Super Mario Odyssey
A sustained blast of colour.
Life is grey. Life is clocking into work and tapping sometimes meaningless words for a social order that says the act of showing up at 9 and staying till 5 is important. It is being rewarded for limitless inane repetition in the hope that you scrape together enough reward to buy a little joy, be it in family, travel, art or consumerism. A brief flare of colour before the fade to grey, and eventual black.
Super Mario Odyssey is a sustained blast of colour, a rainbow to the heart that demands celebration, that refuses to fall into the increasingly less rewarding cycles other AAA games do. Instead favouring a stream of fulfilling victories, of moment after moment of discovery and surprise and joy.
At its core it is a simple game. A 3D platformer where you jump through wide open levels, trying not to plummet off a cliff while ascending to triumph.
You have a hat that can be thrown at and possess enemies, thus granting you their bodies and powers.
This is its first dip into nostalgia. Goombas, Bullet Bills and other enemies that have lined up to vex Mario since the NES are now playable.
Odyssey doesn’t just rely on expert level design to guide you from start to flag, but invites you to experience the world through new eyes, from perspectives as diverse as fish, fireballs and a slab of uncooked meat. It never really leaves the solid Mario 3D gameplay behind, but instead finds new angles, new ways to combine familiar elements in a playful nod to the past that also works as a roadplan for the future.
In what could retroactively been seen as a rebuff of loot boxes, Odyssey showers you in collectible Moons and Coins, and always promises more just around the next corner. It is a promise it never breaks. You are rewarded for playing the game in a way that doesn’t feel cheap, but celebratory.
Every part of this game is a treat, holding your hand in a way that never feels belittling, but rather like it wants to laugh and hug and be with you as you jump and possess your way to victory.
At one point Mario ends up in a New York analogue, with real world humans in drab suits going about pre-programmed routines. Mario is a rainbow storm in New Donk City, bouncing off everyone and flying about skyscrapers and parks, a whirl of red (or green, or white, depending on which of the numerous costumes you dress him in) among a sea of mundanity. The inhabitants of New Donk don’t take umbrage, quietly bitching about the chaos he brings. They understand the power of play, and arm Mario with the knowledge needed to bring music and a little light to their world.
At the end of this level they celebrate Mario’s visit in a way that again leverages our nostalgia in a symbiotic marriage of the old and the new, a musical number singing us through a moment that is the closest I had felt to pure, uncomplicated happiness while playing a video game.
I won’t spoil it, but the finale brings together everything you’ve learnt in the proceeding hours to provide a sequence that outshines even New Donk.
Once the credits roll the game still doesn’t lose its magical grip. Instead, it opens up the world, challenging you to uncover more mysteries, to win even more Moons and coins.
I haven’t said a lot about the gameplay, because five minutes in you will get it. In a gently guided (but not overly assisted) way you will run into Mario’s suite of jumps and powers, and be set loose on a tight loop of skill and reward that begs you to play just another minute. And to speak of the mechanics would be to reduce the power of the game, to bring the fantastic circle of gameplay down to a series of button presses. Button presses that will promptly become second nature as you are sucked into a joyous world of colour, as that colour and happiness bleeds into your grey existence, via one of the best games of recent memory.
