5/5 ★ – tom_toast's review of Super Mario Odyssey.

This is my favorite game of all time. See, I didn't grow up with Mario 64. Not because I'm too young, no, I still remember playing my cousin's Nintendo 64 at my grandma's house on Thanksgiving. No, simply because my parents originally planned on never letting my brother and I play video games. Now, I tried playing Mario 64 via emulators previous to playing this, but I just never got that into it. Even recently attempting to play the Switch re-release, I had a tough time with it. I know I'm in the minority, but I just find that the camera controls and the movement have both aged quite poorly, to the point where they were just downright unfun. But Odyssey, oh boy, that's another story entirely. With Super Mario Odyssey, you have such a wide, varied array of moves and tricks you can pull off, and thanks to Nintendo actually using what they've learned over years of developing groundbreaking 3D platformers, the movement here is such a joy to control. I've spent hours and hours perfecting my skills in Luigi's Balloon World and still I'll find someone placing a balloon somewhere that absolutely floors me, leading to hours of confusion trying to work out how they pulled it off. The story is nothing special, but it's Mario, you don't need to be revolutionary, just solid enough to motivate you. But one area where the game really shines aside from movement, is it's presentation. The obvious peak of this is New Donk City. There's just so much to discover here and it ends with an incredible, uplifting musical celebration of Mario's history that makes me cry ever time I play through it just because of how good it is. This game is an absolute masterpiece. The only way I can think to sum it up is to quote the great Video Game Dunkey's review: "If you can play this game and not have some emotion come over you, then wipe yourself off man, because you are dead."