Super Mario Odyssey
Switch
Wait a minute. Mario’s a dinosaur? The payoff to Odyssey’s debut trailer stuck a moustache on a Tyrannosaurus as seemingly the logical extreme of its new capture mechanic. Courtesy of a ghostly hat named Cappy, Mario can indeed inhabit his enemies – well, if you can’t beat them, you might as well become them – so you’d imagine this moment as the culmination of the game’s fanciful conceit, a climactic blowout toward the game’s end. But no. The T Rex arrives within the first half-hour, curled up and slumbering sweetly on the lush grass of the Cascade Kingdom – and yes, you get to control it. It seems a reckless gambit, before you realise it can only mean Nintendo knows it has better tricks under its hat. And goodness, does it ever.
Its big idea is certainly a daring one. A Mario game based on its star being sporadically hooked from the spotlight? It’s also, come to think of it, a Mario game built around a single power-up. Cappy, however, represents the series’ most versatile ability to date. The first transformation is introduced by a cutscene that makes the capture process look positively nightmarish – for our hero, at least, as he plummets, wailing, into a whirling vortex. Then comes the punchline, as for a moment we see the world through his eyes and hear a tentative, cod-Italian ‘ribbit’. Cut to a frog sporting a moustache and that familiar red cap.
It’s a great gag, and yet Nintendo approaches the business of playing as a frog – and, indeed, as any of the 50-odd other capture possibilities – with total seriousness. This isn’t simply the amusing, throwaway inhabitation of, say, David OReilly’s Everything, where all objects are functionally similar, and everything either slides along or rotates in rudimentary steps. Instead, it pays close attention to the physics and handling of each of these new forms, making each one enjoyable to command. There are usually clear benefits to specific transformations, of course. Lava bubbles are your only way to cross the broiling seas of the Luncheon Kingdom. Tap B as the frog, meanwhile, and it bounces to a height Mario could only dream of reaching with a triple-jump. A Goomba’s grippy soles let it waddle across icy surfaces where Mario would skid about. Cheep Cheeps swim briskly through water – but flop around awkwardly when you take them ashore.
They’re not always essential, and in many cases Mario’s repertoire is enough to get by, though it’s often easier or quicker to make the switch. Sometimes, you’ll bench Mario for the simple novelty of playing as something else, while other forms offer distinct pleasures of their own. Tropical Wigglers are a tactile delight, as their stretchy bodies expand and contract with an accordion’s wheeze. The T Rex has a fittingly clumsy, lumbering gait that might make you think twice about capturing it again, but then Nintendo spawns a crowd of spiky enemies that are just begging to be flattened. And one late-game opponent almost steals the show, with a unique ability that promises to make it a speedrunner’s favourite.
With such a broad assortment of fresh guises, you might think Mario would be undermined. Not so. Even leaving Cappy out of the equation, our hero has been furnished with his most expansive moveset to date. The triple jump is back, together with old favourites like the side somersault and backflip. Jump immediately after a ground pound and you’ll gain extra height; tuck into a roll and you can drum with the Joy-Cons to move faster, sending sparks flying as you bounce along. Then again, sprinting downhill might be even more fun than rolling: as you accelerate down the beautiful brick-red dunes of the Sand Kingdom, you’ll see Mario’s legs going 19 to the dozen, his arms spread wide in delight, a picture of gleeful momentum. Introduce Cappy, and you’ve got more options still: hold the throw button and he’ll spin in place, letting Mario run up and bounce off him, and that’s just for starters. At the top of a New Donk skyscraper, we spy a rooftop we haven’t yet visited and take a chance that we might just reach it. We roll into a long jump off the edge, throwing Cappy ahead of us, before launching into a dive that bounces Mario off his hatted friend, diving again to clear the outer ledge by a matter of inches. There’s an easier route there, sure. A more exhilarating one? Unlikely. It’s tempting to say Mario’s never felt better under the thumbs; he’s certainly never felt better in the palms. Haring up power cables as an electrical spark produces a tingly buzz of feedback, while you can sense a gentle mechanical click as you twist the camera while overlooking a stage inside a pair of floating binoculars. And diving into the carbonated ocean of the Seaside Kingdom produces such a convincing sensation of effervescence you’ll be unable to resist climbing back out just so you can take another dip and feel the fizz once more. Such is the advantage of playing with JoyCons in separate hands, that portable mode is a compromise – and it’s not the only reason why the TV feels like Odyssey’s natural home. Nintendo’s Koichi Hayashida once dismissed the notion of a 3DS port of Galaxy, saying Mario would be little more than a speck on the screen; though we’re on more capable hardware, there are times in handheld mode when subtle details are lost, or distant targets become hard to make out without pressing your nose against the display.
Odyssey’s combination of fantastical elements and realistic detail – its pipes convincingly scuffed, its brickwork authentically weathered – takes some getting used to. But these worlds are so generously stuffed with distractions that after a while you’ll barely notice the incongruities. Moons, the game’s main collectable, are
With such a broad assortment of fresh guises, you might think Mario would be undermined. Not so
scattered liberally across them. Some are visible but beyond easy reach; others are quickly unearthed from glowing hiding places; the majority take rather more effort to earn. A clutch of stage-specific quests offer a more traditional structured progression, but otherwise you’re free to choose between the many remaining activities to earn the right to move on.
Not all activities are created equal, but you’re rarely far from a brilliant new idea, or a clever twist on an old one – and Cappy sits at the heart of most of them, allowing Nintendo to reinvent a host of favourites. Capture a Goomba and you can leap onto others to form a tower, stacking up to reach floating Moons, or even to impress potential mates. Hammer Bros join in the culinary theme of the Luncheon Kingdom, lobbing frying pans to chip away at rock walls. Chain Chomps become wrecking balls in one stage and billiard balls in another, as you line up a cannon shot to complete one of hundreds of shortform challenges. And the capture mechanics are the driving force behind Mario’s finestever selection of boss fights, with Oddjob-esque hat attacks supplemented by mid-fight transformations.
If the opening, as a propeller on Bowser’s airship shreds Mario’s cap, suggests Nintendo is comfortable slaying a few sacred cows, this odyssey isn’t about to forget where Mario came from. It often feels like a celebration of his history, in fact. Its nostalgic leanings are most apparent in the frequent retro-styled 2D sections: enter a pipe and Mario might emerge in 8bit form against a wall, or even embedded in the sea floor, with water gently lapping across the screen as Cheep Cheeps wiggle by. Some of these sequences employ dazzling spatial tricks; others simply benefit from spectacular presentation – a nighttime festival commemorating the Metro Kingdom’s origins functions both as a dewy-eyed tribute to Mario’s early days and a reminder of just how far he’s come since. And the party continues in the postgame, too. Odyssey already feels like the spiritual successor to Mario 64 we never quite got, before a thrilling final throwback – hinted at in a skin-prickling tease some way before the climax – makes the connection more explicit.
While that game’s pioneering work partly informed the development of the N64’s other era-defining classic, here the Zelda team returns the favour. There is, as we’ve already noted, a lot of Breath Of The Wild in Super Mario Odyssey, from the chance to scout out potential destinations from high above ground, to the way the soundtrack often lets you acclimatise to your surroundings in relative quiet before the stage’s main theme announces itself. But it’s most obvious in the way its environments appeal to your natural curiosity, sights and sounds teasing you away from your present path – and in its sheer volume of diversions. Though its worlds are more compact, it really does earn that Homerian title: Link may have more Korok seeds to find than Mario has Moons, but not by many.
And these two games, beyond their shared role in getting Switch off to a flying start, have something else in common. Like BOTW, Odyssey is a new entry in a long-running series that belies its age with sprightly invention, taking big risks with an established formula, and having all of them pay off handsomely. Mario might be getting on a bit, then, but a dinosaur? This astonishing adventure proves he’s anything but.