“Super Mario Odyssey” is one of those games that comes around once or twice in a console generation. The game is as close to perfect as a video game can be, with everything working perfectly in tandem to create something that controls beautifully, looks amazing and is just fun to play.
Mario games haven’t been as good as usual in the past couple games, with Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World being fun divergences from the formula, but Super Mario Odyssey shows that the developers at Nintendo know how to create amazing, polished video games. The Nintendo Switch already had one masterpiece earlier this year with “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” and now it has another.
The most important aspect for a platformer is the way the game controls. If it controls badly, the game will suffer enormously. However, “Super Mario Odyssey” controls amazingly well. The game is fast and fluid, and whenever the player pushes a button, Mario will do that action. The only problem about this game, and I cannot stress the word “only” enough, is that sometimes, motion controls are required to get some of the power moons, which are the main collectible in “Super Mario Odyssey.” The motion controls are not very fun, and whenever I am in handheld mode on my Nintendo Switch, the motion controls require me to swing the screen around like a maniac. This makes it hard to see the screen, and that is disappointing. The motion controls aren’t too much of a hindrance, but are a blemish on an otherwise perfect game.
The graphics of “Super Mario Odyssey” are great. It isn’t going to wow someone that is familiar with a PC and only cares about photorealism in video games. However, the graphics are great if you don’t compare them to games that are on the other consoles. There is a wide variety of worlds, known as kingdoms in the game, and most of them are completely different from each other.
For example, you go from an exotic, tropical area to a busy and crowded city. I love how the game surprises the player in what can be onscreen at one time. The variety in the look of the game, makes it better, and even more fun to play.
“Super Mario Odyssey” is special. It is even better than I thought it would be, and I had massive expectations for the game. It blows past all of them. It looks better than I predicted, and it has some of the best controls in any game I have ever played, excluding the motion controls. Super Mario Odyssey is immediately one of the front-runners for game of the year, and deservedly so. It is one of the best games I’ve played all year, and one of the most fun games I’ve ever played.
