Review: Super Mario Odyssey

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When was the last time you went on a nice trip? Off to a far away place,

Near the falls..

A nice sandy beach..

Or a winter wonderland…

Whatever the destination, I know you’ve never had an experience like this game will give you.

Welcome to Super Mario Odyssey.

Super Mario Odyssey is the latest 3D platformer on the Nintendo Switch starring the mustachioed man himself, Mario.

Taking their not-exactly consenting relationship to the next level, Bowser has kidnapped Peach for a wedding….again. Knowing that a princess isn’t a princess without her crown, he also took a sentient crown named Tiara.

I gotta say that though this story has been played in the ground and then some, I must give credit to Bowser. Bowser has been taking a beating over and over again by Mario and no matter what it, lava, spikes, fire flowers, or magical cat-making leaves, he just keeps on coming back.

Mario gets the dog crap knocked out of him in the beginning. And the next quite a few times as well. Slight spoilers, but you already knew that.

After Mario’s airship altercation, he falls into the first kingdom of the game, Cap Kingdom, fresh from a brutal battle with Bowser’s battalion.

This introduces a new main character of this game, Cappy.

Bowser stole his sister…No surprise there…

And he needs Mario’s help to get her back. Mario isn’t much of a Koopa slaying soldier without his hat that was stomped and shredded by Bowser. Cappy takes the shred of Mario’s hat, fuses with it, and with the toss of Mario’s new “hat” the new adventure begins.

Instead of collecting stars, the game revolves around finding moons. These moons, scattered around the many kingdoms that you’ll explore, power the Odyssey. That’s the ship you’ll use to get from kingdom to kingdom.

It’s similar to the Mario head ship from Super Mario Galaxy 2, minus inflating Mario’s ego to galactic proportions…

Super Mario Odyssey does an amazing job of making each of its kingdoms different. It is easy to break each of the kingdoms down like you would with The Legend of Zelda’s dungeons, but that wouldn’t do it justice. There is just too much detail that goes into a place called the “Luncheon Kingdom” to call it anything else.

I’m not going to ruin it all but the best kingdom by far has to be New Donk City. First time players and even those that are familiar with Mario games will love what they have done with the place. Nintendo knew exactly what they were doing with the mayor…

Image result for super mario odyssey mayor pauline

 

This game introduces “Capturing”. Capturing is where Mario will throw his hat at an enemy and if it doesn’t have a hat on, Mario will take on control of it. Each enemy that you capture has a different power to use.

You can glide…

Image result for super mario odyssey glide

You can be a MOTHERF******* T-Rex!

Image result for super mario odyssey tank

You can swim…

Kinda makes you question if Mario controls Cappy or the other way around…

Anyway…

With each title that comes to the Switch, I feel that Nintendo wants to make sure the technology of Switch stands out, and that was executed very well with Super Mario Odyssey.

Just looking at the advanced moves in the action guide shows you how far they’ve taken the Mario moveset. In addition to the popular long jump, you can now roll and ground pound jump.

And this doesn’t even include all the things you can do with your hat.

With a bit of practice, you can triple jump into a wall to wall jump to hat throw to dive to hat bounce to hat throw to dive.

It looks a little something like this..

Image result for super mario odyssey advanced movement

And to get some of the more challenging moons, you will need to practice.

This game borrows a lot of mechanics from Super Mario Galaxy with the use of the life meter and special purple coins.

There are purple coins in each kingdom and while collecting these coins won’t directly give you moons, they are the proper currency to get special costumes the pertain to getting certain moons and with the variety of costumes out there, even Barbie would get jealous.

I mean, have you seen Mario in his wedding dress… Yeah, wedding dress. You heard me right.

I really wanted to find a gripe with this game. I really did. I didn’t WANT to give a perfect score though it is really hard to argue with a good game.

Looking deeper into the story, I can see how the tried and true “Mario saves Peach” mechanic changes a little. I felt that Nintendo had a better time making this game, setting it apart from its predecessors. In previous Mario games, Bowser seemed evil just because. But when you get inside Bowser’s head, you see what he motivation was. Even Peach has some depth to her character, which was a pleasant change.

Super Mario Odyssey: Nintendo’s switch to take you on a fantastic voyage.

 

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