Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey brought Mario back to the style of 3D sandbox platformers that last shone in Super Mario 64 and Sunshine, but pushed the concept even further thanks to the magical cap Cappy. Cappy lets Mario possess almost any character or object in the world — from a frog through a tank to Bowser himself — and each such possession brings unique mechanics and puzzle solutions. That's the heart of the game's charm: each new ability appears, the player has fun with it for a while, and it's soon swapped for another, so the pace never grows stale and the game doesn't need classic upgrade-collecting.

The story is classically simple: Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach and is preparing a forced wedding with her, while Mario and Cappy chase his airship Odyssey across a series of themed kingdoms, from the desert Sand Kingdom through the culinary Luncheon Kingdom to the photorealistic metropolis of New Donk City. The contrast between cartoonish Mario and the realistic-looking city inhabited by humans sparked heated debate when the game was revealed, but in the end it works as a refreshing visual experiment. The game emphasizes collecting Moons, of which there are dozens to hundreds in each kingdom, encouraging a free exploratory pace without the need for linear progression — the player can leave a kingdom practically at any time and return whenever they want.

Odyssey is also marked by extremely precise controls and total camera freedom, making it one of the technically most cohesive 3D platformers ever; jumps, flips, and cap throws can be chained into fluid combos, on which the entire speedrunning community has built its existence. The music, led by the central song Jump Up, Super Star!, ranks among the catchiest in the series' history, and its live-sung version was something entirely new for Mario games. Critics and players alike embraced the game as one of the peaks of the genre and as a title that, shortly after launch, showed what the Switch was capable of; after finishing the main story, an extensive postgame full of the toughest challenges awaits.