Sorry to be that Mario fan but Odyssey would have benefited greatly from Sunshine-style extra levels, where Cappy is either restricted, or you’re forced to use Cappy and all of your other moves in creative ways to overcome clever platforming challenges.
There was almost none of that in Odyssey, at least not as satisfying as Sunshine’s challenge stages. Odyssey’s level design is entirely “alright now hit this enemy with your hat so you can use the enemy to traverse this segment that was specifically designed to be traversed with this enemy” and the only thing that really keeps it interesting is the sheer variety of enemies you can control, but none of them have as varied or interesting a moveset as Mario himself, so the game just kind of feels like it’s cheating you out of playing as Mario.
I’m not necessarily condoning Sunshine, which I think is a bad game. I just think it had some of the best core platforming-focused stages, next to 64 and very few Galaxy 2 stages.
And like, if you’re playing Mario Maker 2, especially in the NSMBU style (NSMBU is also on Switch and is a fantastic game, if too sterile), you’ll run into a lot of stages that require to use Mario’s entire moveset, or maybe stages that use a single move in very clever ways.
Okay I’m done Marioposting
tl;dr Mario Odyssey is definitely worth playing, just not the game I personally wanna pay $60 for
I mean after the SB levels dried up I was done with Mario Maker 2. There are theoretically infinite levels but most of the levels outside of a few good designers (and I definitely include SBS folks in the good camp) are shit.
I also think the contextualization in a wider world really helps odyssey, and it has a lot of really nice moments where it rewards you poking and prodding at it. I guess it’s not a pure platforming challenge but it’s a super fun toy box?
I dunno, I always go to bat for games about exploring contiguous, memorable, spaces and Odyssey does a pretty bang up job of that’s
much like most of Nintendo’s current stuff it’s way better than that would’ve been a decade ago but it’s also the only one of the surprisingly great switch games I’ve picked up that made me go “I probably have better things to be doing right now” and I’m mindful of that threshold (again, it speaks volumes for me personally that fire emblem and dragon quest cleared it last year)
it is very thoughtfully and creatively done though no question
to me the pleasure of 3d platformers is fundamentally different from (and superior to) 2d platformers when done right
but the only ones I have ever really loved are mario 64 and, oddly, despite the enormous amount of jank, goemon 64
I still think mario 64 is just way more fun and engaging than any 2d mascot platformer and while odyssey isn’t as good it’s the only thing that has come remotely close for me
criticisms made in this thread are not wrong but I still think it’s an easy recommendation for great switch games.
and besides mario maker can give you a great variety of novel and interesting content but you don’t get the relative cohesion and flow of a full length single player campaign from it. to me, at least a game like mario odyssey is somewhat greater than the sum of its mostly great parts. I still play games for escapism, idc if that’s old fashioned, and mario odyssey does provide a fairly solid sense of adventure as you progress through it.
I am a psychopath who literally got all 999 moons tho so think of my opinion what you will
Yeah, it’s not about challenge, since trying to deliver and expect precise platforming in 3D is just the game and the player fooling each other. At most it can deliver an aesthetic of involvement from the player while the prime appeal is the adventure – discovery, creativity, player self-direction, all of which Odyssey delivers better than Galaxy.
I think it has very different goals than later 3D platformers. Mario 64 is so involved, and wants the player to be so involved, in the technical aspects of moving a human in 3D space that it ends up a technical, rich game. As later games figured out which aspects could be automated and run by the game and not the player, they moved away from the simple experience of movement and towards the world and its challenges.
But platformers died because movement is the core they’re built around, and as movement became simpler other games just assumed & absorbed those platformers aspects, leaving 3D platformers as empty worlds without purpose.
Most of that energy moved into open-world; particularly, watching Sucker Punch go from Rocket: Robot on Wheels to the more directed Sly Cooper to the open-world with platformer-elements Infamous illustrates how it works. Now a game like Assassin’s Creed involves lots of platforming, completely abstracted away from player skill, as a portion of a broader fixture built around long-term player goals.
yeah, mario odyssey is less interesting in terms of movement than grow home or snake pass (or sunshine?), but, sure, it alone successfully recaptures the spirit and the density of mario 64; the idea that it was the challenge or the design space that big mascot games had to go after was what led so many to fail to succeed it
idk I think the movement in mario odyssey feels amazing and is far more flexible/rich than sunshine or galaxy. the game underutilizes it in terms of level design and the setpiecey cap ability areas highlight that but I think an admirable effort was made to keep the level design sandboxy enough to where you don’t always have to rely on cap abilities to navigate areas “intended” to be navigated that way. the kind of tech people do in speedruns shows this off and imo almost rivals mario 64 in terms of mechanical flexibility/inventiveness, and only bc 64 has more weird/exploitable glitches and stuff.
but just playing odyssey feels amazing and the overall experience at least for me had such a surprising amount of sense of wonder and discovery that called back to the early days of 3D game design. didn’t really think that was possible in this day and age.
I agree, I think Odyssey has better movement than they’ve had since Sunshine, though they don’t push the player. Preservation of momentum! is the heart of interesting movement and they loosened the reins a bit.
