Super Mario Odyssey: My thoughts so far.

 

By Sam Coles:

Every time I boot up a 3D Mario adventure I always revert back to a small and innocent child, as it reminds me of my childhood of playing lots of Super Mario 64 on Nintendo’s titular console. So when I first booted up Super Mario Odyssey on my Nintendo Switch, those emotions came back with my eyes widened in awe as I felt like I was five years old again. I’m going to talk about my initial thoughts about the portly Italian’s globetrotting adventure. Just to preface this is not a full review as I have not finished the game yet at the time of writing.

Does Mario Odyssey divert from the standard Mario narrative formula? Of course not, it is still Princess Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser it is a Mario game I’m not expecting Socrates levels of social commentary or any at all as it is a Mario game. Although there is the strange premise that Bowser is trying to force Peach to marry him, but I will let people on Rule 34 drum up their twisted fantasies. Anyway Freudian digressions aside, the story revolves around a race of sentient hats and headwear (stay with me). Where Mario adopts one to use his power to possess his enemy’s souls, narrative wise it is silly, but it works more in favour of gameplay.

Gameplay goes back to the free form style of Super Mario 64, where you have huge hub based levels with various collectables and missions to complete. What astrological McGuffin is Mario collecting this time? Moons of course, I swear Nintendo throw a dart at an astrological chart and decide “Yep that is what Mario is collecting”. What next Suns? Oh wait they technically did that already with Shine Sprites, anyway enough digressions.

Anyway back to gameplay this time you are not in the Mushroom Kingdom, instead you are what I think is supposed to be the real world. At first I found this rather jarring, as Mario’s cartoon aesthetic mixing with realistic environments didn’t really gel with me at first. However as I played the game more and more, it slowly grew on me and it worked.

Mario’s objective in each world is to acquire Moons, these can be singular Moons in plain sight or in obscure places or they are Multi-Moons which are generally tied to a boss fight. However unlike Mario 64 you are not booted out the level to start it all over again, it takes the Banjo Kazooie approach of letting you carry on and you can retreat at your own time and pace. It keeps the gameplay flowing and I never felt the tasks at hand were ever laborious, they are all varied and kept me engaged with Mario’s slick controls.

Speaking of controls as well as the cap mechanic it feels as smooth as butter to control Mario in this game, his momentum feels natural yet quick and performing flips and triple jumps feels excellent! The platforming while using the cap in tandem feels great, especially when you perform a long jump and then use your cap as a spring board to barely make the jump. The game really encourages you to experiment with Mario’s movement, because if you faff about with the controls you can find Moons in hard to reach and obscure places.

The cap is not only to help you with your platforming endeavours, no as I said early you can possess enemies and control them. This is fantastic as it adds an extra layer of depth to the puzzle solving within the game or if you just want to destroy everything in sight. Before you ask, yes I had a lot of fun taking control of a dinosaur at the start of the game raining death and destruction on anything that got in my way.

Visually the game is absolutely stunning and it runs as smooth as a freshly oiled bike, with vibrant and colourful worlds that really pop even on my Switch Lite. The framerate is a smooth 60 frames per second, I didn’t notice any framerate drops well major ones as it would hitch but that was very rare. Mario’s character model is very detailed, you can see every stitch on his trousers, every strand of hair in his moustache and everything has been given a nice update to his appearance.

Overall I am enjoying my experience with Super Mario Odyssey so far, it is a wonderful and colourful Mario adventure that takes me back to my childhood. It is a game that I’m looking forward to finishing 100%, and it will keep me occupied!