Taxis in the city of New Donk show the number 1981, not coincidentally. That was the date when Mario started jumping, and since then Miyamoto set himself an ambitious goal: that no one should do better than him. Super Mario Odyssey picks up his desire and transforms it into the great leap that not only the plumber needed, but Nintendo itself. Here’s our in-depth review.
The many moments that I have lived with Super Mario Odyssey, there is one that does not get out of my head. You will have seen it through the many trailers that Nintendo has published. In a kind of nostalgic sections, Mario runs in two dimensions, hitting pixelated blocks and collecting coins with the corresponding eight-bit sound. Suddenly, it comes out on one side and moves to its current 3D shape. That moment, when the plumber goes through a pipeline and gains volume, represents the passage of more than 30 years of history.
Far from being a banal matter, it is the key to everything. This moment could be interpreted as a source of nostalgia. It is. However, reading between pixels is the way we welcome the great jump of Mario. His odyssey through different regions throughout the world is the excuse to tell us that they do not forget their past, but they are not afraid to face the future either. There are many blows of nostalgia, but also of novelty and evolution. Moreover, the surprising thing is that all this knows how to combine without falling into the easy tear or the most disrespectful insult against tradition.
That a saga grows at this rate, does not explain the charisma of a character, but has been treated well for several decades. This video game proves it. He is aware of his responsibility, but far from being self-satisfied, he improves to amazing heights. To do this, he puts on the cap of fun, not only metaphorically, but adding a layer of innovation to each of the systems that make up the title. Control, mechanics, structure, technology, art, music ... The dedication is commendable, the great talent and the irreproachable work. We can not say it clearer in his analysis: Nintendo Switch receives a platform with the potential to end up in the category of masterpiece.
Repeating history, making history
The anecdote that gave rise to Super Mario 64 is well known: a test of the plumber chasing a rabbit. "It is fun," insisted Miyamoto. The adjustment regarding control, key in the jump to the 3D, was something fundamental in the development. Twenty years later, we continue chasing that animal called MIPS in one of the countless tests that contain Super Mario Odyssey, not located here as a mere wink to the past. The best observation that the game works exemplary is that the simple mechanics of chasing the rabbit is still fun today.There are many aspects of the game that is transparent when you put yourself at the controls, but that explains your success. We assume that moving or jumping, you will go where you want to go, but then there are few video games that get such a basic mission. On this occasion, with 60 frames per second on the back, it is more important than ever for Mario to respond, and not only that he does it well, but that he does it perfectly.
The catalog of actions, recovered and strengthened concerning previous deliveries, explains half of the success. The other half has the camera, which is positioned in all possible ways to ensure your comfort. All this exempts the developers from the misfortunes of poor Mario. It was something they learned from Gunpei Yokoi: "A video game is funny when, if you fail, you blame yourself, not the video game."
It is possible to manually reorient the perspective, although it is not strictly necessary, just as it is not essential to master the new actions introduced. The reason is that Nintendo is aware that there are users of all types. This is when we must talk about something fundamental: layered design. In its most superficial part, Super Mario Odyssey is an easy video game in difficulty and easy to handle. In its deepest part, getting all the crescents (hundreds) requires the maximum skill, becoming what gives the title its name: an odyssey.
The fuel of your odyssey
The very structure of the game is an unequivocal manifestation of the proposal. Each world is conceived as a "sandbox" environment concentrated in which the crescents (necessary to pass the stage) entail a challenge of different magnitude. There are the simple, the challenging, the complex and the almost impossible. You could meet them on the road, or throw yourself several minutes with only one of them.Different game layers for different types of users. A decentralized but at the same time compact approach: the chaos within the order for each player to achieve the greatest satisfaction. Nintendo has been working on it for a long time. Specifically, from Super Mario 64 and Sunshine through the star system. The logic starts from there but is modified so that each half moon is a small challenge so that the action continues immediately in the same place where you get it. It is a joy to affirm that this is the most accurate attempt to date.
The feeling reminded me of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He knew where he started playing, but not where it ended. The intervention of the free will dynamics, in which you decide the place to go, explains the success of Super Mario Odyssey. No two games are the same. The developers propose a main goal, but there are so many things to entertain you, that you could get the crescents needed to go world without having completed the main mission.
Even so, the flow is insurmountable, the brutal addiction and the hours pass without you noticing, thanks to the fact that the worlds are extremely dense and varied. You always feel that you are doing something new and amazing. It is the "Russian doll" effect. It seems that what you see is that there is, but going into its nooks and crannies, you realize that there are many hidden possibilities.
If you have played previous titles of Mario, you will know that the developers usually place coins or some invisible block at that end of the phase that only a few explore. Miyamoto has always considered this an incentive, which detail that rewards the player for doing what is outside the script. Super Mario Odyssey delves into this appreciation and reward that you explore to the furthest corners of the stage. Probably the video game of the franchise that most affects this mechanics, becoming another of those invisible but surprising aspects that contribute to enriching the result.
The more I played, the more I saw the breaking of certain conventions like Mario is not winning or losing lives. Instead, there is a penalty with coins whenever it suffers serious damage or falls into a vacuum. With this, a double objective is pursued. On the one hand, that less skilled users are not overcome. On the other, that the most experienced take risks as never before. It works. The solution adopted offers a balance based more on reward than punishment.
In the end, the playable logic is perfectly cohesive. The crescents serve to progress and the coins to acquire new uniforms in stores. Each world also has exclusive items, an aspect that ends up erecting a really round game. For all these reasons, the pace of progression may vary from one user to another. I have overcome it in about 8-10 hours, but the post-game content allows you to invest more than double. It is a strategy followed by the EAD team from Tokyo in previous Mario titles. The first round is of learning; the second domain.
The belief that Nintendo video games do not bet on graphics is widespread. That is because no attention is paid to the talented use of the color palette. That is because the careful animations are not considered. That is because the sympathetic design of characters is not appreciated enough: goombas, toads, Cheep Cheep ... Everything in Super Mario Odyssey seems to be taken from a fantastic fairy tale in which you would not mind going to live a few days.
I have been completely surprised to enter each world and see how they have been represented. Sometimes betting on horizontality; others for verticality ... and most for an extraordinary combination of both. There is a kingdom of vegetables and forks as protagonists, a desert in which the first people who greet me are colorful Mexican skulls or a beach in which they chased me goombas dressed as pirates.
Moreover, even in this, the video game is consistent with the tourist theme. Each stage has its viewpoint so you can take a look at what there is. The map of each world is a leaflet with the places of interest and, among the things that we can buy, there are souvenirs that end up being part of the decoration of the Odyssey ship. Get them all is another reason to hit a good vacation in the game.
The details do not end, and also touch the sound plane. They are more than 50 songs that walk between calm, tension, joyful and rhythmic. The approach is similar to other Mario adventures, but then there are things as unusual as the presence of songs performed live. Surprisingly, most worlds have a retro theme, corresponding to the sections in which Mario moves between his eight-bit 2D version and the current 3D. It is nostalgia, but not forced, but inserted into a logic that puts evolution before mere homage without meaning.
To remove the cap
That is why Super Mario Odyssey is so big. For that reason, and for the cap that crowns everything already mentioned. It is the last layer, the one in charge of giving this adventure a singular magic: that of becoming anything for which the game has been programmed. The cast is extensive, and you can basically overcome difficulties by land, sea, and air that you could not in the original state of Mario.Swim without drowning in the depths with Cheep Cheep. Embed against rocks and enemies with a Chain Chomp. Throw pans in the skin of a Koopa Troopa. The variety rises exponentially with this powerful mechanics of transformations. Moreover, the surprising thing is that each one is taken care of to the maximum, making Odyssey go beyond what we understand as a platform game. It is almost pity that some of the transformations are only used in a specific part of the adventure, but there is the magic of making a situation unrepeatable and remaining in memory.
There are specific moments -in addition to minigames- that depend exclusively on the possibilities that Cappy opens up for us. In many of them, the developers demonstrate tremendous ability to surprise us, with not only varied but fun and challenging approaches. In other words, the cap is a fundamental element in the success of Super Mario Odyssey. It is their greatest innovation, although not the only one. It may not even be the most important thing.
Maybe the key is what I pointed out before, the elements that go unnoticed when you play, but that is there to ensure a great experience. There is so much work behind that it is difficult to do it justice. We have a title that does not start from scratch but gathers many years of experience.
Here you will see references to Super Mario 64, Sunshine, Galaxy ... and other works such as Donkey Kong, Mario Kart or Splatoon itself. The pieces of the puzzle about the history of the franchise are perfectly mounted in the game. It is a real festival, but it does not fall into the nonsense of continuously looking at the navel.
A pipeline to the past, but also to the future
You will agree that we live years in which nostalgia has become fashionable. Nintendo is not oblivious to it. You will notice it in many situations, the more you have played Mario's adventures. However, the nostalgic serves as another layer of the video game, without charging all the limelight. The 2D scenes are developed on 3D spaces, as meaning that we do not lose perspective, that this is fine for a while, the memory that brings you the tears. However, before it falls on your cheek, you are once again throwing the cap to become a goomba.Super Mario Odyssey puts a pipe in the past but appreciating the other that leads to the future. It means coming back to the open worlds with the passion and determination of a young development team. While you play you perceive things never seen in a Mario title, which is a mixture of the courage that youth brings and the lucidity that experience gives. Going into the unknown but not forgetting everything learned is what explains the success of this development.
In the process, they have been extremely cautious so that the ambition does not hinder the result. The benefits provided by the friends can also be obtained via playable. The gyroscopes are used for special maneuvers, without being essential. The cooperative allows a second user to handle Cappy but does not provide an advantage over the game alone.
All this does not mean that they experiment with the online and the new fashions. There are numerous mini-games and tests that have scores (we anticipate madness records). The photo mode is so well integrated that sharing your work via Facebook and Twitter is very comfortable.
The very high number of crescents and the extreme difficulty of some will really make the function of recording and share online the last 30 seconds of departure. That is not to mention the bizarre plays or secrets that will be discovered about the game. Rarities that, as in the case of Super Mario 64, were not known until decades later.
It is as if Nintendo had thrown the Cappy cap on the advances and trends in the industry, but without losing that which makes them unique and recognizable. It could also be understood as if a cap was thrown on all the invisible elements (control, structure, difficulty ...) that I have insisted so much on and that is key to success. Alternatively, it could be understood as if Mario launched Cappy on the planet Earth itself, something that would explain why this odyssey is still an extraordinary fusion between fantasy and reality.
Although I have to be honest. I do not know if I played more by taking off my hat ... or my hat. Miyamoto once said that since Donkey Kong (1981) his priority goal was to prevent someone from doing better. Today Super Mario Odyssey shows us that the mustachioed is still a vehicle of innovation and excellence, that character that for more than 30 years has inspired many developers at Nintendo.
Neither is the most handsome, nor the tallest, nor the strongest, nor the most intelligent ... however, its creators always believed in him. The process of growth of a character is not explained by his charisma, but by video games like this. A title that, together with Breath of the Wild, confirms that the Great N returns to red, to its best time, that in which it proposed not only quality but things that had never been seen in the industry. In its way, Odyssey is again a surprise after another, in the form of a platform in which creation and creators jump in unison. Because this is not only the great leap of Mario but the great leap of Nintendo as a developer
A great platform jump that covers more than 30 years of history, looking to the past, but also throwing a hat of innovation towards the future. Super Mario Odyssey manifests Nintendo's intention to evolve, putting his feet in the present but without forgetting what his style is. The video game is a show of variety, talent, and fun. One of those titles that justify the purchase of a console and that you can not get out of your head until the developers themselves come up with something better to do with the plumber ... or his hat.
-Zardoz-
10/10
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: jump’n’run
Release Date: 27th of October 2017
Pro
+ Open structure in levels, density, and variety, with challenges for all audiences
+ Mario control and irreproachable camera: it is a pleasure to play
+ It covers more than 30 years of Mario's history without falling into the tearful nostalgia
+ Minigames, tests, secrets ... Replay is more than half of the game
+ Extraordinary artistic, talented, friendly and overflowing colorful
+ Optimal technical performance, 60 very stable images per second
+ Musically varied and surprising, with themes of the memory
+ It is another great leap within the franchise, at the height of great classics
Cons
- No cons
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