I think Super Mario Odyssey is a super original and inspired piece of art. I don't think it's an amazing video game. There are so many cool ideas in this game, so many instances of the developers clearly having tons of fun with what they're making and letting their imaginations run wild but unfortunately I think it coalesces into a very unfocused game that never really gets off the ground.

Super Mario Odyssey's main gimmick is "Cappy", a sentient hat that you throw at enemies to possess them and gain their powers to progress and find collectibles. That's sick! And the game has beautiful creative syntax - it's able to use hats and headwear (or the lack thereof) to communicate to the player that an enemy can or can not be commandeered without ever saying a word, it's a hilarious and charming leitmotif that's used really well throughout the game.

The problem is that the charm of these possession power-ups wears off quickly for me. They more often than not have one button or one "thing" that they do, understandable since there's so many of them that the designers have had to implement but maybe that's an argument against the game spreading itself so thin? Because instead of using Mario's new, exciting and more-comprehensive-than-ever platforming moveset to traverse the worlds, you spend a lot of this game trudging across flat levels to possess a guy, do that one thing that guy you just possessed can do to solve a menial puzzle, get a collectible and move on to the next one.

Mario feels better than ever to control, likely even better than Super Mario Sunshine - which in my mind was the previous benchmark for Mario's sense of control. But the difference is that in Sunshine, a lot of the levels are designed to accommodate for platforming. So many of that game's early levels are built like jungle gyms, just ready for you to jump and climb all over. Bianco Hills, Ricco Harbour, Pinna Park etc.

Mario Odyssey has New Donk City as an excellent example of this kind of design...And not much else. The Sand Kingdom teases you with this huge, climbing frame-like tower right in the centre that you traverse to get a collectible in the game's main story. There are so many levels and layers to this tower, it's really cool to navigate in whatever way you want. In my mind, the game peaks here, and then it never does this again. If all of Mario Odyssey was like this one bit in the Sand Kingdom, it might be one of my favourite games of all time! But the rest of the Sand Kingdom is flat, largely empty dunes. The Seaside Kingdom is largely flat. The Lakeside Kingdom is almost entirely underwater. The Snow Kingdom is basically just a racetrack. Isn't this supposed to be a platformer? All of the levels have to be designed to house things only accessible with Mario's various gimmicks to the point where the kind of cool, tricky, expressive platforming Mario Sunshine had you doing is hardly ever necessitated, even with Mario's pimped out moveset.

This is all compounded by the nature of the game's main collectible, the Power Moons. It's sad to say that I don't like the Power Moons because I feel like they were a direct response to a common complaint about Mario Sunshine and Galaxy - that being that gathering the main collectible boots you out of the level and disincentives you from exploring and learning the layout. It's cool that this is no longer the case, but this also means that Power Moons are everywhere and often completely trivial and underwhelming to collect. If you're not finding one via silly one-dimensional possession gimmick, you're getting one through some other form of filler busywork. There's a few Power Moons that are obtained through platforming challenges, but there's a lot more that are found through doing random, unfun bullshit. Sliding block puzzles, ground-pounding shining spots, fishing "minigames", RUNNING IN A CIRCLE.

It's just unfocused like I say. The game stuffs so many ideas into one place that it's constantly having to compromise your fun so that you can experience all of them. All the pieces are there for a super imaginative, fun and original platformer. I really love a lot of the ideas Super Mario Odyssey has and a lot of the things it represents, but I think it gets crushed under the weight of its own ambition and the gameplay itself ends up being far more of a slog than its individual parts would suggest. It's not a bad game at all, in a lot of ways it's objectively good! Its quality is so visible in so many areas, but when you look at just how gimmicky it is, it becomes absolutely no surprise that a game like Balan Wonderworld - which tried so hard to follow in its footsteps, was an abject failure. This is a game that is less than the sum of its parts.