"Super Mario Odyssey" Review

Were I to describe Super Mario Odyssey as simply great, or even terrific, it would be a dire understatement. In the end, the word I settled on as the best descriptor for this game is "delightful." Super Mario Odyssey is a delightful game. Now, unlike Legend of Zelda, Mario is a saga for which I do hold a little bit of nostalgia. I haven't played a Mario game since Super Mario Sunshine, but Super Mario Sunshine was one of the first games I ever played. It defined a major part of my gaming childhood. I bring this up in the interest of transparency. I'm always railing against people who let nostalgia get in the way of their criticism, so I wanted to get my own nostalgia out in the open so that you, dear reader, can decide if I'm practicing what I preach or not. Let me put it to you this way: I don't officially choose my Game of the Year until the time comes, but I can say for sure that Odyssey is in the running for at least the top 5. Is it as good as Sunshine? In my opinion, no. However, it's still a game that I was excited to start up every night that I played it. I'd also like to apologize in advance, as this review is a little vague. I just don't want to spoil any of the ways you can experiment with this game's core mechanic. So, from a high level view, let me tell you why I think Super Mario Odyssey is worth your money if you own a Nintendo Switch.

Mario hardly needs any introduction, what with him being gaming's most iconic character. I feel like it's kind of a waste to write a section about the story and characters when we all pretty much know the basics. The game starts off with Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach so that he can take her away and marry her. Unlike every other Mario game where Peach is kidnapped and that's just about the end of Bowser's ambitions, Bowser actually has an end goal this time around that we're trying to prevent. After failing to stop the kidnapping, Mario ends up in the Cap Kingdom, and is greeted by a new character, "Cappy" (points for effort, Nintendo). Cappy takes the form of Mario's hat, and he explains to Mario that the tiara worn by Peach is one of the Cap Kingdom's citizens. And so, after finding an airship and powering it up, Mario and Cappy set out on a voyage (nay, an Odyssey) to rescue Princess Peach and the Tiara. From there, the duo follow Bowser's airship across the kingdoms as he steals their various treasured wedding-themed artifacts (a wedding dress, a cake, a stew, etc). They, of course, fail every time. After all, it's the nature of a Mario game to tell you "your princess is in another castle" once you complete your trials. At every turn, the duo is met by Bowser's newest goons: a family of rabbits called "The Broodals" [Side note, don't look them up. The internet is the internet, and there's already some...interesting fan art of the seemingly female one]. They're not the best as far as villains go. Unlike with the painted Mario from Sunshine, there's no sense of why the Broodals work for Bowser. What's in it for them? What do these rabbits get out of this wedding? These questions are never answered, and individual Broodals are used as bosses for about 90% of the game. I found that pretty disappointing, as the Broodals don't require a lot of brainpower to beat. So, in short, the story and characters are about what you've come to expect from Mario.

Gameplay is also what you've come to expect from Mario, but with the notable exception of the game's core mechanic: Cappy. You can use motion controls or just the Y button to throw cappy, and if he hits an enemy with an uncovered head, you'll possess that enemy and gain special abilities (and also that enemy grows a Mario mustache). Several things can be possessed, so you'll want to experiment with throwing Cappy at everything you see. You never know what might happen. I was always excited to see what new things I could do with a newly possessed enemy type (and really, I defy you to look at a full-sized T-Rex wearing a Mario hat and a mustache and not smile). Nintendo doesn't always succeed when they center their entire game around a brand new core mechanic, but this is definitely a success. The special abilities you get when possessing an enemy are used for puzzle solving, fighting enemies, and getting to places Mario himself can't reach. I had so much fun experimenting with each possessible enemy, and thanks to the variety of options Nintendo created, the experience never got stale. There are just so many ways to utilize the abilities of enemies that I had several "I wonder..." moments followed by "I can't believe that worked!" moments. It's just brilliant. Odyssey is truly a triumph in terms of puzzle solving and outside-the-box thinking.
The end goal for possessing enemies and solving puzzles is the attainment of power moons. Power moons are essentially the same as stars in other Mario games or Shine Sprites in Super Mario Sunshine. They're collected by completing certain challenges, and when you get enough of them, you can progress to the next kingdom. Unlike Sunshine, which had you going through a hub world to reach areas whenever you wanted, Odyssey has you gather as many of the power moons as you want before proceeding to the next area. It's more linear in that way.
There's a good side and a bad side to the linearity of Super Mario Odyssey. The bad side is that the game feels quite short. Let me explain. In Sunshine, you had to return to each location multiple times in order to get a new mission (and by extension, a new shine sprite). The location would be slightly altered each time to reflect the new mission. Because of this, the runtime of Sunshine was longer, and the locations felt much more dynamic. The good side of this, however, is the love that Nintendo put into each of these kingdoms. There is a delicious amount of content to be found in just about every kingdom. There are potentially over a hundred power moons in these kingdoms, and the kingdoms aren't gigantic. This means that exploration is richly rewarded, no matter where you go. There are so many little nooks and crannies that can be overlooked, so when you really take these worlds and look at them, they're deeply and intricately crafted. From the crowded urban streets of New Donk City to the sand and fizzy water Seaside Kingdom, you'll find plenty of detail in each world. Sure, they're the kinds of worlds we've seen before in Mario games, but there's just so much detail and care put into them that it's hard to fault Nintendo for re-using ideas in this case. In addition to the power moons, each kingdom also has its own form of currency, which is used as a way to get collectibles. These local currencies can be used to purchase new outfits for Mario, and I personally thought these outfits were fitting collectibles. Did they have any particular purpose? No. Sometimes wearing certain outfits gets you into a location with a power moon, but beyond that, the only purpose of these costumes is to be endearing. In that regard, the outfits succeed as collectibles.

There was one thing that I did feel took away from my experience with Odyssey, however, and that was the bosses. As I mentioned, the Broodals were less-than-inspiring bosses, but the non-broodal bosses (including Bowser himself) were even more uninspired. The solution and everything you'll need to beat every boss is handed to you on a silver platter, so there is literally never any challenge, even in the harder "rematch" missions post-game. Granted, I realize I'm an adult. But going back and re-playing Sunshine, you had to use your head to beat the bosses, even as an adult. It isn't that a Mario game needs to be hard, it's just that I feel like too many of the boss fights depended on possessing something, and because of that, what I needed to do was too obvious. In several instances, I had to possess something in order to get through the level, then the boss also required possession of this same enemy type. I'd been getting used to playing as that kind of enemy for a good half-hour, so the bosses never really offered anything new or forced me to think outside the box with how to use this enemy type. This should come off as especially ironic, given how much the game's puzzle solving encouraged out-of-the-box thinking. It's a shame that they didn't structure their boss fights to encourage experimentation too. The designs for the bosses also felt uninspired. For example, in Sunshine, you had to fight a bowser robot by boarding a roller coaster and hitting the robot with water rockets at just the right time or beat an eel boss by cleaning its teeth. In Odyssey, the most unique boss that came was a giant robot that could be overcome easily by taking control of the enemy type that I'd spent the entirety of the level possessing. I just thought it was a shame. This game could have been perfect if Nintendo had put just a little more effort into the boss design. They could keep it so that you need to possess something, but I just wish they'd put the same challenge into their bosses as they did with their puzzles. I don't know, maybe because I'm an adult things came to me more naturally. Maybe for kids this is a healthy challenge. If that's the case, more power to them, I'm glad they're learning how to improvise. For my experience, however, I didn't feel particularly challenged. This is made worse by the fact that the final boss is just a slightly amped up version of a previous boss. However, even though the final boss was more a whimper than a bang, that wasn't the end of it.

Super Mario Odyssey is one of those games that actually made me happy when, upon completing the game, it presented me with a wealth of new content and the promise of even more content once I'd gained enough power moons. When I came to the end, I just wasn't ready to put it down. I wanted more, and Super Mario Odyssey delivered. What's more, as you complete more and more of this additional content, more and more collectible outfits are unlocked. Words simply cannot describe the wealth of content readily available in Odyssey.
Not only is there a ton of content available, all of this content is wrapped up in a tight technical package. I never experienced a single bug, crash, framerate drop, texture pop-in, graphical glitch, or really any technical issues throughout my time in Odyssey. What Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild couldn't accomplish, Super Mario Odyssey accomplished with flying colors. What's more, Odyssey boasts a watery framerate of 60 frames-per-second throughout. The soundtrack is pretty competent for the most part, but all the tracks kind of pale in comparison to the game's jazzy theme. This theme, "jump up, super star!" has the kind of lyrics one might expect of a song made for kids, but it's just so delightfully upbeat and catchy that I couldn't help but dance along myself.

With Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo caps off (HA! GET IT?!) an already stellar year for them. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of Nintendo as a company. I feel that they tend to recycle their content and that they refuse to innovate. However, this year, Nintendo seems to be turning over a new leaf. With the switch, Nintendo seems to be improving their existing IPs. First, there was the stellar Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Now, there's the even better Super Mario Odyssey. If you own a switch, you owe it to yourself to purchase this game. If you feel uneasy because it's made for kids, please just buy it anyway. I can almost promise you'll have fun unless you're really hung up on the made-for-kids thing. For my money, Super Mario Odyssey is a technically strong package featuring an unfathomable amount of content scattered across some of the most intricately designed levels I've seen since Doom. It's a game that is consistently rewarding as you experiment and explore its levels, and it makes it so that the process of reaching 100% completion feel compelling. Sure, the bosses aren't the best, but let's be honest, that's but a drop in the ocean. At time of writing, I haven't yet completed the post-game content, but I fully intend to. Let me put it to you another way. For every game I've played since Yakuza 0, my thought process has been "I'll play some more of 'x' tonight." With Super Mario Odyssey, my thought process was: "Oh boy! I get to play more Super Mario Odyssey tonight." The last game that I felt legitimately excited to play some more of was Yakuza 0, months ago. That's how good Super Mario Odyssey is. Props to Nintendo for creating such a splendid, or, as I've stated, delightful game.

Let us review:
Uninspired boss design - 0.5


The final score for Super Mario Odyssey is...

9.5/10 - Absolutely Outstanding
Excellent work, Nintendo, excellent work

Also, for your listening pleasure, here's that catchy theme song I was talking about: