We’ve never seen anything like its semi-realistic look of New Donk City in a Mario game before. Of all the disparate lands Mario visits in his Odyssey, the urban-themed Metro Kingdom is my favorite. My favorites include the aviator suit and the retro-colored builder outfit, for no other reason than them being fun looks for the veteran plumber, but you can also mix and match hats and outfits to your heart’s content. “It’s also super fun seeing Mario’s new costumes get translated into the old 8-bit art style. They bend the rules so far they go beyond even the most ambitious creations we saw in Super Mario Maker. Most of these sequences aren’t too long – I wished they were longer, in fact – but each blends pure, weapons-grade retro gameplay with numerous other callbacks while still mixing things up in ways they never appeared in those original games, such as flipping gravity or wrapping the 2D scene around the corner of a 3D object. Entering into a pixelated pipe in the 3D space transports you to a side-scrolling 2D challenge that takes place on the surface of an object in the world, almost like Link’s 2D transformation in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Odyssey’s inspired integration of 2D gameplay – complete with Super Mario Bros.-era 8-bit art – deserves special mention. Throughout the entire campaign, you’re using new creatures in new, game-changing ways on a regular basis. “Many of the cleverest and most smile-inducing possessions are best left to be discovered for yourself, but whether it was thrashing about as a huge, realistic-looking T-rex in the prehistoric-themed Cascade Kingdom or becoming a lowly Goomba but then making a stack of Goombas 10-tall to win over a hard-to-impress Lady Goomba, Odyssey mixes up the gameplay in surprising ways in each of its 16-plus worlds. Cappy’s also used as a jumping pad and a weapon, sparing Mario’s tuchus from an untold number of butt-stomps this time around (though you can still do that, if you wish).
SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY NSP REDDIT FULL
(I said it was charming, not original.) Cappy’s power allows you to possess many other characters by throwing Mario’s hat at them, which bizarrely slurps Mario’s physical body inside of the enemy and gives you full control over their powers. has been kidnapped by Bowser along with Princess Peach. In keeping with Nintendo’s decades-long tradition of charmingly nonsensical storylines, he’s a hat with a soul, and he’s teamed up with Mario in order to rescue his sister Tiara who… wait for it. That possession power, embodied by Mario’s new sidekick/headwear Cappy, is Odyssey’s big new idea. But it also has new things to say as well, like fusing classic-style 2D gameplay with the 3D world and using a completely new possession mechanic to add constant variety to Mario’s abilities and exploits. Naturally, it evokes, honors, and is sometimes directly inspired by the games that came before it in its characters, music, and mechanics. “Odyssey looks like a straight successor to the Mario 64 and Sunshine line of sandbox 3D Marios, but it is much more than that.