Mario Odyssey Review

 

Even though Mario Odyssey has only been out for a week, it’s already become a cliché to refer to it as “an absolute delight”. The truth is that there may be no better phrase in the English language to describe the experience of playing this game. Since the internet has already been flooded with lengthy essays gushing about Nintendo’s newest flagship platformer (you can also checkout my impressions from last week), I’ll keep my rundown simple:

• Each of the game’s 10+ kingdoms has a unique structure and appearance, but also a unique set of mechanics. Some of this is a function of geography, traversing a wide-open desert is very different from a tightly-packed city, but a big part of the difference between kingdoms is how the capture mechanic is implemented. Often, taking control of some of the more mundane creatures or objects can be surprisingly fun once you get the hang of their move sets. For example, one of my favorite character to capture was an onion with stretchy roots.

• I was initially thrown off by how many Power Moons there are to collect and how frequently they were found. My concern was that finding them so often would make them feel less special and significant than finding stars in other 3D Mario games. However, I came to realize that what the moons are really doing is bread-crumbing the player through each kingdom. This incentivizes the player to thoroughly explore each stage and gives meaning to reaching the most remote areas of the map. Since finding more moons unlocks more areas to explore, a compelling and addicting loop is created; I quickly found myself saying “just one more moon” at the end of the night, only to end up sucked in for another hour or so.

• In the past, 3D Mario games have suffered from repetitive and simplistic boss battles. While this is still true for the mid boss enemies, the Broodals, the proper stage bosses are usually much more creative. Many of them are fought while Mario is in the form of a captured character which helps keep the boss battles fresh and ensures that each is mechanically distinct.

• In addition to the ear-worm vocal theme, “Jump Up, Super Star”, that I had mentioned in my impressions post,  this game as all-around excellent score. The orchestral pieces further add to the sense of place in each kingdom, and on a few occasions in the campaign, vocal tracks kick in at just the right moment to give the scene some extra oomph.

• The only gripe I had with this otherwise stellar game, was with the controls. While many gamers took, issue with the motion controls (I didn’t have a problem with them), my issue is with Mario’s ever-increasing move set. Since Mario 64, the variety of jumps and flips has ballooned to a level that makes keeping them all straight a challenge. For example, I’ve never found Mario’s sideways flip to be a useful maneuver, but I accidentally executed it several times on narrow platforms, cartwheeling Mario to an unnecessary death. I think trimming some of Mario’s extraneous moves would prevent this and cut down some frustration. Also, since camera control is primarily manual in Mario Odyssey, managing the viewing angle while tackling difficult platforming segments can get tricky.

• My playtime in Mario Odyssey was split between docked mode with the Pro Controller and handheld mode. While I preferred the TV and Pro-con setup, I also enjoyed playing the game portably and don’t think handheld-only players will be at much of a disadvantage.

After playing for over 30 hours and collecting at least 440 moons, the campaign came to a satisfying conclusion, but there is still so much more to do. There is already a staggering amount of content in the game’s main worlds, and more moons and bonus stages become available after the credits roll. Normally, after such a robust campaign I would be satiated with a game and set aside the extra content for later, but in the case of Super Mario Odyssey I’m immediately eager to dive back in. The game is just that much fun to play. If you have a Switch and pulse, Mario Odyssey is a must-buy game.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: About 30 hours (Main campaign with 440 moons)

Mario Odyssey Impressions

After over six months of hype, Mario Odyssey is finally out, and I am once again absorbed into another massive world built by Nintendo’s crew of mad scientists. Over the course of the game’s release weekend, I have put about 15 hours into the game and have already collected 222 moons (out of 800). Here are my impressions of Mario Odyssey so far:

• The game’s structure is an interesting amalgam of Galaxy, 3D World, and Sunshine. While there’s no central hub world, each kingdom in Mario Odyssey is a large and fully open playground to roam around (similar to Sunshine or 64). Just wandering around the kingdoms, the player will happen upon dozens of opportunities to collect Power Moons (equivalent to Stars or Shines in other Mario games). Within each kingdom, there are doorways that lead to areas with linear platforming challenges that reward the player with even more moons. I’m not sure if these areas have proper names, so I've started referring to them as dungeons. From what I’ve seen so far, the regular kingdom moons and the story-essential moons have been relatively easy to get, while a few of the dungeon moons have been quite tough.
• Unlike previous Mario games, where there would be no more than 10 stars in a stage and finding each one involves a significant trek, the moons are extremely plentiful and vary widely in terms of difficulty to acquire. Some moons are obtained simply by breaking a glowing box or talking to a right NPC, while others are more involved and could require climbing a massive tower or beating a boss. So far, the kingdoms I’ve played through have had anywhere from 17 to 100 moons to collect.
• After collecting the story-essential moons and a handful of the more obvious moons in each kingdom, I find myself making pretty liberal use of the in-game hint systems. There are two ways to get hints in Mario Odyssey: In one case, talking to an NPC will provide you with the title of a moon (e.g. "Atop a Tall Tower"), but not provide a location. In the other case, an NPC will mark the map with a location of a moon, but not tell you what you need to do to actually make the moon appear. The second of these two options requires paying 50 gold coins, which is pretty easy to accumulate, or to scan an amiibo. 
• The capture mechanic, in which Mario can take control of an NPC or enemy allows for some interesting breaks in the typical 3D Mario action. Capturable characters range from giant dinosaurs, to classic Mario enemies, to benign objects like plants. For the most part, the time spent as a captured character is brief, but each character has a unique feel and adds more variety to the gameplay.
• While it didn’t initially grab me when I heard it during E3, Mario Odyssey’s theme song, “Jump Up, Super Star” has really grown on me. I couldn’t help but put it on in the car on my way to work this morning.

While Zelda: Breath of the Wild represented a drastic departure from the series' traditional formula, Mario Odyssey feels more like a new blend of mostly familiar elements. However, as one would expect from a Mario game, the execution is top-notch and every part of the game that I've seen so far is simply imbued with the spirit of fun.

Shin Megami Tensei Synchronicity Prologue Review

Surprising pretty much everyone, last week Atlus of Japan released a new freeware spin-off Shin Megami Tensei game for PC. Unlike most SMT games, which are usually turn-based RPGs, Synchronicity Prologue is a non-linear action platformer in the style of Metroid and Castlevania (i.e. a “Metroidvania”). While my exposure to the Megami Tensei franchise is minimal, I’ve been interested in it for a while and could not pass up the opportunity to grab a free game, especially from a series that is rarely seen on PC. Here’s a rundown of my thoughts on the game:

• While it’s my understanding that regular Shin Megami Tensei games have a pretty dark and serious tone, Synchronicity Prologue stars cute-looking cartoon mascots Jack Frost and Pyro Jack. Despite the kid-friendly appearance, when your character takes damage there’s a pretty distinct blood splatter animation which struck me as a kind of out of place.
• If you’ve ever played any of the Castlevania games on the Gameboy Advance or Nintendo DS, the gameplay of Synchronicity Prologue will immediately feel familiar to you. The playable characters have standard and special attacks and collect upgrades that strengthen them and allow them access to new areas of the map. The level design and placement of hidden rooms are also very similar to Metroid and Castlevania games.
• The game’s mark of differentiation from other Metroidvanias comes from its character switching mechanic and use of elemental strengths and weaknesses. As you can probably guess, Jack Frost is immune to ice but weak against fire and the reverse is true for Pyro Jack. Each enemy also has its own set of elemental strengths and weaknesses. Later on, special moves introduce wind, lightning, and non-elemental attacks as well.
• During boss battles, enemies will often launch a massive barrage of ice and fire projectiles in bullet-hell fashion. Studying the bullet pattern and quickly switching between Frost and Pyro to avoid taking damage is the key to survival. This mechanic, reminiscent of Ikaruga, makes for an interesting addition to the otherwise standard Metroidvania format.
• Much like other aspects of this game, the music sounds like something straight out of Castlevania. It’s well-composed Castlevania-esque music, though, so it fits nicely.
• Even though I know very little about Shin Megami Tensei, with the help of the English translation patch (see notes below), the game’s simple plot was easy to follow. It wasn’t anything special, but it got the job done.

As you’ve probably gathered, SMT Synchronicity Prologue is essentially a Castlevania clone with some bullet-hell elements mixed in. In this case, however, that isn’t a criticism since Synchronicity Prologue is an exceptionally well-made clone. The game is quite short (~ 3 hours) but this keeps its simple mechanics from getting stale. There’s also the fact that this game was completely free, so you’ll hear no complaints from me. I’d highly recommend checking out Shin Megami Tensei Synchronicity Prologue, especially if you're a fan of the Metroidvania genre.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Completion Time: About 3 hours (92% map completion)

Note:

• If you’re interested in playing this game, it can be downloaded for free directly from Atlus of Japan. Click either of the blue rounded buttons midway down the page to download the game. It will be available until December 24th.
• The game was originally in Japanese, but a translation patch was created by @Brento_Bento on Twitter. The patch and installation instructions can be found in an article from Destructoid. Small amounts of text remain untranslated, such as some character names and item descriptions, but the patch still provides more than enough English text for a Japanese illiterate player to be able to understand what's going on.

Demo Hotness: Spelunker Party

A great thing about Nintendo’s eShop is the proliferation of demos. On many occasions, demos have turned me to new franchises and genres that I would have never discovered otherwise. In other cases, they’ve shown me that a game that sounds like a good fit for me on paper just doesn’t work for me in practice. Square Enix’s new co-op 2D platformer, Spelunker Party, unfortunately fell into the latter of those two groups. Some thoughts on the experience my wife and I had with the demo:

• The game has a simple and cute visual style. However, the male spelunker, female spelunker, and their animal companions all look like they were drawn by different artists, giving the game a somewhat uneven look.
• In local co-op mode when playing with the Switch docked, the screen splits into small windows even though additional screen space is available when playing with two characters. This can be problematic as it makes many of the game’s already tiny obstacles, traps, and items even harder to see. For visibility’s sake, it would probably be best to play this game on two Switches.
• Spelunker Party is extremely unforgiving for a game with the word “Party” in its title. Touching any of the cave’s tiny obstacles is instant death as is missing a jump or even falling from minimal heights. These deaths are in fact so instantaneous that the game strangely doesn’t bother to animate your character falling, but instead just displays the death animation the moment his/her feet leaves the ground if your jump or fall trajectory would result in death. It also doesn’t help that two characters can’t grab the same rope at the same time,
• Spelunkers also have a finite amount of air in the cave (yet another way to die), but thankfully checkpoints with air refills are easy to find. However, once you’ve lost five lives, the whole level must be restarted. If there’s a disparity between skill levels of the players, it’s quite likely that one will be left staring at the game over screen while the other one continues with their remaining lives. Having to sit out the rest of the level like this significantly detracts from the party potential of Spelunker Party.
• The game’s music is simple, repetitive, and catchy. It reminds me a lot of the upbeat tunes you’d hear in Bomberman.

Based on my experience with this demo, Spelunker Party could potentially make for a decent 2D cave exploration game for those with the patience for its finicky nature. However, as a casual co-op or party game (which is what I would expect from a game with “Party” in its title), I think Spelunker Party would introduce more frustration than fun.

Note: At some point after playing the demo, it was brought to my attention that this game is a remake of an Atari game which helps to explain some of its quirks. Thus, it may have some additional appeal to retro gamers, but as somebody that lacks that nostalgia, I still can’t recommend Spelunker Party.

Broken Age Review

My wife and I recently finished playing through Doubefine’s crowdfunded point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age. If you’ve ever played other adventure games directed by Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, etc), you probably already know what to expect from Broken Age. For those unfamiliar, the game consists exploring the environment as one of two different playable characters, collecting miscellaneous junk used to solve puzzles, and having snarky dialog with NPCs.

The game starts out strong by introducing you to its protagonists, Vela and Shay: two reasonable people trapped in two very different, but equally, absurd worlds. The game’s visual style, which looks like moving children’s book illustrations, gives the world and characters plenty of personality while still making items and objectives easy to discern. Snappy dialog, featuring the signature LucasArts/Doublefine sense of humor, further adds to the charm of the game world.

Pretty pictures and quirky characters aside, Broken Age is a game that’s all about puzzles. The puzzles are all initially of the pretty straight-forward “use item X on environmental object Y” variety and gradually increase in difficulty and obscurity throughout the game. This is all part of the standard point-and-click progression that one would expect from a throwback adventure from Tim Schafer. In the second half of the game, a different type of puzzle is introduced in which long sequences of actions must be completed in a very specific order for the game to progress. This is where the game makes the transition from clever, but occasionally arcane, to tedious and frustrating. Many of sequential puzzles require traversing the map in-between steps and switching between characters, with a single incorrect step resetting the entire puzzle. Compounding this issue, the game often isn’t particularly good at conveying what you did wrong. As a result, for the last handful of puzzles, my wife and I resorted to using a guide to spare ourselves the aggravation of using trial and error to finish the game.

Overall, Broken Age is an adventure game with a strong sense of style and personality but suffers from gameplay mechanics that fall apart in the second half of the game and make the game feel like it’s dragging on. I expect that players that are already fans of Tim Schafer’s work will find enough to like here to make the game worth playing, but newcomers will probably find it too discouraging.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Completion Time: 11 hours

DragonCon 2017

This past labor day weekend, my wife and I attended DragonCon for the first time and really enjoyed it. While the Con covers a huge variety of fandom topics and doesn't really focus on gaming, when you get over 80,000 nerds together in one place, you can pretty much guarantee there will be video gaming happening somewhere. Here's a synopsis of the gaming-related things we saw at the Con:

Japanese Arcade

One of the exhibit halls was set up as an arcade stocked with imported (and mostly untranslated) Japanese arcade games. Best of all, the cabinets were all set to free play mode. I worked in Japan for several months a few years ago and found the selection at this DragonCon exhibit to be a pretty good representation of the modern Japanese arcade scene. In my experience, non-redemption Japanese arcade games generally fall into 4 categories: fighting, rhythm, mech battle, and button-mash/novelty. I’ve included some photos and brief description of the games I was able to try.

Reflec Beat – A touchscreen-based rhythm battle game. Notes are fired as projectiles downward by an enemy at the top of the screen and they must be tapped in time with the music to reflect them back.

Gundam Pod – A first person mecha battle arena with enclosed cockpits. Each cockpit features a panoramic curved screen and controls with a combination of joysticks and foot pedals. The screen between the pods allow spectators to watch the battle in 3rd person. The game is 100% in Japanese (which I can’t read a word of), so I had to make educated guesses when navigating menus and monitoring the HUD. I was most excited to be able to play this game at DragonCon. I played it briefly when I was in Tokyo, but at ~$10/play, my prior experience was fairly limited. That being said, my limited background knowledge was enough to give me an edge and wreck most of the other players during the match.

Upend The Tea Table – This is where things get weird. The player pounds on the table until a meter fills and then flips the table over (it’s attached to the cabinet with a hinge). On the screen, the table is sitting at home plate in a baseball diamond and then gets launched into the air. Players compete to see who can launch the table furthest.

The Bishibashi – A collection of competitive minigames that are all based on button-mashing. Each minigame features cute animations and objectives such as trying to hit the button exactly 100 times within a time limit.

Cosplay

I saw a lot of fantastic cosplay at DragonCon. The most popular game used as cosplay inspiration was definitely Overwatch. I’m generally not into competitive multi-player games, but seeing the passion people have for the characters definitely has me more interested in trying it. One of the top-ranked cosplayers in the DragonCon masquerade contest was dressed as D.Va:

Photo credit: Crescent City Cosplay

However, my personal favorite video game cosplayer, was this dedicated gentleman cosplaying as Beedle, the shopkeeper from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. “Oh, thank you!”

Accessible Gaming Demonstration
We attended an interesting panel about the inovations and challenges involved with creating specialized gaming equipment for players with physical disabilites. We saw everything from controllers meant to be used with one hand to those that could be controlled with the tongue. This panel really gave me an appreciation for how gaming can be an important recreational and social outlet for people with disabilities. For more information about this topic, check out Able Gamers.

Hololens Demonstration
This panel was hosted by some developers that are working on software for the upcoming Microsoft Hololens augmented reality (AR) platform. While the tech definitely has some cool applications, it was very clear from the live demonstration that we're still in the very early stages of AR. I didn't get a chance to try on the headset myself, but from what I was able to observe watching the developers use it, the performance of the equipment looked rough compared to the heavily produced presentations seen at events like E3.

Demo Hotness: Octopath Traveler

 After teasing the mysterious new RPG, Octopath Traveler, over six months ago, Square Enix hasn't said a word about the game since. However, much to my surprise, not only was the game prominently featured in the September 13th Nintendo Direct, but it also had a demo released on the eShop that very same day! I immediately dove into this meaty demo, here are my thoughts on the 2-3 hours of gameplay on offer:

• First, a warning: Octopath Traveler may feature seemingly innocent looking 16-bit graphics, but do not be mistaken; this game features very dark themes such as murder, slavery, and rape. This is NOT a family-friendly game!
• The structure of Octopath Traveler is very similar to Saga Frontier. You start the game by picking one of eight protagonists; two are available in the demo: a knight and a dancer. Each protagonist has their own unique story and starting location, but their quest will eventually intersect those of the other characters. When you meet another one of these characters, you can add them to your party but continue along your original character's quest line.
• Even though it's clear that this game is still unfinished, the production values are very high. The 2D/3D hybrid art style is very striking and most of the cut scenes are fully voiced. However, what grabbed me the most was the beautiful soundtrack.
• The combination of 2D sprites and 3D background has a cool old-school look to it but also uses advanced lighting and particle effects. These effects generally look really nice but sometimes obscure certain details like character facial expressions and staircases in dungeons. It would also be nice if the character sprites had a broader range of animations to make cutscenes a bit more dynamic. There's a good chance a lot of these things will be polished up in the full version of the game.
• Octopath's combat system features random encounters and straight-forward turn-based battles with the turn order displayed at the top of the screen (similar to Final Fantasy 10). The unique wrinkle is the boost mechanic in which boost points can be stored up to allow your character to strike multiple times per turn. Also, enemies have weaknesses to certain elements and weapons that can be exploited to stun your foes and gain additional turns.
• The demo only featured single-character scenarios, so I wasn't able to get a feel for how the game's combat will work with a party. With only one character available at a time, combat strategies were pretty limited, but there's probably potential for interplay between characters in battle once a party has been formed. With what was shown in the demo, I'm not really able to determine exactly how deep Octopath's mechanics will be.
• Olberic's path presents a pretty generic RPG story of a disillusioned former knight. While his plot is something I've seen in many games, his unique ability, dueling, makes for some fun possibilities: Olberic can challenge pretty much any NPC to a duel, including those that are blocking access to doors and passageways. Thus, I was able to duel a guard, win, and then step over his unconscious body to enter a restricted area.
• I found Primrose the dancer's path to be much more compelling from a narrative standpoint. It covers the mature themes I mentioned earlier to set up a dark revenge tale. Between the two paths available, the writing and voice acting are much stronger in her story (Olberic's is still ok, though). Her special ability, alluring, allows her to recruit NPCs as temporary companions to join her in battle.
• Each path in the demo features some lengthy opening dialog scenes, a town, a short dungeon, and a boss battle before coming to an end.
• It was clear that a lot of features that will be available in the full game are not available in the demo. These include the world map, a quest log for managing side quests, and a character status screen. Also, the demo lacks the ability to change the text speed or skip cutscenes. Even though these basic features were all missing, I still feel like this bare-bones package was enough to give a representative taste of the game.

I finished the Octopath Traveler demo hungry to experience more of this unique Switch-exclusive RPG. As much as I enjoyed titles like Saga Frontier in the PS1 era, the lack of a cohesive narrative and quest structure often led to dead ends and reliance on guide books to make progress. Octopath seems like it will deliver on the intersecting multi-adventure premise of the Saga games but use modern story-telling techniques and structure to hold the game together in a more statisfying and complete package.