Title: Super Mario Odyssey
Original Release: October 27, 2017 (Switch)
Finished Release: North American Switch Release (2017)
Hey, wait, this can't be right. This game just came out! Less than two months ago, in fact. There's no way I beat a game within two months. Well, if that's what you thought, you would be dead wrong (in this case), because I beat Super Mario Odyssey within a week!
Seriously, I played this game nonstop, even beyond the point where I had beaten it. And sure, maybe that gives away what I thought about it, but we're gonna go through the review anyway. Here we goooooo!
So look, I'm not gonna treat you like you're stupid. You know what's up with the ol' Mario games, so I'm just gonna go ahead and confirm some of your assumptions. Yes, Bowser has kidnapped Peach. Yes, Mario has to rescue her. And yes, he has to do so by traveling from world to world, running, jumping, and collecting stuff. Sure, that surface-level formula hasn't changed all that much here, but if you look a bit closer, you'll see some interesting differences.
First of all, you aren't technically traveling to different "worlds" in Odyssey. Instead, as the name implies, you're off on a globetrotting adventure, going out beyond the boundaries of the Mushroom Kingdom and seeing what other kinds of kingdom the world has to offer. Your method of transportation is a hat-shaped flying ship, which I'll get to in a minute.
Let me first say that hats are very important this time around. It's interesting that, considering how iconic Mario's cap has always been, it rarely plays an important role in the series. In Odyssey, however, it's almost the star of the show. See, after initially losing a fight to Bowser in the opening cutscene, Mario finds himself in the Cap Kingdom, home to a whole race of people who are... hat spirits?
Anyway, it's here that Mario meets Cappy, a local resident. Cappy's sister, Tiara, has also been kidnapped by Bowser, to serve as the tiara (obvs) in Princess Peach's wedding ensemble. Oh, did I not mention that Bowser and Peach are getting married? She's not into it.
Anyway anyway, Mario and Cappy team up to take down Bowser. Cappy takes the form of Mario's famous cap, which mean that Mario now has a magical talking hat. And so, the two of them take off on a trek to see the world and take down Bowser once and for now!
Sure, the story is standard Mario fare, but it's what we expect, y'know? You're never gonna see Mario get drugged and have his kidneys stolen by organ thieves, and so he has to fight against hordes of black market goons in an effort to get them back, only to eventually have a brutal hand-to-hand fight with a mob boss, in which he dramatically takes off his shirt to reveal an epic full-back Yoshi tattoo. That's never gonna happen. I'd totally play that though.
All joking aside, for what it is, the story is pretty great. It's pretty simple, as usual, but it's all just so darn charming that it's really difficult to want anything more than what you get. Not impossible, mind you, but I'll talk about that later.
First let's talk about how great the game looks, and it looks great. Things are bright and colorful in just the right way. All the worlds are unique, and I don't just mean unique from each other, I mean genuinely unique. Sure, you have the standard go-to world types: your ice world, your desert world, your lava world, but they almost always have an interesting feature that sets them apart from what you've seen before.
The "forest" place, for example, is actually what appears to be an ancient survey outpost, operated by a host of robot dudes. The desert world features a pyramid, of course, but surprise! It's a Mesoamerican-styled pyramid, not an Egyptian one. In fact, the whole place is clearly Aztec/Mayan themed (it's kind of a mishmash of the two.) The ice place is more or less what you expect, but it's one of the smaller kingdoms, so you're not there for very long. But the most unique location has to be what serves the role as the "lava" world. I'm not going to say any more about it, because it's so quirky and strange that you just have to see it for yourself.
Also, Odyssey plays home to the coolest version of Bowser's Castle. There, I said it.
So it looks good, but how's the musi-You know how the music is. This is Mario, the music is fantastic! Sure, it also goes for atmospheric from time to time, which you know I'm not a huge fan of, but most of the songs are super catchy, and there's multiple versions of each song to boot. My absolute favorite is the previously mentioned "forest world," the Wooded Kingdom. Not to mention the game's one vocal song, "Jump Up, Super Star!" which is fantastic. It's also the star (heh) of a really great sequence in the game, which I won't say more about.
The gameplay, as with everything else, is exactly what you would expect from this series at its finest. Mario moves and feels exactly how you would expect him to. When you've played 3D Mario games for as long as I have (every single one, thank you very much), you develop a feel for how Mario is "supposed" to move, and here it's pretty much spot-on. If there's any real difference it's only that he appears to have slimmed down a bit and become a bit quicker, which is absolutely not a problem.
The major new gameplay addition is, obviously, the use of Mario's hat. You can fling Cappy out to attack enemies or hit objects in the world, but you can also bounce off of him to increase your jump distance, spin him around you in a circle to attack everything around you, or capture certain enemies. What's capturing do? Oh, it makes Mario into that enemy.
So moving on-What? You want to know what that means? Okay, if you think it's important.
So yeah, Mario can take possession of certain enemies and objects (quite a few of them, too), which allows him to do unique actions based on the type of enemy he's possessing. Possessing Goombas will allow you to stack on top of other Goombas, Bullet Bills let you fly around the stage for a bit, and Lava Bubbles let you swim through lava. It's a really cool system, and it just adds that many new things around which the developers were able to build challenges and objectives. I admit I wasn't sold on it to begin with, but I'm happy to say that the system proved itself to me.
And the final big addition to the game is outfits. All through the game, you can acquire new hats and outfits for Mario. You can change into any of these hats and/or outfits at any time from your ship, and you can mix and match them to your heart's content. The idea of being able to dress up Mario is cool in its own right (though I'll always prefer him in his standard gear), but the best thing about the system is just how many references to Mario history are contained within. Like, sure, you can unlock Mario's construction worker outfit from Super Mario Maker, that makes perfect sense. But you can also acquire his painter's hat and apron from Mario Paint! Sure, the system is pretty similar to the equipment system in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (without stats), but I think I prefer it here.
There are things I'm unhappy about, but, as I mentioned before, it mostly comes down to little things that just aren't here. First the big one: where the hell is Luigi? Seriously, it's 2017, we should be past this now, but Greenbro is absolutely nowhere to be seen. I'm not saying that he has to be playable (though that would be nice), but he doesn't even make an appearance, outside of being able to unlock his outfit. Just a few years ago we had the big "Year of Luigi," but he's already been forgotten again.
Speaking of missing characters, this is the second Mario game released this year alone (the other being Mario+Rabbids) in which we have major, overt Donkey Kong references, without him actually appearing directly. And unlike Luigi, he doesn't even get to be a costume! But Diddy Kong does, which is weird.
And for my last somewhat petty complaint, let me first say that I love the idea of Mario visiting other kingdoms. It's a really cool way to open up the world and show what things are like beyond the border of the Mushroom Kingdom. I also liked it the first time it was done, back in 2003, which brings me to my point. This a game about visiting other kingdoms. Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga was a game that took place in a different kingdom. That game got an enhanced remake for 3DS just earlier this year, and yet the Beanbean Kingdom is nowhere to be found here. This is such a massive missed opportunity that I'm genuinely amazed by it.
But at the end of the day, those are all minor complaints (okay, not the Luigi one), but are there any real problems? Well, not really. I guess if I absolutely had to complain about something, maybe the game is just a bit too easy? Outside of a few endgame areas, I never really felt like I was pushing the limits of my abilities, but I also just played Bloodborne earlier this year and I'm playing Hollow Knight now. I never expected the majority of Mario Odyssey to be at that level of difficulty. Super Mario Bros. 3, on the other hand... That's not to suggest that the game is a cakewalk, but it definitely won't make you tear your hair out. Wait, that's a negative?
My only other real complaint would be the length of the game's main storyline. I pushed through the game's story in about ten hours or so, which was admittedly disappointing. But the good news is that even once you finish the game, the game isn't over. There are so many things to do and secrets to find in this game that it's absolutely astounding. I played for hours after the ending, and I bet I still haven't accomplished much more than a third of what the game has to offer me.
So yeah, Super Mario Odyssey is great. I was extremely hyped up by the time I played it, and it did not disappoint. It is kind of a shame that the story was as short as it was, but I'm nowhere near done with everything there is to do. That, combined with the fact that it's a great game to just pick up and play, means I'll probably be coming back for a long, long time.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Original Soundtrack (1996)
Playing - Divinity: Original Sin II (2017)
Reading - Hyperion (Dan Simmons, 1989)
Watching - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
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