Of twists and turns.
It is - to be frank - super weird.
Firstly, the adult clothes age the strip in a way that Charlie Brown’s zig-zag shirt never has.
Secondly, they completely throw out the scale.
Are the kids tiny or are the adults giants?
And they also clutter everything up.
It’s very, very odd.
The Mario game that I find the least comforting and familiar.
Super Mario Odyssey is - to be frank - super weird, if you ask me.
I’m going to attempt to pin that down now, and Peanuts will maybe help.
First up: this game is wonderful.
With the Switch, Mario returns to the expansive sandbox template of Mario 64 and Sunshine.
It’s also wonderful because the Mario team have decided to really push things.
This is probably the most technically challenging 3D Mario game to play Nintendo’s made in a while.
Anyway, in Odyssey you have the standard Mario move-set but you also have Mario’s hat.
Just ponder that for a second.
(Argh, we’re back to New Super Mario Bros U again.)
This is almost too much.
It’s brilliant, but in terms of skill it leaves me far behind it.
But this is possibly one of the minor reasons why Odyssey sits so strangely in my hands.
Not a criticism of Odyssey - if anything, this is a criticism of me.
And overall, it’s a choice I’m glad the designers made.
So where do things really get weird?
Mario Odyssey is definitely not set in the Mushroom Kingdom.
The trees will be a bobbly delight.
Mario Odyssey is not like that.
That’s the wrong way to put it, but it gets close to what I mean.
It’s not a question of scale, but of jarring textures and tactility and art styles.
They’re something else.
Granted, a few of themareMario worlds.
The Sand Kingdom is a wonderful toy chest of things to do, with bright Mexican influences.
Take the Cascade Kingdom.
It’s all a bit too…realistic?
That T. rex Mario can control is not a Yoshi-style cartoon dinosaur in my memory of it.
It’s a lunge at something more photo-realistic.
It makes me think: what exactly am I meant to feel here?
What am I meant to be making of it all?
So its ultimately intriguing to see Mario Odyssey aiming for graphics that, well, look likegraphics.
I want to know why they wanted to the game to look like this.
For a while I was stuck at this point.
(If it even does.
In my wildest moments I’d cook up conspiracy theories.
But are there other ideas to explore here?
In an early chapter Coccia explains this ancient Greek idea that he translates as “appropriation”.
I read that and I thought: Mario Odyssey.
Mario never achieves appropriation.
He never totally fits in.
In this game he is the eternal stranger, the eternal visitor.
He works through New Donk City and he beats that Dark Souls world.
He swaps bodies with a toss of the hat, but he never really bends who he is.
Homer would be proud?
To put it another way, It’s-a me,Mario.
