Super Mario Odyssey Review

Wedding Crashers

(This review contains minor spoilers!)

          It’s weird to think it’s been six years since we’ve had a true 3D Mario game. Ever since he wrapped up his intergalactic adventures, Mario has remained squarely in his roots of classic sidescrolling action. The closest game we got, 3D World, felt more like a 3D-ized version of a classic 2D Mario sidescroller than 64, Sunshine or the Galaxy games, and as a result felt pretty cookie cutter and uninspired.

          But with the arrival of the Nintendo Switch, it was finally time for the plumber in red to return to his classic 3D formula. Super Mario Odyssey was clearly made with Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine in mind, as the devs returned to large, sandbox-type worlds with plenty of enemies to stomp, platforms to jump, and secrets to find. Were they able to recapture the magic of what came before, or is this yet another 3D platformer that ends up being little more to nostalgic fans of the good ol’ days?

          I think Odyssey is best compared to Zelda: Breath of the Wild in some regards. Breath of the Wild came along and revitalized the Zelda franchise in a way that made it both fresh and new while at the same time not shying away from what made the games so popular in the past. Odyssey is exactly the same way. This game will be looked back upon in ten years the way we currently reminisce on Super Mario Galaxy: it’s one of, if not the best game Mario has ever starred in, and has become both a must-have game for Switch owners and an instant Nintendo classic in record time.

          Just like all Mario games, the story is deep, thought provoking, and has some very profound things to say about life and the concept of existence. Bowser has finally decided to cut the crap and get rid of Mario once and for all, taking Peach as his bride in the process. Seriously, every time you see Bowser in this game legitimately it feels like he’s out for blood instead of just a slice of Peach’s cake or whatever. Your job, as Mario, is as always to rescue the princess before the wedding can take place.

          Alongside you this time is Cappy, a ghost-like…thing that hides inside your hat and allows you to use it as a projectile weapon of sorts. I’ll talk more about how that works later, but as for Cappy as a character, he’s fine. He doesn’t have a deep backstory or a three-dimensional character depth. He’s just a fun companion that adds some entertaining commentary and gameplay tips along the way. I enjoyed him in the same way I liked Sunshine’s F.L.U.D.D: as a cute friend that didn’t intercept the adventure too much.

          Odyssey’s presentation is fantastic, and brings to mind plenty of classic Mario favourites. The game looks gorgeous in both docked and undocked mode, with no frame drops from what I could see. You can see every single hair on Mario’s mustache this time around, and I’d just like to appreciate the fact that someone at Nintendo had to work on that. The music is also incredibly stellar, as is to be expected from a Nintendo game at this point. While only time will tell if any of the songs from Odyssey will match up with past favourites like Bob-Omb Battlefield, Delfino Plaza and Gusty Garden Galaxy, I found myself enjoying quite a few of them, especially the music from the Cascade Kingdom, Sand Kingdom, and New Donk City.

          Speaking of those, let’s talk about the levels. There are several, each of them with a specific theme. You’ve got your typical ice, underwater and desert themed worlds, as well as several more original types, including ones based on food, hats and yes, a city inspired by a combination of New York and Donkey Kong. While some worlds are bigger and more in depth than others, each is a complete delight to explore from top to bottom as you search for treasure. New Donk City ended up being my personal favourite of the bunch, as it’s filled to the brim with stuff to do and buildings to climg. Equally good is the Sand Kingdom of Tostarena, which I spent hours in finding oodles of secrets.

          Said secrets come in the form of Power Moons. Just like Stars and Shine Sprites in previous games, Moons are your main source of progression in Odyssey. Collecting enough of them will power up your ship enough to fly you to the next world. But unlike previous celestial objects in 3D Mario games, Moons are everywhere. You can find moons hidden in boxes, being held by Toads, under rocks, behind your ear, on top of towers, in your breakfast cereal, across treacherous platforming challenges, after the end credits for Thor: Ragnarok, inside mysterious temples, and more. From what I’ve heard there are around 999 (!!!) in total, so you’ve got your work cut out for you finding them all. The sheer number of them results in some being easier to find than others, but Mario pros don’t need to worry either, as there are quite a few tricky Moons that require some real platforming finesse to track down. Overall the Moons are fun to find in the same way that made Breath of the Wild’s Shrines so entertaining, as the quest to uncover them is twice as fun as finally adding one to your collection.

          Lastly, let’s talk about Mario himself and his moveset. He controls exceptionally well, although I did find him a little faster than in past installments, which took a bit of getting used to. All your favourite moves from the past are back, including the triple jump, long jump, backflip, and many more.

          As for the much-touted new feature to the game, the Capture ability is easily the best move Mario has ever had in his arsenal, and it’d be a shame if we never saw it again in another game. The way it works is that Mario throws Cappy out in front of him. You can do a number of things with this move, from dispatching small enemies and objects to using Cappy as a platform to activating levers and more, but what really makes it fun is when you use it on certain enemies and NPCs. On most creatures you find in the overworld, throwing Cappy at them will allow Mario to take control of them for however long you wish. It’s tons of fun to take control of everything from classic Mario enemies to new baddies to even crazier creatures like a T-rex or a random city slicker. The possibilities are near endless, and the developers do everything they can with the concept. Much like Mario Sunshine being designed around using the F.L.U.D.D pack, many of Odyssey’s wilder puzzles are solved by taking control (literally) of your environment and using it to your advantage.

          Despite me singing nothing but praise for this game, I do have a few nitpicks with it. First off, I was a little disappointed that the costumes you buy for Mario don’t offer any real changes to the gameplay. I still loved using them and I’m glad they weren’t just used as fluff for microtransactions, but I would’ve liked more of a reason to spend coins on them than just “I wanna see how Mario looks in this.” Again, it’s still beyond hilarious to see him in his boxer shorts or in an outfit referencing one of his past games, but I would’ve liked more of a reason to track down rare purple coins to get some of the fancier outfits.

          And secondly, I found the main campaign a little too short. Maybe it’s just because I loved the game so much and didn’t want to stop playing, but I was able to see all the main worlds and finish the story in just over a day. While the post-game content has kept me very entertained, I would’ve liked if they’d used some padding to keep me in worlds for a bit longer. I was in and out of the snow themed kingdom in about 15 minutes, and while there’s plenty more Moons to find there, I would’ve preferred staying there a while longer instead of getting rushed to Bowser’s Castle.

          All in all though, those are just minor gripes. I can happily say that Super Mario Odyssey is the current highlight of the Switch’s library, even alongside amazing games like Breath of the Wild and Splatoon 2. Everything is done either perfectly or just shy of perfectly, from the world design to the presentation to the awesome Capture system to the near endless supply of Moons to collect, ensuring plenty of replayability even after you reach the end of the somewhat disappointingly short campaign. If you’re still holding out on picking up a Switch, this is the game that you should buy one for.

FINAL SCORE

10/10

Legendary

Girls’ Last Tour Episode 4 Review

Side-eye statues

(This review contains spoilers!)

          There really wasn’t too much to talk about this week, so I’ll keep this review brief.

          Thanks to Kanazawa (who’s disappeared into the night) the girls now have a camera at their disposal. As they explore the new level of the city, they start to discover strange, tall statues that all stare off to the side. Following the statues lead them to a temple where an inscription describes a god the people who came before worshipped, as well as a room with a statue of said god alongside the flowers.

          There’s one major drop in this episode lore-wise, but it’s so subtle you could miss it. I personally only found it out because some guy online pointed it out in a discussion thread. On the camera screen, the date reads August 6, 3230. We know this is a date and not a bunch of random numbers because it changes to August 7, 3230 in the next segment, which takes place the day after the previous one. So we’ve got a year! The story taking place a full millennium and more after modern day explains why the girls don’t know about a lot of commonplace stuff like oceans and cheese, as well as the overall unusual design of the city. It’s a little strange that it was snowing so hard earlier if this episode takes place in August, but maybe that’ll be explained later on down the line.

          As always, Chi and Yuu’s relationship remains the highlight, and they have a lot of fun moments together. Especially interesting is a brief scene where Yuu thinks she’s lost Chi and takes a moment to wonder what she would do without her. Of course everything turns out fine in the end, but the fact that there are some real gloomy and existential moments slipped into what is essentially a slice-of-life show with an apocalypse setting really makes you wonder if they’re setting up something for the future.

          While it didn’t give me too much material to write about, this was another very strong episode of Girls’ Last Tour. There’s just something really compelling about this series that other slice-of-life shows seem to miss out on. Maybe it’s the relaxed nature and quirky sense of humour that made Non Non Biyori work? Or maybe how the genre clashes with the setting is the culprit? Whatever the case, this remains a show I always get excited to see more of.

FINAL SCORE

7/10

Good

The Orville Review: “Majority Rule”

Downvote

(This review contains spoilers!)

          Last time on The Orville, we got high-stakes action, awesome alien environments, and fantastic moral dilemmas for our characters to face! What do they have for us this week?

          A sluggish and downright annoying episode with a preachy message and the most boring setting known to mankind? Well, that’s disappointing.

          Yeah, I wasn’t too hot on this week’s episode. The crew is sent down to a planet to rescue some missing anthropologists. It turns out that, what do you know, the planet is a near perfect replica of 21st Century Earth. Wow, isn’t that convenient.

          Seriously, could they have picked a more boring idea for a location? After having episodes on Bortus’s home planet and the Krill ship, modern day Earth feels like a cheap cop-out. Maybe the Krill makeup was so expensive they had no other choice, but overall this episode has just a very bland and basic tone overall.

          It turns out this planet is ruled entirely by the popular vote. If someone likes someone, they give them an upvote. If they don’t like someone, they get a downvote. Too many downvotes and they start parading you around so you can try to apologize to the people. If that doesn’t work, they fry your brain and turn you into a vegetable (figuratively).

          It’s not a bad concept and there are quite a few good morals hidden in there, but when you have it set on what is essentially modern day Earth, it feels less like a fun allegory and more like the writers beating you over the head saying “THIS IS YOU! THIS IS WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA DOES TO YOU! NOTICE THAT THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE YOU!”

          LaMarr gets his first major role this week, as he earns the ire of the entire civilization after pretending to hump a statue. It’s kind of irritating that the black guy’s first main role is in an episode where he has to deal with oppression and is treated like a criminal by everybody (seriously, they couldn’t have it be anybody else?), but the actor does a good job with what he’s given regardless.

          There’s also a lot of inconsistencies in this episode. Having the crew be sent down to this planet without any research on what the planet is like is just plain frustrating, but I guess it can be explained away by the fact that no one aside from the anthropologists know what the planet is like. Even more annoying is why they don’t just beam LaMarr back on the ship and rocket the hell away. Mercer calls the admiral early on to ask this question, but the admiral basically reads him the Prime Directive from Star Trek to explain why he can’t. That’s all fine and dandy, but later on they bring the doctor back onboard no problem! And I know they didn’t use the shuttle they used to get down there to get her back, because we see Alara use it later on by herself to transport a girl from the planet onboard the ship!

          Oh yeah, that’s a thing too. They bring this random barista onboard the ship to try and get LaMarr out of trouble. The way they solve the problem feels pretty “we’re reaching the 45 minute mark, think of a clever solution!”, but it’s a funny ending nonetheless, flooding the feed with sympathetic pictures and videos of LaMarr created by Isaac.

          This episode is the very definition of weak, especially when you consider the two episodes that came directly before it. The setting is dull, LaMarr’s storyline is just plain frustrating instead of tense, the allegories are way too obvious, and some of the plot holes are so big you could fly the Orville through them. I do think this concept could’ve worked better if they tried to go a little more sci-fi with the world instead of just having it be “oh yeah this planet is just like Earth in the 21st century!”, like they did with the biosphere ship episode. Overall, you can definitely give this episode a pass.

FINAL SCORE

3/10

Bad

Star Wars Rebels Review: “In the Name of the Rebellion”

One rogue

(This review contains spoilers!)

          After a frustrating and underwhelming premiere, Star Wars Rebels managed to spin itself back in the right direction this week with lots of action, fun, and a very smart story that ties directly into Rogue One.

          Honestly, they should’ve used this episode as the season premiere and saved Mandalore for next week. Everything you want out of a good Rebels episode is present in this two-parter. The Rebels have arrived on Yavin IV to join up with the Rebellion once again, this time alongside Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and that one bearded guy who’s name nobody knows. The Rebels are sent on a mission to mess with a deflector dish Star Trek 2009 style, but things go quickly awry when Saw Gerrera shows up and recruits Ezra and Sabine to help him uncover a dark secret of the Empire’s.

          Saw Gerrera is always a welcome presence, especially when he’s voiced by Forest Whitaker. It was really cool how they moved him closer to how he looks in Rogue One than how he appeared in Season 3, but still missing a few of the robotic parts he has in the movie. He also was the source of a great moral question: how far is the Rebellion willing to go to take down the Empire?

          Being a two part episode, the episode is split into two separate stories, both of them good ones. The first half is dedicated to the crew arriving on Yavin IV and trying to disable the Empire’s deflector dish, and the second half sees Ezra and Sabine teaming up with Saw to infiltrate a cargo ship to see what the Empire’s working on. Unlike the ploddingly paced Mandalore episode, both storylines are supremely enjoyable and kept me glued to my screen the whole time.

          This episode tied in to Rogue One quite a bit not just with the inclusion of Saw and Yavin IV, but also the presence of Deathtroopers as well as the kyber crystals we know the Empire is using to charge the Death Star laser. Granted that you can see both Chopper and the Ghost briefly in Rogue One I wouldn’t be surprised if we got more ties to it throughout the season as we get closer and closer to the time it takes place.

          Please give us a Cassian and K-2SO episode, guys.

          Overall, I enjoyed this episode leagues more than the premiere. It really felt like a true animated Star Wars adventure with the action, comedy, quiet moments with Kanan and the kyber crystal stuff, and ties to the movies with the Rogue One stuff. While I still think the show isn’t quite as good as it was at the end of Season 3, I’m more than happy to give it the time it needs to get its space legs back.

FINAL SCORE

8/10

Great

Editorial: Blocked

Blocked

          It’s no secret that the Triple-A gaming industry has really ramped up their usual scumbagginess to the 10th degree this year. We’ve had a rogue’s gallery of games notorious for extreme shadiness in backdoor loot box and microtransaction policies emerge in just the past few months, and it looks like things won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

          Recently those slimy scoundrels over at GameStop were tasked with encouraging pre-orders for Assassin’s Creed Origins. As usual with these types of games, pre-ordering will unlock you a bonus mission along with some other optional stuff. How did GameStop decide to advertise this?

          …Oof.

          It’s become fairly obvious recently that whoever GameStop’s got in charge of social media and advertising doesn’t have a clue how to handle those things. What I can only hope were attempts to ape the fun and sarcastic quips utilized by the Wendy’s Twitter account instead came across as rude and patronizing, basically acting like the ultimate gamer stereotype. Because that’s what we want our most prominent retailer coming across as!

          Anyways, back on track. I think I can safely say that I’ve never quite seen an ad like this one for any form of entertainment. Normally ads for pre-orders try to look all friendly, like “Hey, if you buy the game now, look at all these cool extra goodies you’ll get!”

          And on the other hand, there’s this ad. “Sorry, the bonus mission is blocked unless you pre-order the game” in bright red bold text on an all-black background certainly draws eyes, but it doesn’t exactly breed excitement as it does worry and fear. See, what these ads are always trying to accomplish regardless of their specific approaches is the same thing: they want you to pre-order the game. But, as I said before, the usual tactic is showing off the cool stuff you’ll get if you don’t pre-order, and subtly encouraging you to put money down because of that.

          Here, the tactic is blatant. They’re not suggesting that there’s some cool stuff you’ll miss out on if you don’t pre-order here. They’re full on telling you that if you don’t put money down early for their game exclusively at GameStop, there’s content that’ll be gated off to you in the final product.

          Until it inevitably becomes available to everyone else via DLC in a few months’ time, of course.

          Honestly, the real kicker here is the phrasing of the whole thing. I imagine that if GameStop had instead worded the ad by saying “Pre-Order now and get a secret exclusive sidequest!” or whatever people wouldn’t nearly be as up in arms about it. But the word “blocked” isn’t exactly something gamers enjoy hearing. “Blocked” makes you think of something held off unfairly, like you’re a baby and there’s a fence cutting you off from entering the room where Mom keeps her fine china. “Blocked” also brings thoughts of censorship, region locking and all that other stuff people don’t like infesting their games.

          And the ad doesn’t even say what the mission is. Normally with stuff like this you get a fair idea of what you’ll be getting if you pre-order, like a special gun or character costume. But not here. For all we know the ultra-exclusive “blocked bonus mission” is one where you trek across the world gathering apples for some random lady running a fruit stand.

          It’s unclear whether this is GameStop’s fault or yet another misstep as Ubisoft desperately claws at the chance to redeem their sins of the past, but personally I think it’s the former. My guess is that Ubisoft told GameStop about the exclusive pre-order mission and told them to build an ad around it, and GameStop created the worst possible thing they could.

          I have to agree with Jim Sterling when he said that this ad is essentially the gaming equivalent of an infomercial that says “Order now while stocks last for this limited edition product! If you miss out it’ll never come back!” That doesn’t drive customer interest in a product nearly as much as it drives fear into a consumer’s mind. When we buy something, we want the complete package, especially when it comes to video games that often cost upwards of $60. And when you think about casual customers who buy a few games a year from names they recognize, that is when this ad’s true insidiousness comes into play.

          Assassin’s Creed is one of those series that a lot of casual gamers buy annually thanks to a new game being released nearly every year. Thanks to that, GameStop knows that they can count on those who don’t pay too much attention to the industry as a whole to take one look at this ad and think “Oh, that’s for Assassin’s Creed! I’d better pre-order it now to make sure I don’t miss out on that blocked mission!”, therefore putting money in the hands of GameStop and Ubisoft before any reviews appear. That’s what’s up with the red and black colour scheme here. This isn’t an ad gently encouraging you to pre-order a game because if you do it’ll net you a few fun bonuses. This is an ad saying that if you don’t blindly throw money at one of gaming’s most untrustworthy developers, they’ll block you from experiencing content.

          And that just makes me sick. Game industry, you’re better than this.

Song of the Week

Main Theme – Metal Gear Solid 2

Girls’ Last Tour Episode 3 Review

Going up

(This review contains spoilers!)

          Girls’ Last Tour is such a delightful enigma. This episode continues to subvert anime expectations, as we explore another trope of apocalypse storylines and turn it into another cute, fun and happy adventure through the wasteland.

          Continuing off from last week, the girls are continuing on their merry way to the tower they spotted, trying to get to a higher level of this mysterious city. Along the way, they meet a new character: a map-maker known as Kanazawa. He helps them reach the tower, but as they climb upwards in the elevator things start to get interesting.

          One thing I’d like to point out is how Kanazawa’s character seems like a reversal of the typical one-off character you’d see in an apocalypse show. Usually, if our heroes come across some random guy in one episode who looks like he’s going to help them, the episode ends with him turning on them and things getting worse for both of them. Given the overall kind themes of this show, we get nothing of the sort from Kanazawa. While he’s not someone I think I’d like to stick around for more than another episode or two, having an extra companion along for the ride was fun.

          The entire sequence on the elevator and the immediate aftermath is some amazing storytelling. The entire episode is built around a single question: “What makes life worth living?” For Kanazawa, the answer is his maps. But as the rickety elevator taking them up to the next floor begins to shake, his maps fall out as a result. For Kanazawa, he thinks he might as well follow them out of the elevator window, but Chi and Yuu force him to go up with them. Yuu then gives the answer to the question: life doesn’t need to have a reason to be worth living. It’s a delightful ending to an excellent episode.

          The one gripe I have is that the ending seemed a little rushed. Granted, they covered the moral excellently, but I would’ve liked to see how they fixed the elevator after getting stuck. The scene in between the maps falling out and them at the top of the tower is framed kind of weird. It basically goes “Boy, I hope we can fix the elevator.” followed by a cut to them at the top and saying “I’m sure glad we fixed that elevator!” It’s a little weird, but if we had to skip it to get the great ending it was all worth it.

          There was a little bit more lore sprinkled in this week too. Kanazawa said the elevator is hundreds of years old, which again poses the question: how long have Chi and Yuu been around for? The art style makes it kind of hard to tell exactly how old they are. I really want to learn their full backstories as well as how this world came to be.

          This was another fantastic episode of Girls’ Last Tour. Adding in a third character to push home the existential question posed in the first minute of the episode was brilliant, as was the way that question was answered. His interactions with Chi and Yuu were a lot of fun as well. While we might not see Kanazawa again, he was a great one-time addition.

FINAL SCORE

9/10

Amazing

Star Wars Wednesday: The OTHER Clone Wars Cartoon

The OTHER Clone Wars Cartoon

          Star Wars Rebels began its final season on Monday, as we prepare to say goodbye to Ezra, Hera, Sabine and friends as they embark on their last adventures. Over the course of the show we’ve seen many callbacks and characters from the ever-popular Clone Wars cartoon. But what you may not know about is that Star Wars: The Clone Wars was not the original cartoon set during this time period.

          Called Star Wars: Clone Wars (you can tell it’s different from the more popular version because this one doesn’t have a “The” in the title), this cartoon was a hand-drawn take on the titular battles and aired from November 2003 to March 2005. It was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, who you might know as the director of the Hotel Transylvania movies or as the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack.

          With the Prequel Trilogy preparing to conclude, Lucasfilm wanted to create a cartoon series that filled in the gaps between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. This show attempted to do just that, using an animation style not dissimilar to Tartakovsky’s own Samurai Jack. Overall the show looks really stylized, like nothing else you can find in Star Wars.

          Instead of character and story driven content like the 2008 Clone Wars utilized, this series was all about one thing: awesome battles. Every episode would see your favourite Jedi alongside massive armies of Clone troopers slicing their way through hordes of battle droids in the most creative and fun ways imaginable.

          That isn’t to say the show didn’t use the characters at all though. We got to see some unique spins on our favourite Prequel heroes and villains here. Anakin is seen with much darker overtones than he ever had in the 2008 Clone Wars, as the show makes his lust for power blatant from the first few minutes of the first episode. Palpatine is hilariously displayed as an obvious villain right from the start. His skeletal fingers even make slimy noises when he taps them together.

          Each episode is about 3 minutes in length (bumped up to around 13 minutes in the shorter final season) with a small self-contained plot adding into the overarching story. The first 3 episodes focus on Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship as well as a battle between an elite squadron of Clones and battle droids. Later episodes star lesser known Jedi such as Kit Fisto and Ki-Adi Mundi as they fight their own battles on different planets.

          This show can also be credited as the first appearance of popular Star Wars villain Asajj Ventress. Here she’s seen as Dooku’s apprentice, as well as a major overarching villain in the series. The series also explains that she’s responsible for the scar Anakin has over his eye in Revenge of the Sith, so that’s some nice continuity.

          If you’re interested in Star Wars: Clone Wars, it takes just over two hours to watch the whole thing and the entire series is available to watch for free on YouTube as of this time of writing. While it isn’t canon anymore and never quite matches the depth that the 2008 series got, Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars is still well worth a look for the awesome animation style and epic battles only a cartoon could portray.