some way then jumping on their head. Which might have been okay if they didn’t show up again after beating them all once. Other than that the one other annoyance was the fact that some moons were just part of a certain type that keep showing up in every kingdom. For example getting a moon from the slot machine or unlocking the locked room by putting on a certain costume. Not really a huge issue but it certainly is a bit repetitive.

Nothing is ever perfect yet Odyssey does one thing that very few games based on collectibles do. That is to fill every world full of stuff to do. It is very hard to go anywhere in this game without something to do. Sure you might just find a few coins but every nook and cranny you find will have a helpful item in it. Even when the credits roll the game decides to throw a curve ball and expand things in a way you might not expect. At this point it is pretty obvious that I think Mario Odyssey is a awesome video game. This is an easy recommend to anyone that has played a Mario game before. Even if you’ve never played one before I would still recommend it unless you just hate platformers.