Mario with Alice Liddel? Don’t be shocked.
By: Justin Sumter
As this is the first story that shall be shown in this publication, I feel we should do this in style. And what is more stylish than the hottest game of 2017? That’s right my top-hatted lords and ladies of the court, I’ma talking about the greatest and most popular Italian after Leonardo Dicaprio, the main man, a-Mario Jumpman Mario!
Now, here on the Gaming Planet, we don’t criticize the games. We only nitpick the genre of that game to death, the faults and the triumphs. You won’t see us drop a bunch of hate on bad games of a particular genre, like Superman 64 for the Nintendo 64, because we know there are far better ones of that type all over the place. We will only draw similarities between games or make analogies to it. That being said, we won’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes over how terrible some games are, or lessen the monumental achievements of others.
Now with all that being said, let’s talk about Mario Odyssey, and via transitive property, the platforming genre. Odyssey has the unique pleasure of having a 3D and 2D style via warp pipes that change between the main overworld and short hops in the traditional style of side scroller. This allows for easy access to both sides of the spectrum. Any good platformer has a fairly large world with lots of space, unique abilities, puzzles,(though that’s mostly 3D ones) and circuitous routes to reach odd places. One good example is Bowser’s Castle stage.
The exact size eludes me, but it would take a good player at least half an hour to clear even half of the stage. Mario Odyssey is fairly light on the puzzles, but if that’s your poison, Portal or its sequel would be right up your alley. And as for abilities? There are more here than you can shake a Piranha Plant at, as the main mechanic of the game is the ability to capture and take over other creatures, gaining their abilities. So taking over a frog gives you high jumping, and taking over a Chain Chomp allows you to act like one of those pull the string back and let go toys. And there are plenty of enemies to help flesh out the scene, making the levels less of a featureless bunch of jumping, and more of a challenging arena/maze that must be navigated with much care and poise. Another good idea in a game like Mario Odyssey, which is heavily platformer with few enemies, is to keep the world open. That means being able to traverse everywhere that you have already visited and search for the collectibles and goodies that are sprinkled throughout the world. However, the drawback is that the game must be completed before the entire world can be searched. Odyssey does a good job of the open world concept by making the open world exploration part of the level. To advance, the player must collect power moons.
They look like this and are scattered around every open world level, the player being left free to search for them at their leisure. For a look at the gameplay and what I’m talking about, check out the gameplay trailer that was showcased at E3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGQHQc_3ycE
Now that we’ve covered all the parts that Mario can give us, let’s shift gears to a different title. A fun little psychedelic madhouse of a game called Alice: Madness Returns.
Now if Mario had the front in actual platforming, this game had the edge in enemies. Not surprising though, since this game was designed as more of a hack and slash than an actual platformer. A hack and slash is based more around large waves of enemies that you can plow through rather than jumping around a large world, though Alice does have that as well. Since we’ll be talking this game, might as well have the hack and slash pros and cons here too.
Now, this photo seems to me to showcase what exactly a hack and slash does. It has a slew of smaller enemies that grow steadily harder and you collect better weapons to combat said enemies, with a few larger boss-like enemies thrown in from time to time. For a decently good look at what actual gameplay looks like, I recommend watching this trailer.
And of course, there are puzzles. They are few and far between because that’s not the main focus, but they are there, in the form of sliding block picture creations. But back to the murder of creepy inkblot babies. The way that the combat works is that the character locks onto one of the enemies and the camera follows it around, then through a combination of short range, long range, dodging and blocking, the enemy is no more. Each enemy has some little trick that has to be discovered before it can be beaten and then using that trick, a way is discovered that can be used to easily beat them. The enemy variants depends on the level, what kind of weapons you’ve acquired, and a few other things. There is a little bit of exploring with large areas being set aside for the combat and such, but on the whole, it’s a linear progression down a set path with almost no deviation. There are of course other types of hack and slashes out there, like Hyrule Warriors, that looks to be less linear and a bit more open, with more enemies and weapons, but the main way it’s designed and played is similar down to the last detail.
Well, that concludes my long-winded drawl. I do sincerely hope that this publication, and this article in particular, has helped you to decide upon any number of things, not the least of which is whether the genre we have described suits your style. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day.
