DREAMLIKE MOON FARMING
Super Mario Odyssey is a charming, relatively short, and visually arresting 3D platformer with a catchy musical score and bubbly sound design. It has everything going for it, and yet it completely shrinks in the shadow of Astro Bot. Sony’s masterful genre outing demonstrated creativity, level design, and controls of the highest order. It set a new standard, one that makes Nintendo’s Super Mario Odyssey feel lacking when I circle back to it. I probably should have played them in release order.
My main issue lies with the controls. They’re not bad by any stretch, but they feel needlessly clunky and overcomplicated. 3D Mario has always had a certain unruliness to its movement inertia, almost a dreamlike quality.
Mario’s acceleration is relatively slow, but once he reaches top speed, that resistance disappears entirely. At full tilt, steering becomes hyper-sensitive. The slightest nudge of the analog stick can send Mario veering into an almost half–U-turn. Jumping is also a nuisance. Judging how fast I need to run and how far I’ll leap feels imprecise and awkward. I know it's-a-"me"-problem, but I never had this issue with Astro Bot.
Luckily, Odyssey’s levels aren’t built around precision movement. Many are largely horizontal, with wide stretches of flat terrain. The more vertical levels feature large platforms that feel more like plateaus than tight challenges. The camera work has improved as well, keeping its distance so you can better read and prepare for what’s ahead. It still causes the occasional death or mishap, but far fewer than before.
So why mention the controls at all? Because they break my immersion. When a character doesn’t move the way I expect, I feel disconnected from the experience. If that disconnect leads to a fall or death, frustration quickly follows. Odyssey is packed with difficult optional challenges that I wouldn’t even dream of attempting. I want to keep my sanity intact, thank you very much.
So I mainly stuck to the short main story, which is familiar territory. Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach with plans to marry her. Mario is powerless to stop the big-brute-in-a-half-shell and can only watch as Bowser escapes aboard his airship. Enter Cappy, a sentient top hat whose fiancée, Tiara, was perched atop Peach’s head and kidnapped as well. Discovering they share a common enemy, Mario and Cappy join forces to rescue their respective partners.
Every 3D Mario game since Super Mario 64 has introduced a new gimmick. Super Mario Sunshine had water spraying. Super Mario Galaxy had gravity. In Odyssey, it’s Cappy. Mario can throw his cap onto certain enemies and temporarily take control of them, adopting both their appearance and special abilities. If a Bullet Bill is homing in on you, throw your cap at it and steer its trajectory instead. Why not crash into a brittle wall that needs blowing up?
Odyssey lets you possess a wide variety of enemies this way. It’s a clever, creative idea, but it rarely goes anywhere interesting. Most of the time, you’ll use an enemy’s ability to overcome a short obstacle—flying across a wide gap or scaling a steep wall—and then move on. It’s over almost instantly, and while the mechanic adds novelty, it doesn’t exactly deepen the gameplay or create much of an obstacle.
This makes the final level unintentionally comical. It throws all these capturable enemies at you in a gauntlet leading up to the final boss. It's a classic way to test everything you’ve learned. The problem is that these mechanics were never fully developed or reinforced. They parade past like fashion models on a catwalk: flashy, fleeting, and ultimately disposable. And since each enemy has exactly one defining ability—punch, fly, shoot, stretch, jump—the solutions are immediately obvious.
You could dismiss it as child’s play and be absolutely right. I played through the entire game facing very little resistance. Mario boasts an extensive moveset, but the levels almost never demand more than running, jumping, and tossing your cap.
Progression revolves around collecting Power Moons. They are everywhere. Smash a crate and you might find one. Enter a pipe for a short 2D platforming challenge and you’ll find at least one inside. Plant your rump on a grassy knoll and one may pop out. Pick your nose and one might fall out of the other nostril. You can even buy them outright in shops using collected coins.
Most moons are earned naturally while following each kingdom’s story arc, which follows a predictable pattern: some local calamity has disrupted the natural order, and it’s up to Mario to fix it. The Sand Kingdom is frozen by a rogue idol. The Seaside Kingdom’s sparkling water is being slurped by a thirsty octopus. The Ruined Kingdom is a moody, isolated mini-map built entirely around a single dragon fight.
Level design quality varies wildly, from poor (the Lake Kingdom’s underwater slog) to excellent (the Luncheon Kingdom and Bowser’s Kingdom are standouts). Visually, the game shines. Its bold colors and impressive lighting give many areas a breezy, summery feel that makes me want to stay. Those moments are when I enjoy Odyssey the most.
Boss battles are another highlight, especially the world-specific encounters that cleverly incorporate local enemies. The top-down fight against the flower-munching machine in the Wooded Kingdom is a standout, as is the sprawling octopus battle in the Seaside Kingdom. Unfortunately, the recurring bosses—the Broodals, a gang of four bunny rabbits—are far less inspired. I don’t understand get them, and I don’t enjoy fighting them. They seem included purely for pacing, padding the game with extra boss fights that change little from one encounter to the next. Did Nintendo deem the game too short?
After finishing the story, I poked around the post-credits Mushroom Kingdom. A few additional worlds unlocked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Countless challenges remained, but completing only a fraction of the game is enough to see the ending. I could have collected another hundred Power Moons to unlock a second ending—but I felt no incentive to do so. That kind of self-inflicted suffering is best left to masochists and completionists.
As a complete package, the main game drifts by like a summer breeze. Playing it feels like an afternoon spent scrolling through YouTube Shorts: entertaining, lightweight, and quickly forgotten. When it was over, I struggled to articulate what I had actually experienced.
I briefly considered playing more. Then a Mushroom Kingdom resident asked me to herd sheep. Alarm bells started ringing. I’d already done that in another kingdom. When I stumbled into a recycled boss fight inside one of Peach’s paintings, I pulled the plug. The game was clearly running out of creative juice. Super Mario Odyssey is fun while it lasts, but it stops being interesting long before it runs out of content (if that makes sense). I’d still recommend it to children, Nintendo die-hards, and Peter Pan.
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