Super Mario Odyssey (2017, Nintendo Switch) Review

DREAMLIKE MOON FARMING

Super Mario Odyssey is a charming, short and visually arresting 3D platformer with a catchy musical score and bubbly audio design. It's got everything going for it, and yet it completely shrinks in the shadow of Astro Bot. I probably should've played them in reverse order. Sony's masterful genre outing demonstrated creativity, level design and controls of the highest order. It became the new standard, one that Nintendo's Super Mario Odyssey fails to match in every respect.

My main issue is the controls. They're not horrible by any stretch, but they feel needlessly clunky and advanced. 3D Mario has usually had a degree of unruliness to the inertia of the character's movement. It feels almost dreamlike.

His acceleration is relatively slow, but once he reaches top speed that resistance is gone. At full speed the steering gets hyper-sensitive. It feels like the slightest nudge of the analogue stick results in Mario making half a u-turn. Jumping is also a nuiscance. Calculating how fast I'll need to run, and how far I'll jump, is tricky. Whenever I miss I can't help but blame the controls. I know it's a "me"-issue, but I never had this problem with Astro Bot.

Luckily, Odyssey's levels aren't designed around precise movement. Some of them are almost entirely horizontally oriented, with big spaces of flat running ground. The more vertical ones have big platforms, almost like plateaus. The camerawork has improved, too, keeping its distance to let you admire and prepare for the level ahead. It now causes less (but not zero) deaths and mishaps.

So, why the control grievances then? Well, they break my immersion. Whenever a character doesn't quite move the way I envision he should, I feel detached from the experience. Odyssey contains lots of difficult, optional challenges that I wouldn't even dream of attempting. It would be unhealthy. When I fail in Astro Bot, I'm disappointed with myself. When I fail in Super Mario Odyssey, I'm angry with the game.

The story is familiar. Bowser snatches princess Peach, with the intention to marry her. Mario is powerless to stop the big-brute-in-a-half-shell. He can only watch as Bowser flies away with the princess on his airship. But he's not alone. Cappy the top hat approaches him. His fiancée, Tiara, was firmly planted on Peach's head and promptly got kidnapped, too. Finding they have a common enemy, Mario and Cappy join forces to rescue their partners.

Every 3D Mario entry since Super Mario 64 has come with a new gimmick. Super Mario Sunhine had the water-spraying. Super Mario Galaxy had gravity. Now Odyssey has Cappy. Mario can throw his cap onto certain enemy types to assume control of them. This means adopting their appearance as well as their special skills. If a big Bullet Bill is homing in on you, throw your cap at him and gain control of his trajectory. Maybe look for a brittle wall somewhere you can blow up?

Odyssey lets you control a multitude of different enemies this way. It's a neat, creative idea but not much comes of it. Usually, you need their special skills to pass a few obstacles, like flying over wide gap or climbing a steep wall. It's over in a heartbeat and the lightweight mechanics don't elevate the gameplay experience as much as just shake it up a bit.

It's almost comical that the final level throws all these enemies into a gauntlet-style rush to the boss. It's what most games do to test the skills you've acquired. But in Odyssey, these gimmicky mechanics haven't been firmly established as major gameplay features - they just came and went like models on a catwalk. Secondly, it's not much of a challenge, since every enemy you control has one single distinguishing feature. Punch, fly, shoot, stretch or jump - you'll realize what to do right away.

You could dismiss it as child's play without being wrong. I played through the game from start to finish facing hardly any resistance. Mario has an extensive moveset, but the levels rarely require anything but running, jumping and throwing your cap.

To get from level to level, you need to find and collect Power moons. They're everywhere. Smash a crate and you might find it. Dive into a pipe and you'll find at least one in a short, 2D-oriented platform challenge. Plant your rump on a grassy knoll and one might pop out. Pick your nose and one might fall out of the other nostril. You can even cash in your coin collectibles to get them in stores.

Most moons will come naturally as you progress through each level's "story arc". It's always the same. Some big baddie has upset the natural order. It needs restoring. For instance, some godly idol has caused the Sand kingdom to freeze over. An octopus is sipping all the sparkling water from the Seaside kingdom. The Ruined kingdom is an atypical dark mini-map, reserved solely for fighting a fearsome dragon.

The quality of the level design ranges from poor (the horrible Lake kingdom mostly takes place underwater) to pretty great (Luncheon kingdom and Bowser's kingdom are very memorable and fun). Visually, the game's striking colors and amazing lighting brings forth a brisk quality. Many levels have the summertime vibe that make me want to stay longer than necessary. That's when I like Odyssey the most. 

The boss battles are also great fun and creative, especially the world-specific ones where you use the level's minions against them. The flower-munching machine of Wooded kingdom is a great fight in top-down perspective. The crazy bout against the octopus in Seaside kingdom is another favorite, taking place over a huge chunk of the map. A recurring enemy is the Broodals, a gang of four bunny rabbits I don't get, nor like. They seem included only for pacing, to add an extra boss fight every now and then. You fight each of them at least two times, with little to no change from one fight to the next.

I finished the story and messed around a little in the post-credit Mushroom kingdom. Some other worlds opened up but I couldn't be arsed. Many hidden and not-so-hidden challenges remained, but one only needs to beat a fraction of the game to finish the story. I could've raised a hundred Power moons more to unlock a second ending, but I found no motivation to do so. That pain is reserved for masochists and completionists alone.

As a package, most of the main game passes like a summer breeze. It's pleasant but short-lived. Playing it feels like an afternoon of scrolling through YouTube shorts. It's made to entertain with no real substance or punch behind it. I got no real grasp of what I experienced.

I thought about playing further. But when a resident of the Mushroom kingdom begged me to herd sheep, alarm bells started ringing. I'd already finished such a task in another kingdom. When I entered into a recycled bossfight inside one of Peach's paintings I pulled the plug. The game started running out of creative juice. Super Mario Odyssey was fun while it lasted, but it lasted way shorter than it ran out of content. (If that makes sense.) I'd still recommend it to children, Nintendo freaks and Peter Pan.