The only good Mario game (not counting the offshoots like glof, tennis, paper and others) was SMW so its done well to have me rank it so high. 64/Sunshine (waggle bollocks cunt) and others can get binned.

From what I've watched, his criticisms match my suspicions: that Mario controls beautifully but has little to exploit with it. I expected that the first time we saw Sand Kingdom with its few buildings.

For its many faults, Tenchu felt fresh after 64, because it iterated on some of the latter's 3D-platforming elements. Deadly Shadows in third-person, too, despite not being the best Thief, had some cool ideas of its own. I think Mario's worlds are still lagging behind his moveset.

There's a real dull semantics battle over the definition of exploits and glitches and how they fuse based on implementation. Using a chopper when the designers had based a mission around cars in Vice City; that's my flavour. Doing it that way actually took longer.

There is still flounce in you, I can feel it.

You know how you can grind up your RPG men to blast through mid-tier bosses and that sort of thing. Everything in Odyssey's tied to speedrunning, no? It's not like you're manipulating weaknesses in AI or owt, 'cause they're yer little Goombas and that again. Three hits to down bosses.

Like your man in the video says, Mario has a ton of agency in a game that falls short of using it to full effect. Unless you speedrun, which is a valid thing, then yes. I just like digging into things at a deeper — and for most people more boring — level. Fightman frames are an acquired, semi-desperate taste.

If I could manipulate a Goomba into following me into a Minecraft-style pit that I'd dug up. Shit idea, but to give an idea of what I mean about interacting with AI at an appreciable code level, instead of just watching it run its routines. Breath of the Wild's world felt almost empty for the same reason, luckily it was a pretty amazing world by itself. Hookshot, boo.

Thing is, I agree with the sentiment behind this boring as fuck, badly constructed and overwritten JPH video, even if Lambhoot did one ages ago that was far, far better f only because it never relies on bullshit like those stupid "this is the first level" and "pause the videos guess" gotchas that feel so ill-judged, as pandering and desperately rote as the very things he's criticising.

But, importantly, I still greatly enjoyed my time with Odyssey. I never felt obliged to collect every Moon, I relished having a smorgasbord of objectives to dip into, I loved the way it felt like a dialogue between player and designer, and I found the texture of the experience wonderful. It is a game for kids, but I am not going to pull a snobbish angle on that like JPH and say a critic's feelings need caveating because of thats. For a man who writes stories like "Dragon Wizard" or whatever he should be more careful about disregarding kid's media especially when it's proven more elegant and thoughtful than reams of 'mature' stuff over the years.

Bar an overbearing sense that the majority of it was a little on the easy side, none of the valid criticism really sticks in my mind, because the action of playing it was delightful, it felt good, it was fun and joyful and stopping to analyse games on such a reductive level can often be pointless: every game is reducible to the same handful of tasks with altered set dressing, Odyssey barely bothered with the artifice because it had faith in fun. I can't sit through 10 hours of most open world games these days, but Odyssey had me on board. Sometimes things are more than the sum of their parts if you just buy into the ride and experience the whole as opposed to deconstructing it to reach the same answers as you do with almost every single player game given their construction.

It's slick design, kinect immersion, a flippant sense of joy, a banquet of platitudes, and you know what? That's entirely fine.

Ultimately by watching an analysis and not playing it, in my mind you're removing yourself from discussion to an extent - you've got all the mechanics there, but not the expression or the feeling. It's an intangible thing, which is a weak defence, but Mario has it.

I'm seeing this as reading way, way too much into a videogame. It's a piece of entertainment. I'm not sure it really deserves this sort of level of dismantling but hey.

They're fair and valid criticisms handled badly because they misunderstand the premise and aim of the game. People vocalising these feelings is what gets you the games you enjoy, but pre-youtube it was largely confined to studio and classroom discussion. You can't design Souls without knowing what you don't want to be. It totally deserves analysis as a response to the insane amount of time and effort put into its creation.

You can also just enjoy. Invalidating either approach is disingenuous.

I like it but it's no Galaxy. For one It's lacking a sense of challenge. Secondly, it's too freeform - there's millions of moons all over the place and it lacks the achievement felt by getting a star even in Mario64.

Considering how child-friendly it is I do love it's change in atmosphere. It's not afraid to go a little moody - wide expanses of not very much and no music playing. It's quite startling to just hear the sound of Mario's footsteps echoing around a stage.

The minor Moons never bothered me as I appreciated they were intended as a replacement for the now-depreciated 1UP mushrooms.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make tbh.

But you could do similar for Zelda, easily. I think Bunnyhop calculated the amount of time he unable to skip the intro and the reward scenes from the shrines in Breath of the Wild (including loading) and it's a minute per shrine (on the WiiU). That's ignoring the Korok Seed jingle. It also misses the point that the scene lingers just long enough in Mario for you to hit screen grab, in case you want to share it with your friends.

There's a push and pull between No Fanfare and Some Fanfare, and you have to decide somewhere. It was probably too long in Odyssey, but I honestly don't feel it ever bothered me. Heck, I even like the little jingle.

That's a response that takes the suggestion to absurdism, it's there for all of them so you can chose which ones you want to capture, so they're level.  I think that's the main issue though, the harder ones to find are given the same level of fanfare as the easiest ones. Fucking Participation Medals right? Again, it doesn't bother me really. I spent just over an hour getting Moon Fanfares in my total play time, but to be honest most of that Fanfare time overlapped with the time I talked to Ev about what I'd just done, or me putting the pad down for a rest. It rarely felt like wasted time. Hugely less so than Zelda's loading issues.

I'd say the same for a the moons too, you don't really need all that many for the majority of your progress

It basically feels like it's been made by Rare on licence.

It’s almost like different people like different things. Madness.