Super Mario Odyssey

I'm definitely realizing that with the immersive worlds that this gen is capable of, environments you can lose yourself in, that I much prefer long-arc kind of plotting and world-building. My only complaint with Zelda was the brevity and scarcity of the "dungeons", and the overreliance on bite-sized questing (the shrines)-- the main quest itself was unimpeachable.

Mario on the other hand is a B or a B- for me. At the moment you started being able to buy Power Moons for 100 coins each I felt like the primary currency of the game was so debased that the game just felt like work. Even in the main quest, the inconsequentiality of each achievement started to just feel.. "the opposite of sweeping". I loved the environments and the bosses very much, all the bosses were amazing really, but for me, this fell far short of 64 and Galaxy

― flamboyant goon tie included, Thursday, November 9, 2017 5:55 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

- Agreed about Zelda
- I believe you can only purchase 1 moon per place
- What do you mean the inconsequentiality of the achievements? Can you elaborate a little?

My only complaint about SMO is that you see this very beautiful and realistic planet when you're flying between places (which is immersive), but only some of them feel like they're part of the planet. The desert and beach one feel like they're a place in the world, but others like New Donk City have an arbitrary barrier via the whole thing being atop a giant tower with a repeating metal tile texture extending down the side. This is a picky design-nerd grievance, but I want to believe the universe they created! Galaxy was able to do it with the framework of mini "planets". Blatant arbitrary barriers with generic backdrops ruin the immersion.

Seamless. That's the word I was looking for in regards to the beach and desert examples.

haaa the rock paper scissors thing is so cute!

yeah that's insane.

im in the end game and now, it just feels like Infinite Mario, and it's wonderful. i can go back to any of these worlds and explore and i always find something. i can end up spending half an hour trying to win a race., or playing around with the face matching puzzle, or looking for rare things to turn into, flying around, etc.

it's a nice approach to the Open World Game. usually im sick of doing the side stuff halfway through your Far Crys or AssCreeds. they really got the pacing right with SMO. when you get to the ending you just want more more more. i think the smaller size Evan mentions is a big help. i'm not overwhelmed by the map, there aren't a million icons everywhere that makes it feel like a To-Do List. instead i WANT to find those little tucked away things.

Is it like the Lego games that way?

The AV Club actually had a decent piece about what Adam’s talking about

https://www.avclub.com/open-world-games-are-broken-and-nintendo-spent-2017-tr-1820333889

my housemate has been playing horizon: zero dawn and i like to watch while asking 'can you climb that mountain? no? that one? how about that one? maybe you can climb that one?'

Haha owned

xp yeah i wouldn't say witcher 3 transcends the 'map game' genre trappings, it's just the best game that's been made within them and thus should be where the bar is set currently. zelda is very different from all those games and mario isn't even in the genre at all.

yeah idgi why the phrase 'open world game' comes up so much in regards to this game, it is not that

i mean there are a bunch of worlds and once you beat the main mission they open up and you have free reign to go back and do side missions and mini games. functionally it really isn't that different than Vice City or whathaveyou.

there's a big difference in both the design and the experience. the SMO worlds are much more like levels than sandboxes. that av club article was kind of bad overall but it nailed the experience of this game. "dioramas" was a great descriptive term for the design of the worlds.

yeah. im saying compared to the other Mario games ive played. like Super Mario Galaxy is pretty linear and doesn't have any backtracking

i watched a football video where the guy was talking abt "sub optimal game design" yesterday o god

like real football not video game football the one where ppl tackle each other to the ground

I've used "dioramas" to describe the Mario Galaxy and 3d World experience actually, where the levels are miniaturized and it feels like you're peering in on them rather than inhabiting them

if you think about it the true cousin of 3d mario gameplay wise is tony hawk pro skater

okay, just "beat" this; looking forward to the post game
also dark souls mario for the dragon level otm

over 600 moons now and dozens of hours later. i am still finding new things, new shortcuts and hidden areas, new sub-levels, new characters to possess even.

the post game is great, getting some strong Super Mario World vibes from stuff, the Yoshi levels in particular. i was LOLing so much at the level where you are bright green Yoshi running around eating fruit in the gritty post-apocalyptic tank-filled cityscape as pouty teenager 90s metal music plays on the soundtrack.

have to say it again cos i played it again that New Donk City festival sequence is amazing. like that's just a fun level to play on top of all the crazy meta stuff. i like how you have to turn on the power to get to the festival. the NPCs are celebrating Mario for starting it all, this complements the meta celebration of Mario as a kinetic "superstar". Mayor Pauline was a very cool character and puts a nice twist on the whole game-within-a-game.

i loved the art deco style around the whole thing, the film noir suits, the spotlights, the skyscraper. i have always been a fan of Mario as being influenced heavily by the old silent film stars Lloyd/Keaton/Chaplin/etc. and that pre-War (well post-WWI pre-WWII) era of animation as well. cool to see this style embraced somewhat by the game. the 8-bit segments are introduced as ancient hieroglyphs you discover while excavating rock walls, by the time you get to Metro Kingdom are turn on the power they are a jazzpunk hologram, the ultimate Super Mario Bros.-Donkey Kong level mod officially made by Nintendo. i think my favorite part is when you are jumping upside down and there are coins in the windows of the skyscraper and there are spotlights shining across them, it all looks so damn good.

wait - what? there's more than one Yoshi level???

ive come across a few now. you can find him at the Mushroom Kingdom castle but he's also in the post-game side moons as well. the one i describe above is "Yoshi Under Siege" and it's on the Dark Side.

can’t put my finger on what it is but i’m not enjoying this game at all. i loved the hell out of every other 3d mario (including sunshine, excluding 3d world because i’ve never played it) but this one is doing nothing for me.

i’m up to the snowy level with the bouncy race thing and am struggling to stay interested. meanwhile zelda is costing me sleep.

okay reading through the thread it turns out i'm not alone, thank god. sleepingbag's

like overall it's pretty good, but a) they put a bunch of unfun, typical platformer shit in here

is otm, it's very good at all the things it's doing, but it's not a zelda-scale genre reinvention. it's a hell of a lot more like galaxy than people having been saying it is, and the cap thing is the next in a very long line of 3d platformers that entail possessing a thing/wearing a suit and having new mechanics.

Even in the main quest, the inconsequentiality of each achievement started to just feel.. "the opposite of sweeping".

especially when stars/shines were always an explicit reward for an explicit achievement, but too often in odyssey it’s just “well you were walking this way anyway so have a moon”

millenials expect a moon for just walking a way anyway

Used to kick a koopa shell in the street

yeah they def just hand you moons during the main quest but that's probably to keep up pace. by the time you beat the boss of each world you have more or less all the moon needed to move on right away. the post-game moons are where the difficulty and exploration really take off.

btw i think the snow level was my least favorite (visually found it kind of dull) but the adjacent beachfront level was one of the best in the game. levels that i was not very impressed with during my first run i have grown to appreciate as i uncover the mysteries and partake in races and such to find the shortcuts.

yeah the beach level started off as Ugh A Water Level but it grew on me a ton in my second pass through it. and that bossa nova bgm! agree that the snow level is the weakest in this one.

kinda hate giant food land as a concept but it also was ok.

i’m holding off on the beach level for now because i’ve been going back and clearing up some of the earlier levels. happy to keep it as a nice surprise for later tbh.

it’s a very decent game obv, but not in a once-in-a-generation way, e.g. new donk city was promoted to death but it could be brightly coloured textureless cubes for all it matters to the gameplay. it’s like playing quite good mario fanfic.

the festival or whatever is amazing, though

it’s like playing quite good mario fanfic.

this is exactly right

my only real complaint is the lack of Boos. yeah the hat is kind of a polymorphic floating ghost thingy and the Cap Kingdom is Tim Burton-y but this game needs Ghost House DLC.

i’m mega pissed off about the main quest ending but don’t want to spoil it so

that completely tone deaf aspect of the story notwithstanding, i'm now up past 300 moons and am just lurching from kingdom to kingdom looking for x markers on maps. as far as i can tell there's no compelling reason to keep going.

people seem to praise the camera but it seems far worse than sunshine and galaxy. i've died a load of times because the camera's flung off in some stupid direction, or because it keeps jumping back to a default angle that immediately puts me at a disadvantage. also some of the creatures you can capture have weird or terrible controls, mainly the goombas (way too easy to lose a heart to those bastards) and that woodpecker thing.

also, a lot of the level bosses or tricky platform bits send you way too far back when you die, so you're having to traverse the dull bit before the challenge over and over again. after like the third attempt i'm no longer revved up to get back and try again, i'm turned off. this aspect feels really dated.

on that, there's also a pretty heavy whack of nostalgia to all this, which is fine but reminds you that the developers are looking backwards. zelda is 100% forward-looking and it pays off incredibly. odyssey is more a very long greatest hits set in beautiful but weirdly sterile places.

all that said, the good stuff is top notch. the art design, sound design, animations are all incredible, and tossing your hat at an enemy and accidentally finding you can possess it is delightful. it's worth the money, it's just... eh. easily my least favourite 3d mario.

surprisingly few image results for "bowser weinstein"

zelda is 100% forward-looking

hah i felt the opposite. 3D Zelda was always hand holdy this felt like closer to TLOZ than the series has been in decades. it even starts with an old man in a cave

i think u mean ‘reassuringly few’ xp

I've come back to Zelda after Odyssey, and Link's movement feels so sluggish now

and being unable to climb or grab a shrine ledge that is 10 cm taller than Link is even more frustrating

zelda is 100% forward-looking

hah i felt the opposite. 3D Zelda was always hand holdy this felt like closer to TLOZ than the series has been in decades. it even starts with an old man in a cave

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, December 21, 2017 12:14 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, they were definitely trying to get back to the mission statement of the original.

"let's make the player rearrange furniture within the belly of four divine beasts. you know, get back to the jamiroquai Link of the original"

...with many enhancements in regards to specifics

I'm with the future-vision - instantly felt like they incorporated so much 2000s design sense into Breath, from Portal, Assassin's Greed, GTA, etc.

very crazy. on the north end of Metro Kingdom there is a despondent city dweller about to jump to his death. if you dress Mario as a clown you can go to him and cheer him up and save his life. for saving his life he will give you a power moon. i thought this was so rad - i don't know if i've ever saved a suicidal npc in a videogame before. you really do everything in this game...

after hitting 500 moons i'm playing it through again. hell of a lot more fun the second time. also, getting a peach amiibo for xmas (instant life-up heart anywhere) has made some of the tricky moons loads easier.

my god, Nintendo has solved depression

im so happy now