Super Mario Odyssey — Review After Finding 500+ Moons
A great gift tip
Super Mario Odyssey is a typical Nintendo game. It uses a time-tested and honestly refined gameplay formula — jumping over obstacles and solving small logic puzzles. The polished foundation is then accompanied by a symphony of original ideas that bring something new to the table every few dozen minutes, putting a slightly goofy smile on the player’s face.
His brain cells are stimulated to do something different now and then, and he relaxes at the game. If we’re talking about play and playfulness in general, there is no better example in the video game industry today than Super Mario Odyssey. Yet it starts classically and innocently: Mario’s arch-enemy Bowser has decided to marry Princess Peach.
Right from the start of the game, Mario is ignominiously beaten on the head and watches helplessly as Bowser kidnaps Peach and plans the wedding preparations. However, the beast still has to find a ring, treats for the wedding table and other necessities before his forced marriage to the beauty. Which, of course, opens the door for the Italian plumber to ruin the whole wedding and keep the princess for himself. It’s a classic story that serves only as a bridge between imaginative worlds.
However, Mario’s journey through various kingdoms and empty castles could not begin without a means of transport and a helper. The transport vehicle is the flying hat Odyssey, and the helper is the hat/cap Cappy, which Mario uses as a mentor, weapon, launching pad, and a means of controlling certain enemies.
The biggest twist on the classic gameplay, which allows for more and more gameplay mechanics to be unlocked, is Mario’s ability to turn into basically anything and use the enemies’ abilities to get further.
We jump for joy
In the first few minutes of the game, you’re introduced to running and classic jumping, but after a while, you realise there’s much more to the game. If you time your jumps correctly, the third jump is higher. You can also jump an arrow, which is handy if you need to cover more distance.
By timing it right, you can make a jump with a bounce. And after all, you can also use Cappy as another platform if you throw him in front of you, hold him in place for a moment, and then land on him. The possibilities that the moves open up are endless, and you’ll get a kick out of every properly executed jump, which is essential for a good platformer. Nearly twenty different moves are required to overcome all the fun obstacles the game has in store for you.
These include standard, cleverly placed platforms you overcome by jumping with a running start, trees, poles and various other things to climb, natural-looking hills and chasms to jump over, and other brilliantly designed obstacles. Not only do you have to climb these to progress through the game, but you’ll want to climb them at the same time.
The appropriate challenge and cleverly dosed rewards work a treat. And the best part is that you won’t be drilling the moves anywhere. Still, the game will naturally nudge you to use them without semi-popularly explaining that this particular section is a tutorial for this type of jumping.
There’s also no shortage of classics in the form of plummeting platforms, rotating platforms, destructible blocks, sliding floors, time limits or unexpected environments that you can only navigate if you engage your brain threads alongside your speed and finger dexterity.
Enemies won’t give you anything for free, but this time you don’t have to destroy them by jumping on their heads (although you can), but a Cappy hit will hurt them — you have to aim well.
Mario possesses you!
But as I’ve written before, Cappy has other uses. The first time you throw Cappy at a frog, and suddenly you’re controlling a frog with a Mario moustache and a typical cap, you’re going to think it’s pretty hilarious. But the mechanisms that come from reincarnating into different characters are so fun that you forgive the idea’s slight weirdness and enjoy the positives.
The power of the frog’s legs does allow you to jump much further and higher, but you should at least partially forget what you’ve learned: frog flight and classic jumping are slightly different, and if you want to succeed in the frog arcade, you’ll need to learn its jumping style. But anyone who expects that frogs, or somewhat different forms of jumping, are where it starts and ends, and beyond that, Nintendo will run out of ideas, will stare open-mouthed.
You can control electricity, for example, by playing lightning and influencing the flow of current from one point of the circuit to another. You’ll possess a T-Rex, and suddenly you won’t have to worry about enemies. Towards the end of the game, you’ll encounter the ingenious pecking mechanic thanks to chickens, and these are just a few examples of the many ways you can spice up the classic gameplay.
I don’t want to go into detail on every mechanic here, as a surprise is an important part of the fun, but all of the 40 or so major enemy types you can possess add a completely different feel to the game and change the mechanics differently. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop smiling while playing, enjoying the geyser of ideas the authors were spouting at me.
I was entertained the whole time, and about every half hour to an hour, I was doing something completely new that was so polished and fun that you could build a whole game on it.
Plus, everything is designed so well that you don’t have to learn new elements laboriously. You pick them up very easily. In addition to the various characters and creatures, Odyssey takes you through a huge variety of different worlds.
Each one is original and inhabited by different characters, and of course, there are different mechanics attached to the worlds, too — on ice, you’ll logically slide.
In the water, you’ll have to deal with oxygen. Elsewhere, you’ll have to watch out for red-hot jelly, and the mood of one of the worlds will even remind you of Dark Souls. Combined with clever design and Mario’s wide well of transformations, it’s not like this “ordinary” bouncy game will ever get boring.
An updated classic
What’s also perfect is that it’s up to you how you choose to traverse each world. To continue your pursuit of Bowser, you usually must complete a fairly linear quest and collect fuel for your hat-shaped Odyssey ship. The local fuel is energy moons, which come in various colours, and you’ll get an armful of them in each kingdom.
Of course, it won’t be for free: some are for boss battles, others are given to you for careful exploration, some are hidden at the end of a difficult jumping passage, and others are dangling in front of you just waiting for you to reach them. Each time, though, you have to perform an action, show a little skill and cleverness, and, most importantly, enjoy some of the mechanics.
One month usually equates to five to ten minutes of effort, and each time you feel like you’ve made some progress and accomplished something in the game, you’ve figured something out or demonstrated your skill. So Odyssey makes sense to turn on for a few dozen minutes, but be warned that you’ll tend to sit in front of the TV for hours — you’ll be so entertained by the game that you won’t even notice how quickly time is passing.
Alongside the moons, you then collect classic coins that serve as a universal currency and coins that are unique to each world. With the latter, you can buy special outfits, without which you can’t even get into certain levels. Still, you can mainly use them to sympathetically transform Mario’s appearance and buy the souvenirs on display.
What’s great is that the coins are usually hidden near the moons, so getting them is a sort of “in-between challenge,” so there’s always a goal hanging in front of you.
Beautiful 3D
The graphics and music deserve a separate mention. The variety of individual motifs and artistic sophistication overcomes the slightly “jagged” technical aspect of the graphics, making Mario very easy to watch. And all this at 60 FPS. However, I have to give a special shout-out to the retro 2D passages, which seem to have fallen out of the 8-bit era and cleverly complement the classic 3D gameplay — it’s a change of pace and angle, but the playfulness and perfect gameplay remain.
And what’s great is that the 2D elements are perfectly integrated into the 3D world, where you’re mostly playing with Mario on a 3D object and moving through each screen. The controls are also interestingly designed, fully showing off the convenience of two disconnected joycons and using some movement elements or gestures for control.
On the one hand, it is great. On the other hand, it’s a shame that Odyssey can only be fully played this way when the console is connected to a TV. The second criticism then relates to the ability to play in two-player — as much as advertised on the packaging and within the menus, don’t try it.
It’s not fun, the controls or camera angles are not well resolved, and the game is not designed for two-player play.
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