{"id":367,"date":"2017-10-31T00:45:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T04:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=367"},"modified":"2017-10-31T00:45:52","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T04:45:52","slug":"game-ramblings-57-super-mario-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=367","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #57 &#8211; Super Mario Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/supermario.nintendo.com\/?gclid=CNik3fr5mdcCFdbhDQodDdQOVg&amp;gclsrc=ds\">More Info from Nintendo<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: 3D Platformer<\/li>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: Switch<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>TL;DR<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Another great entry in the <em>Super Mario\u00a0<\/em>series, with great platforming mechanics, a predictable but fun story, and great world locations to explore<\/li>\n<li>Collectathon-style worlds didn&#8217;t work as well for me as the more focused Mario 64\/Sunshine style individual stars, but the story moons in particular were great<\/li>\n<li>New core mechanic of taking over enemies and using their abilities was a great focus for the design, and works fantastically<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wtGw-ZfHyLQ\">Theme song of the year<\/a> &#8211; go buy it on iTunes or Google Play Music<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be perfectly honest from the start here; I still think <em>Super\u00a0Mario 64<\/em> and <em>Super\u00a0Mario Sunshine<\/em> are better games.\u00a0 While\u00a0<em>Super Mario Odyssey<\/em> is definitely a fantastic game on its own, the change to the star collecting mechanic into something more akin to\u00a0<em>Banjo-Kazooie<\/em>\u00a0often felt weird to me with a strange mix of really good focused moons alongside completely incidental ones that you can find in things like piles of leaves.\u00a0 That said, once I get beyond that change the rest of the game was fantastic and is as good as any Mario game we&#8217;ve seen before.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_368\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-368\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_takeover.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-368\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_takeover-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_takeover-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_takeover-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_takeover-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_takeover.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-368\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flick a hat at an enemy and more often than not you take them over, gaining their abilities and strengths.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Since it is the core difference in the game, let&#8217;s start with the takeover.\u00a0 For various story reasons, your hat is now alive and can bind Mario to the soul of his enemies, or something to that effect.\u00a0 The end result is that you can now become your enemy.\u00a0 Take over a Goomba, and you can now build stacks of goombas and stop sliding around on ice.\u00a0 Take over a Cheep Cheep and you can now swim under water without needing to breathe.\u00a0 Hell, take over a T-Rex and stomp the shit out of everything around you just for laughs.\u00a0 This even extends to seemingly mundane things like the little traffic cones in the city that you can use to catapult Mario around.<\/p>\n<p>This new core ability and the set of enemy mechanics that come out of it are used to great effect.\u00a0 A large portion of the boss fights use specific environment and enemy combos to change things from just being your standard 3 butt stomp affairs.\u00a0 Almost any puzzle solving segment will involve finding the nearby enemy type to use their skill set.\u00a0 Even just for changing up gameplay a bit, it&#8217;s nice to be able to warp into an enemy and use a completely different set of skills than Mario on his own can do.\u00a0 There&#8217;s even a surprise at the end that leads to one of the most bombastic finishes to a Mario game that I can remember.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_369\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-369\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_dragon_boss.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-369\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_dragon_boss-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_dragon_boss-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_dragon_boss-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_dragon_boss-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_dragon_boss.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-369\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">While most bosses are typical scale for a Mario experience, that wasn&#8217;t always the case.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On the boss front, there really was a much wider variety than normal.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a recurring set of bosses that act as this game&#8217;s substitute for the Koopa kids, and they&#8217;re the normal 3 hit to kill with minor mechanical changes.\u00a0 However, there&#8217;s definitely a few much larger bosses in place.\u00a0 For example, the New Donk City segment has a large centipede boss that can warp in and out of buildings, and the only way to defeat it is to hat-possess a tank and shoot its weak points.\u00a0 A later fight pictured above has a very non-Mario dragon boss that ends up being more about attack avoidance than offense, with distinct cooldown segments where Mario can land his damage.<\/p>\n<p>The end result of all this is that both by sheer quantity, as well as mechanic variety, this is the widest set of boss fights that Mario has ever seen, and the game&#8217;s pacing greatly benefited from it.\u00a0 At a typical rate, I was seeing a boss every 30-45 minutes, giving me a nice set of pseudo-open world collecting, followed by a high intensity battle.\u00a0 The consistency of this pace and the mechanical variety allowed for the game to pump up the action when needed to avoid the slow pace trap that other heavy collection platformers have fallen to.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_370\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-370\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_donkey_kong.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-370\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_donkey_kong-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_donkey_kong-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_donkey_kong-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_donkey_kong-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_donkey_kong.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-370\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Little touches like the 2D segments gave a lot of life to the world, and some fun hints at the past.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>However, it was that collection aspect that ended up being the strong low point for me in an otherwise fantastic game.\u00a0 The amount of collection just didn&#8217;t make sense, and often times felt like fluff to me.\u00a0 In a typical world, you&#8217;d have 3-5 moons that were mandatory per-story, then the need to collect an additional 15-20 just to power up the ship and leave for the next kingdom.\u00a0 Out of those, I&#8217;d estimate about half were purely incidental; a glowing stump may be a hint at a hidden moon, a music note starts a 10 second run to collect all notes, or hell, just a moon floating out in the open that you have to climb a tree to collect.\u00a0 Among the ones that required a bit more effort, you&#8217;d typically see a segment similar to a simplified hidden shines in\u00a0<em>Super Mario Sunshine<\/em>, where some quick platforming or single-mechanic enemy would grab you a guaranteed obvious shine and loosely hidden shine.\u00a0 While there were certainly a lot of shines to get, it often didn&#8217;t really feel like there was much point to a lot of them, and I&#8217;d have rather seen a larger focus on expanding the story or hidden-area shines into something more meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s definitely a few other minor things there that didn&#8217;t really hit.\u00a0 The motion controls in particular are pretty terrible, but purely optional.\u00a0 On the hardware front, I&#8217;d recommend playing with a Pro Controller over the Joycons, as I had far too many deaths caused by the signal loss that is effecting them.\u00a0 Some weird mechanical bugs, such as an unintended quick pivot when using fire flower boosts also killed me too many times in some tight movement areas.\u00a0 However, they&#8217;re not really the types of things that kill enjoyment of the game, at least beyond some grumbling at the time problems came up.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_371\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-371\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_bowser_castle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_bowser_castle-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_bowser_castle-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_bowser_castle-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_bowser_castle-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/smo_bowser_castle.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-371\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">What kind of Mario game would it be without Bowser&#8217;s Castle? It&#8217;s seen some upgrades this go around.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>That said, while the collectathon may prevent me from ever doing a 100% run, it certainly didn&#8217;t stop me from really enjoying the hell out of what I did play.\u00a0 End of the day, the core mechanics of the game are just too good to miss out on.\u00a0 The platforming is as fun as it&#8217;s ever been and for the moons that push for depth, it&#8217;s more important than ever to be on top of my game.\u00a0 Even just the act of running around the worlds to get to the next objective is fun to do due to the much larger inclusion of vertical elements and enemies to takeover to traverse them.\u00a0 While it may not hold up to me like\u00a0<em>64<\/em> or\u00a0<em>Sunshine<\/em>, this is still a game worth getting a console for, and that right there says a lot about the quality that&#8217;s in place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Nintendo Genre: 3D Platformer Platform: Switch TL;DR Another great entry in the Super Mario\u00a0series, with great platforming mechanics, a predictable but fun story, and great world locations to explore Collectathon-style worlds didn&#8217;t work as well for me as the more focused Mario 64\/Sunshine style individual stars, but the story moons in particular &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=367\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #57 &#8211; Super Mario Odyssey&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,83],"tags":[65,132,19,84],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-platformer","category-switch","tag-mario","tag-odyssey","tag-platformer","tag-switch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}