Super Mario Odyssey

The 3d Mario games have always been fantastic. At this point, it's practically an objective statement to say that they are some of the best games ever made. Continuing this spiritual series started by Super Mario 64 is Super Mario Odyssey. As the name alludes, this game brings Mario on an epic adventure through a huge variety of kingdoms in order to save the ever-distressed Princess Peach. Each of these kingdoms has a starkly different atmosphere from the last, making progression in the game feel like a real adventure.

New to this title is Mario's companion Cappy- a ghost of sorts that inhabits Mario's hat and allows him to possess various enemies and objects throughout the kingdoms. Although I wouldn't consider it the biggest draw to the game, it is definitely fun to swim as a cheep-cheep and fly as a bullet bill! However, the feature that I appreciate the most is actually just a quality-of-life change from Odyssey's predecessors. Upon collecting a moon (equivalent to a star, or a shine sprite), the game doesn't send Mario back to a hub world, it just continues like normal! This allowed for much smoother gameplay, and it opened up the opportunity for the developers to hide moons in less consequential, but equally enjoyable locations.

This truly ended up being a game that I had trouble putting down. I blew through the main story in under a week (I am a pretty busy guy), and I never felt like the game was getting stale. I intend to revisit this eventually so that I can collect all 999 moons, but until then, I can say wholeheartedly that this was an amazing game.
The game can be purchased for Nintendo Switch here (as of 5/10/20): https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/super-mario-odyssey-switch

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