Topic: Super Mario Odyssey

@Agriculture Yeah, the slopes did that, but it also breaks the lessons of 2D platforming. It's a tight balance and, IMO, 64 didn't get the balance right. Miyamoto was very infatuated with the newfound freedom of 3D at the time and was into experimenting with it. 64 shows it's role as an experiment by throwing out some important conventions that ground a platformer and throwing in more sandbox/experimentation elements. It didn't make 64 a bad game, but it made it fall short as a platformer evolved into 3D and made it a sort of sandbox game. The fact that they never quite duplicated those errors, is, IMO a good thing. 64 deserves its place in history, but it's objectively a very unrefined game with too many rough edges that defied its pedigree. I'm always surprised by how much a core group seems to revere that game. Other than Sunshine it always seemed like the red-headed step-child of the Mario lineup, and arrived marking a period of sharply diminishing Nintendo influence in the industry. I think a lot of NES/SNES players were a little off-put by 64, but a lot kids a little younger stared with 64 so it always has a rosier glow. It started good things, good things that bring us Odyssey today....but it's implementation wasn't the end-all.

@GoldenGamer88 At least I'm not the only one that hates that jump rope. It feels like something that either A) Wasn't playtested, or B) there's a trick to it we're all missing that we're supposed to be cheating with. The name "Jumprope genius" makes me think there's merit to that latter theory. I'm ok calling a game 100% when it means "100% of the parts that aren't broken."

I'd never go for world leaderboards on the jumprope thing just because so many people have 99,999 points after abusing that one glitch with the bird.

Honestly, those rooms with the invisible platforms and poison-spitting piranha plants everywhere are about 100x harder than anything else in the game, last level and jumprope included.

I'm not talking about any of those things. I'm talking about the game feel, and how Mario felt like a real entity in the game world, reacting how one would expect. In Odyssey he feels more artificial because of hard limits on what you can do. Comparing the flood from Sunshine and the Gushen capture from Odyssey it's very clear that Odyssey is more digital, while Sunshine is more analog. Of course I understand that the flood ruined a lot of platforming because it was overpowered, but it was much more fun to play around with because it didn't have the same limitations that the Gushen has.

It (the Gushen) goes from zero to full speed almost right away and has a hard limit on how high you can fly. The flood isn't like that at all, and you can freely experiment with it.

@NEStalgia I was in a similar position finished the whole game just needed purple coins in the last areas. I gave up and used bowser amiibo

@Ralizah What's the bird trick? Do share! I can't get past 60 let alone 100, let alone 99,999

Oh geeze, yeah, that room with the invisible platforms, poison prihanas, and no hat is abusive. As is the bottom level moon of the "thousand bullet bills and a giant one behind you" (with no hat). It would be ok, but the long-jump controls are too fiddly to really be able to rely on them at the pace and precision needed to skip across, what, 6 platforms in a row, and the camera can never be locked to the right angle at the pace needed to spin back around when the big bill launches and get that fiddly long-jump sequence going. There was a third room with no hat there that I also skipped for the same reason, but can't remember what it was. That's 5 stars I don't think I'll ever get. Plus jumprope and vball (jumprope is abusive. vball I probably "could" do but the startup is so slow I have no desire to do it over and over until I get it.) Eventually I could probably get the last level, but it's frustrating redoing the early parts over and over just to keep retrying the last part. That pirhana and giant bullet room though....no thanks. Not ever.

@Agriculture We'll I don't think you're wrong. I suppose it's more digital. But technically I'd say a platformer MUST be digital...it was a genre born of digital limits. Translating that digital limitation to a 3D world has been quite a challenge, and one could argue with Odyssey, 20 years later, they finally nailed it. Galaxy did a pretty solid job too, so I guess it only took 13 years or so. Sunshine.....really was more sandbox than platformer, so I can excuse that as being really a different genre, and more of a spinoff than a core numbered title.

It may be more "digital" but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing.

@NEStalgia

I dunno if it has been patched out or not, though.

While I'm not even close to 100% completing this game, I think I've obtained almost all of the hardest moons in the game. I did the ones where you have to walk in a circle. I did the ones where you have to reconstruct Mario's face. I did the one with the giant bullet bill and the small platforms. I did the one with the invisible platforms and piranha plants. I did the one where you have to run along a disappearing platform without a scooter. I did the last level. I did the ones where you knock sheep into goals at the end of the level. And I've completed several of the races.

To cheese the jump rope, you can also use a certain object. It still requires your attention and input though. So it's not effortless. it got me to 200 and then I never touched it again

@MisterPi If I'm thinking of the object you're thinking I thought the same thing, but it wasn't working out for me so I thought it wasn't workable....maybe I'll re try it with that. The scooter?

@Ralizah Wow, how do people find this stuff? That's some oddly specific requirements that don't seem like something you could easily identify even if you managed to make it work by accident once.

@NEStalgia The scooter helps in so far that no matter how you press the jump button you always get the same height, unlike when you‘re playing with just Mario. I found its weight and landing animations, on top of the difficulty of getting into the minigame, too distracting to make this worthwhile.

What helped me getting more consistently into the 40-50s was playing in handheld mode. I do think that beyond that one glitch, the trick lies in one‘s ability of keeping a rhythm going. Don‘t know about you but I for one am not good with rhythms.

All I'm saying is that it's way less fun to just mess around, jumping and flying in this game. My favorite level is the Seaside Kingdom, but I wish I could play as either Wing Cap Mario or Super Mario Sunshine-Mario in that level.

@GoldenGamer88 I'm sorry, but your excellent description of your painful experience had me laughing.

@Ralizah Well done you 👏

It's funny, cos on my first proper go I got a score like 44 or something, got a moon, and was just going to move on. Then I saw there was a rankings screen and found I was in the 900000s. So I said 'F-this', had another go, and just found it easy. Once I crossed 200 I thought I'd save a clip of it, and of course it was the shifting of my mind from the rhythm of the rope to the feel of the capture button that made me f-up on 207. Job done, I was in the 70000s and far ahead of those on my friends list.

Then Ralizah steps up and blows me away so I go 'F-this' again, 'If I can get 207 easily on my second go (feeling like I could go on forever until I distracted myself) then I'll smash Ralizah's score into the Sand Kingdom', and then spent about 20 minutes trying but couldn't get over 200 once. Then I had to go and pick the kids up

It's weird cos I usually don't get on with mini games (like those in Zelda games) but this jump rope thing was an instant hit with me.

@GoldenGamer88 My grade school music teachers would certainly agree..... Terrible rhythm. Weird thing as I can do ok at Thumper, but it's kind of the arrhythmic game which probably explains it.

@gcunit If I get to 40 I feel like my head is going to explode and my finger is going to melt and then the rhythm goes out the window. It just gets too fast.

@gcunit Trust me, I was laughing, too. Maniacally when I was finally done.

@NEStalgia I feel like by 40-50 you can basically stop the rhythm and just keep tapping the jump button. Not faster but with it going so fast, you can‘t just watch for the dust or that damned woman shouting Hey so you better just concentrate on the tapping - and don‘t look at the counter. Had one try early on where I got to 98, looked at the counter, choked up and failed two jumps away. Was screaming and crying in pain, no jokes.

I'm finding the final kingdom quite frustrating but apart from that I haven't found things too difficult. Perhaps challenging in a fun way but not annoying.

Getting under 26 seconds on that circuit was really frustrating though! It felt like I had achieved something afterwards so that's good I guess?

Purple coins are another thing entirely, I don't see myself collecting all of them any time soon....

@NEStalgia Picture match isn't too bad if you screenshot the image before it's scrambled and then refer back to it religiously while constructing Mario's face. Weird thing is that I've gotten higher scores for matches that I thought looked worse.

Re: Breakdown Road (the dark side level with the giant bullet bill and tiny platforms), I went back to it and completed it to see what I was doing to get it. So the way I beat it was to get in a rhythm across the platforms: long jump --> jump --> long jump --> jump, etc. When you first land after a long jump, you get a speed boost that allows you jump across normally to the next platform. The hardest part was making sure I jumped exactly at the end of a platform so I got enough air time and didn't smack into the side.

I did this just a minute ago... very imperfectly, but it got the job done.

And yeah, I have no idea how people stumble across glitches with insanely specific activation conditions. Like, who does that combination of things in the course of normal gameplay?

@gcunit Can't say I'm a fan of the minigame, but if you throw down the gauntlet like that, I can't very well NOT play ball, you know? (ignore the mixed metaphors)

It sounds like it's a lot easier for you than it is for me, though, so I won't be surprised if you beat me again!

@GoldenGamer88 That.....isn't even a little encouraging....

@Kimyonaakuma Those hatless trials in the kingdom before the last kingdom are sheer torment. Worse than the actual last kingdom, IMO. Much, much worse, though I haven't yet completed either, I feel like the last kingdom I CAN complete. The other things....just...no.

@ralizah Picture match isn't bad, or doesn't feel bad, but the scoring tells me its bad. My pictures don't look too bad to me, but I get like 64 points which makes no sense. I'm screenshotting but I don't need it, I have the right parts in the right places, but it's about PRECISELY lining them up. Are you talking about the first round through them or the second where they must be exact? First time was easy....second time...no.

Ahh, smacking into the side has been one of my biggest problems. Not sure I can get that pattern, BUT I was long-jumping on each one...maybe that will help.

Yeah, I've never understood the glitch location....I realize people are trying to find them....but who would try that combination to even find a glitch intentionally?

@Ralizah First attempt after the kids went to bed:

Yeh, turns out it is easy, isn't it

I lost focus around 230 and my timing went, but I managed to get it back under control just for you

@gcunit

@Ralizah Is that you, with the Bullet bill level, challenging yourself?