It’s difficult to rate this game because it’s enormous but I’m glad Nintendo went this direction even if I wasn’t in love with it like the rest. The story is short but it’s extremely good too I loved the rivalry and the ending. The rest after that are pretty good but where this game excels, is in its charm on a few levels and the way you can control Mario. Still I'd recommend people to watch the speedrun because the skill ceiling is insane and what the guys who mastered Mario's abilities can do is one of the most spectacular and entertaining things I've seen in a videogame but overall Odyssey shows that mechanics aren't everything, the game built around them has to be as good and it doesn't really succeed to do so. The level design is too inconsistent with lots of pointless empty space that doesn't take advantage of the aforementioned movement and a lot of the gameplay scenarios are repetitive and not very engaging, like stacking Goombas together to make Goombette swoon was fun the first time it happend but it's not the kind of activity that should be repeated again and again, same for the countless moons obtained after stomping a shiny spot on the ground or breaking blocks/crates/nuts to find a moon inside. I think it's a mechanically exceptional game with probably the best movement mechanics of any 3D game ever made and it had the merit of making Mario weird and creative again with its themes and ideas after years of bland iteration but I wouldn't call it a great game. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go play some more Odyssey. They do try new ideas and continue to innovate, and for that I am deeply grateful. I'm glad that Nintendo takes their time with Mario games and doesn't simply recycle the same schtick every single time. And Galaxy has those wonderful vertigo-inducing stage designs where you're being hurled in every direction imaginable, yet the course layouts are far closer to the obstacle courses of Super Mario Bros 3. You can't quite get away with that once 3D platformers have become an established genre. SM64 had the unique quality of introducing a new paradigm for videogames, and so Nintendo had the freedom to just let you wander around and marvel at the 3D worlds. Is this 'better' than Super Mario 64 or the Galaxy games? Too early to say, and such claims are always subjective. The ability to control different enemies is a nice touch and smashing everything with the big dinosaur is a lot of fun. I absolutely love the 2D transitions where you turn flat and move along the side of buildings (didn't Zelda on 3DS also do this?).

It certainly has that roam-everywhere-and-goof-off quality that made Super Mario 64 so special, and the controls, as always, as just sublime. I've only played for an hour so far, I'm at the desert world with the Mexican village. I finally grabbed Super Mario Odyssey last week at Gamestop, which had it on sale for $39.99.

Super mario odyssey chefs room