Super Mario Odyssey

yeah the festival song was the best kind of fan service. loved it!

Festival was great but I loved the final escape more

just found the sphinx. woah. it was... totally not where i thought i would find it! <3

pirate goombas: cutest thing ever?

also the boss fight vs. the octopus, holy crap, this is actually difficult! very fun and challenging tho! for real a highlight.

tbh not that i demand decent boss fights in a Mario game but it is a nice change of pace from the Rabbids earlier. those felt like the piss easy mini bosses in SMB3. just one mechanic over and over. this on the other hand is crazy. i'm flying all up and down the Z axis. i'm narrowly avoiding missiles as i chasing this giant octopus across the beach. and i'm an octopus too! aaah!

just swimming around as a fish is wonderful. i am looking forward to coming back to find all the hidden moons after i win story mode.

I'm getting near to the end (I think), and it's been a pretty fun game, so far. I got so spoiled by Zelda though.

I've been able to beat all the bosses after a few tries, so far, which is just about the right difficulty level. The biggest issue for me is (as with all of the 3D Mario games since Mario 64) is just getting the controls/camera to work. It works about as well as can be expected, but I still find myself falling off the edge of stuff and missing moving platforms, etc. Not sure how they could make it any better, but it's still frustrating.

we should poll all the different Marios that you can be. there is some cool stuff you can turn into in here.

mario 64 mario forever

M64 is great. i prefer SMO bc there are none of the control or camera issues in the earlier game. anything with the snow/ice levels, anything with sledding, or flying, was a nightmare. i can see how someone could grow up with the game would not mind those bits or have figured it out long ago but for me it may still be a while before i beat it. of course it was one of the first 3d games ever so even with the issues it had it was a staggering pioneering achievement.

SMO is great because it is like the Imax version of M64. it uses a very similar control scheme and exploratory level design. the camera angles also feel very M64 inspired - even with a modern camera there is a primacy of cinematic vistas. SMO sort of acts as a sort of compendium of all the previous games: it has mechanics and artwork from Super Mario Bros., it has the vegetable carrying/throwing of Super Mario Bros. 2, it has the water spraying and ooze cleaning of Super Mario Sunshine, it has the Bee Life and experimental gravity mini-games of the Super Mario Galaxy titles.

ok at this Ruined Kingdom! damn good level design! wow! wtf we in Bloodborne now?

the last world had simple fire puzzles you lighting pyres with your flame in order to open locked doors and passageways just like Zelda.

nvmd it's like Shadow of the Colossus

M64 does have the edge in music, that is for sure. the castle interior theme is so beautiful. the first stage overworld theme gets in my head all the damn time. it's still synthesized jazz. the new games, SMO included, are a little more traditionally orchestrated. i mean, Koji Kondo is a frickin' genius, no way anything can come close to that og stuff.

the song in Super Mario Odyssey that plays when you are in the hat shop reminds me of "Doo Wah Diddy" by Manfred Mann. that's pretty cool.

i think SMO has the best soundtrack of any of the mario games

it's pretty sweeping!

the Galaxy soundtrack was incredible. I didn't think they'd be able to top it

wtf we in Bloodborne now?

yeah i did think there was some deliberate soulsborne vibes in that area, further strengthening my commitment to double-dip on any and all of those games if they ever make it to the switch

anyway, if you wanna feel something...this is good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80eFXnb9Uro

i think SMO has the best soundtrack of any of the mario games

no game will ever have a better soundtrack than Super Mario Bros.

tbf it's probably the most iconic and well-known bit of popular music written in the past century so i was assuming we were excluding it from consideration

speaking of mario noises:

Super Mario World repurposed its orchestra hit instrument to form... a familiar sound effect!! pic.twitter.com/aZHK4J2Vyh

— Lynn 🧡 (@chordbug) November 8, 2017

thats pretty rad. yeah there is actually a musical element to all the old sound effects. like picking up a coin from SMB NES is just B to E played really fast. the going down a pipe theme is three notes repeating in quick succession. the 33 1/3 book goes deep into all that stuff, there is a reason for the modes and keys used for every sound in Mario.

xp it also exists in SMO so you can have the best of both worlds

awesome

ha, didn't know that Yoshi bit, sick

how do you spell that bit of onomatopoeia btw?
opting for "hwWEE-CHOOO"

yoshi is definitely sneezing

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

It made me excited to playthrough Skyrim again, though.. the thrill of climbing the huge central mountain for the first time still resonates with me

At moment you started being able to buy Power Moons for 100 coins each

but this is for one moon per area, specifically for finding the store. it's not as if you can just buy all the moons you need from that store.

It made me excited to playthrough Skyrim again

lol my least favorite memory of Skyrim was climbing mountains, repeatedly jumping against random incline polygons to gain altitude, the screen filling with a big blurry rock texture. leave it to BOTW to take this awkward experience and turn it into an awesome core game mechanic.

you can buy more than 1 from the stores, they count towards unlocking new worlds but not towards your checklist for getting all the moons in the game

idk why the option is even there though, there's way more easy-to-find moons than you need to complete the game. i can't imagine someone getting stuck.

oh wow thats crazy. yeah ill pass cos exploring is so much fun.

you need a lot of moons for the post-game unlocks. i'm not gonna buy more than 1 per world (to get it crossed off the list) but i can see some people just wanting to unlock the later costumes and such

I've never used the stores for anything. Seemed lame.

omg i just got to the moon. this game. this is my favorite 3d Mario game.

Buying outfits was 10% of the fun

"this Bowser fight is really fun..."

* 5 mins later *

"hooooolyy shiiiiiiiit"

"

i loved the whole ruined kingdom -> bowser's castle -> moon -> ending sequence a lot

yeah i am in end game and have been saying "ooooh myyyy gooood" aloud every 2 minutes

more surprises in store

moon physics is soooo much fun

the bowser fight is really annoyingly designed w/ its gotcha pattern-changes; the ending sequence was agreeable but a missed opportunity

on the main quest i give it a solid C, but the post-game playground hang-out value might bring that up a bit

the inset of cappy's creepy, tired eyes next to the dialogue when he talks to you in game reminds me of the satan frames edited into the exorcist

just reading about the rock paper scissors thing, so many cool things hidden in this game!
https://imgur.com/a/1ZT1b

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.