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S2 Ep124: Mario Odyssey
75 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they play as Mario Jumpman Mario and shoot for the moon in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Autumn Vibes
00:00:36
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's going really good. We are a hard fall vibing. Hard fall vibing? I'm not sure what that means.
00:00:52
Speaker
It is an extreme, a more extreme level of just fall vibing. Ah, okay. The season. Yeah. I got some pumpkin spice wall plugins. I got some apple cider donuts today and some apple cider.
Scent Preferences and Habits
00:01:09
Speaker
And now I'm just borderline comatose. I have had like, I do want to ask about the apple spice plugins. Cause I thought you were going to go like in the direction of coffee or something. Is it just a strong autumnal scent? Was that basically what they are? Just like a. Well, it's like dispensaries. Yeah. It's one of the ones that you plug it in and it diffuses slowly over the course of like 30 days.
00:01:37
Speaker
So initially you smell it more so in the first day and then you become pretty accustomed unless you run errands and come back home and you're like, ah, someone's smoking pumpkin spice. No, that is pretty great though. I've never used this.
00:01:54
Speaker
I'll be honest, somebody many years ago had them. I'm like, that smells nice. And I've adopted it ever since and I've never given them credit, but I don't really talk to them anymore. So if you're listening to the podcast, thank you. You know who you are.
00:02:14
Speaker
Yeah, we collect a lot of candles because they smell good, but they don't have a constant large aura of scent like a wall plug-in or something like that. And we also just don't let them burn all the time because that would be a good idea.
00:02:33
Speaker
Because I have to light it and then keep an eye on it. And then if I wanted to think it's to smell nice overnight, it's weird to have flickering light throughout the apartment. Right, yeah. Is this distracting?
00:02:48
Speaker
And if it gets too bright, then you just get suspicious. It's less it doesn't smell so much of autumn sense anymore and a little bit more of fire and flames and smoke. That's when you get suspicious. Yeah, I got to say fucking incense has always smelled terrible to me. Oh, yeah. It's like the most intense smelling thing. It's like somebody's
00:03:18
Speaker
You know when you like walk by Bed Bath and Beyond? It's like three times that but in a stick and I hate it. It's too many things go on at once. Maybe I just have like, maybe I'm just too sensitive.
00:03:32
Speaker
Right. But I hate that. No, I think that's fair. We actually have a like a three headed dragon incense burner with like incense triangles. You can like light them and put them in the base and then the smoke comes out of the dragon's mouth. Oh, nice. Which is kind of cool. It is a very strong scent, though, like like you mentioned. I find like a nice
00:03:57
Speaker
citrus diffuser oil diffuser or something like that is much more pleasant if not significantly less dramatic than the dragon breathing smoke you know but
00:04:09
Speaker
This is why when I have guests over, I just have orange peel. I just kind of squeeze it randomly at them. We just end the conversation.
Mario Odyssey: First Impressions
00:04:20
Speaker
It's usually like after I've done a poo, I'll just grab the orange peels as your shirt and go and go and ham. That's I think that's the only reasonable thing to do in that situation.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of going ham though, the game we're talking about today, you could possess a Goomba, which is like a ham, I assume. Similar meat structure. They look like they could be ham. That's the transition. You got nothing from ham. Talk about Mario Odyssey, which is, this is coming from Dave.
00:05:00
Speaker
Uh, both in the suggestion and literally I played Dave's copy. So thank you, Dave. Well, this is something I even jumped on the train for very late. Uh, cause I'm not somebody who will grab things at launch. Typically. It was like, I've heard good things, but Mario Odyssey, I'd never played it. I got some.
00:05:20
Speaker
weird working on the weekend bonus money from a job. Let me just, instead of putting it into savings or anything, let me just burn that immediately. So I picked up Mario Odyssey. And then I played through it. I'm like, hey, Jake, we should do an episode on this. And you're like, OK. And then I drove it over to your house. Yes, you did. And then many months passed, and now we have arrived. And I've finally completed the main story, at least, and ready to talk about it.
00:05:49
Speaker
So yeah, this is the latest Mario platformer.
Gameplay Mechanics and Innovations
00:05:55
Speaker
I gotta say, it's really good. Because more recently, like the past week or so, I've been doing a little bit of the Mario All-Stars three-pack. So I'm starting with 64. Right. And holy shit, it is wildly different. Because 64 is a piece of shit. In comparison to- I'm gonna highly contest that, but yeah. In comparison to Mario Odyssey.
00:06:21
Speaker
I mean, it's also like a decade in difference of development or more. Oh, more than a decade. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it would have been 20 years. It was 94, I'm pretty sure.
00:06:36
Speaker
26 years. As of the time of this recording and 64 came out and I was going to ask, but first I'll answer. I haven't played many Mario games. I've only played Mario 64, maybe a little bit of handheld stuff, but I don't think I completed any of those and Paper Mario and now Mario Odyssey. So there's a massive jump between the two, but I see a whole lot of
00:07:06
Speaker
like essential or like very similar Mario features in Odyssey compared to um compared to 64 but you've played 64 more recently um what is your experience with the Mario franchise? Some of 64 growing up when I'd visit my cousin
00:07:26
Speaker
playing within the last week, and then Mario Odyssey. Yeah, okay, so similarly. Yeah, I didn't really grow up playing a whole lot. I didn't usually get Mario games. So I initially got the GameCube as my first console for the sake of Sonic Adventure Battle 2. So I was very much in the Sonic camp. You didn't get Sunshine for the cube of games.
00:07:51
Speaker
See, by that time, because I did want to play it, I think my parents had a rule of only allowed to have one console. So I didn't just amass electronics. Right. Well, I sold off my GameCube and got a PlayStation. Gotcha. Or I forget what the order was. But transitioned off. But I did play a little bit of that again at my cousin's house.
00:08:16
Speaker
enough to mutilate a squid and feel remorse. There's something ethically wrong with ethics.
00:08:24
Speaker
We'll say it here as a preface, but Mario has a troubled, tortured relationship with ethics through the course of his game, so we'll get there. Can't be worse than Kirby, though. Kirby's is pretty messed up, but at least Kirby usually kills the things that it eats. Unless you're playing Smash, in which case that doesn't happen at all.
00:08:49
Speaker
I'll kill you, but not by eating you usually. Sometimes. But yeah, Mario coming coming into Mario Odyssey, it is a for those unfamiliar with Mario, I guess the traditional platformer inspiration and many people's eyes. This is a 3D one. So a lot of world exploration, some puzzles,
00:09:19
Speaker
A lot of platforming that, for the base game, is not, for the most part, overtly difficult, but it does ramp up in the postgame. I did look at some of those videos.
00:09:32
Speaker
But it's largely go world by world to interesting locales, which hearkens all the way back to like, you know, Super Mario 64 further back and collect items, keep the plot going and try to clear everything by the end. Right. That's the short of it. But then Odyssey has its own little twist, the morph function, if you want to talk about it at all.
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, so in this game, they just added a hat that you throw onto an enemy and you can become that enemy.
00:10:09
Speaker
And it's usually for the purposes. Well, I mean, obviously shits and giggles. It's really fun. Yeah. But for like everything else, each enemy or just creature will have a certain interaction for how it moves around or something that it can do functionally. So use that to solve puzzles. Maybe you're grabbing the gliding lizard to be able to fly somewhere. Maybe you're grabbing the statue with sunglasses so you can see invisible
00:10:38
Speaker
objects. Yeah. Maybe you're stacking goombas because you need to get to a certain height to see a lady goomba. So she thinks, wow, what a tall, handsome man. And then you'll get a moon that way. Oh, that's how that works. OK, I never figured that out. OK, she always just left. And I was just like, all right, bye. I think I either did that accidentally or I had to look that up.
00:11:06
Speaker
Interesting. I do think the stacking Goombas is some of the uses are fairly hilarious. And this is one of them because you just start as whatever you possess gets the Mario hat and a mustache usually. You're not confused with the other Goombas nearby. Right. Additionally, it allows the other opponents, the enemies to determine that you are
00:11:29
Speaker
the subversive Mario body snatcher, and they should focus their ire on you still. So it helps identify combatants in this case.
00:11:44
Speaker
But you can just jump on top of Goombas and they'll continue to stack. And it's kind of like, you know, like those robots that have wheels that'll turn and turn other wheels. That's basically how the Goomba kind of works. The left and right legs control the bottom most Goomba and this pillar. I understood the last bit. I got confused in the middle.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, the robot part's a little bit weird. I guess you could think of it as just gears or something on a clock. I don't know if they share a central nervous system for Goomba Stack, or if they're all stepping on each other's heads and propagating downward. I imagine the one at the bottom is doing all the work, and the rest are just kind of there for balance. So the question is, how does Mario with the top motivate the one on the bottom then? I have no idea. I have no idea.
00:12:39
Speaker
I'm really questioning my beliefs here. Anyways, you can walk around and then anytime you jump, the whole stack jumps. You can just keep jumping on top of Goombas until you're like 20 Goombas high or whatever. Yeah, it's they do a really good job of just making it fun for the sake of it being fun.
00:13:00
Speaker
Like if you take over a Koopa that can throw hammers, you just jump around chucking hammers, but then they'll make puzzles around that mechanic specifically. Yeah. So you feel rewarded for when you do it and you're not just wasting time trying out a new morph. Yeah.
00:13:17
Speaker
And they do a really good job of,
Design Philosophy and Collectibles
00:13:19
Speaker
hey, here's a given area. You're going to have these different types of enemies. Maybe you'll grab a chain chomp, and you have to pull back and then let go. And then the sheer release force of the ball slamming into something will break something. Right, a new pathway.
00:13:37
Speaker
Maybe it's being a fucking T-Rex and just destroying things because you're a fucking T-Rex. It's all fun, but then they utilize that fun component so that you're actually solving the game. Everything is built around those mechanics for that level, which I don't think there's anyone. I'm like, I have to be this fucking guy. It sucks.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yeah, some of them are definitely a little more fun or inspired than others, but they all well, yeah, none of them. You can tap out whenever you want. You can jump out as Mario. So if you're not enjoying a particular morph, you can use it just for the puzzle and then swap back. But some of them are cool enough that I found myself going a little out of the way.
00:14:23
Speaker
to grab them such as the the squids and it was just cheat here and look at the name of the kingdom seaside kingdom which had sometimes you have the controls are fairly simple
00:14:39
Speaker
And there's only so many buttons you really have to worry about. And then there's some motion controls on top. But some morphs only have one main function and others will have like two. And this one had, you can like zoom in a direction by expelling water, like really fast. And then another button that let you launch up in the air, like on a pillar of water. And you can hold both.
00:15:05
Speaker
and just book it unlike semi-flight across the ocean at the expense of a sphere of water that this squid kind of like suspends or it's like an octopus more I guess yeah and once that runs out then it just drops onto whatever surface and you just flail about until you can get the water and make another sphere
00:15:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely a resource. But I mean, as soon as you drop back in the water, you get it again. But it's like enough to solve any given puzzles. But it's not so much that you can infinitely fly around and try and break map barriers. Yeah, literally, like no clip through this. One of the things I liked about that is because it is
00:15:49
Speaker
I think they realized, cause Nintendo does a stupid amount of development time, right? Like to publish, like to revise their products over and over and over again for their first party. And then if at any point they're just like, we don't think this is going to be fun, they'll just drop it. Like regardless of how much time was spent on it. So some of these things cook for a long time. And I can tell,
00:16:16
Speaker
There's there's other morphs available there. I can't remember any of them, really. But this one was so fun and like agile and cool that they're like for the boss. This is what you're going to be using. Like you're going to beat the boss with this more if you won't be able to get to it as Mario, because it's kind of hovering above the water. And I had fun with that boss. It was awesome. It felt like kind of. I only played Mario Sunshine, like at Walmart and the little demo to the demo display thing.
00:16:46
Speaker
But it felt like a Mario Sunshine moment, kind of like spraying water all over the place and stuff. I enjoyed it.
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah, they do a really good job of it. Also, how did you feel about the actual hat controls? Because there's obviously standard Mario movement and mechanics. If you remember harkening back to the days of 64, you have your triple jump, you have your back flip, you have your jump, and then you kick for a little bit of extra height. But then on top of that, you can throw your hat, jump on top of it for an extra jump.
00:17:22
Speaker
And kind of like stall mid-air. You can also chain that with jumping and taking things over. Yeah. There's a lot of movement tech in the game. A lot of ways you can combine things. I enjoyed those. I probably underutilized a couple options just because... And I might be judged for this.
00:17:45
Speaker
So I'm going to ask first, did you play with Joy-Cons or the Pro Controller? Pro Controller. OK, I also played with Pro Controller. Good. The game judged me every time I turned it on, being like, try out Joy-Cons, because we made the game to be used this way. I was like, screw that. I tried that. And the inputs were less precise than the Pro Controller. So the platforming feels better as Mario.
00:18:08
Speaker
with the pro controller. I don't like the idea of separate hand controls. It feels disjointed to me. I guess I don't have enough experience with it to be like, oh, it's intuitive and it makes sense. It's just, give me the thing that's like a controller. We'll work with that. Cool. Also, I'm not sure where the split is for motion tie-in, if that's just for Joy-Cons.
00:18:32
Speaker
You can shake the pro controller and the gyroscope will do whatever the shake motion for Joy-Cons would do. So if you're climbing, you can climb faster by shaking the Joy-Con. A similar thing with the pro controller, you can just jiggle it up and down. I probably did a little bit of jiggling for a speed trial here and there.
00:18:53
Speaker
There was a couple mechanics where they wanted you to use movement controls to accelerate something. Some of the enemies only had attacks. They would have other buttons and things, but their attack would be bound to shaking the controller.
00:19:09
Speaker
climbing. We mentioned, I think, electricity. Anytime you're morphed into a power line, you can go faster if you shake the controller. Can you? Yeah. I literally never tried that. I'm just like, I'm here for the ride. Oh, and the hat. If you throw the hat out, it can be your range projectile to do damage to things unless you're taking them over, possessing them.
00:19:37
Speaker
But if you throw the hat and like shake the controller it'll do like a round Mario large spin That kind of like has some auto targeting for enemies
00:19:50
Speaker
Which is cool, I like that, I didn't use it that much. I would always initially try and do that, then I'd throw the hat out, it would come back, and then I would start spinning in place, and then the second time I did it, it would do what I wanted it to do. I'm not sure if it was an issue with just my input or it was meant for Joy-Cons and not the Pro Controller. It was definitely meant for Joy-Cons, because that part was actually easier to do with Joy-Cons, but like I said, the Mario platforming part,
00:20:19
Speaker
was significantly better for me with the pro controller. I actually googled this like when I started playing it because it's like, oh, it's recommending Joy-Cons for me. What do people say on the internet I should use? And someone was like, just use the Joy-Cons. It'll be great. I'm like, all right, I'll try it. But that person is in jail now. Yeah, I think they might be. Liars jail. And it works. It works fine. It's probably the best
00:20:49
Speaker
game I could see that I have played with the Joy-Cons. But again, for precision platforming, left stick move body, right stick move camera. That's just really nice to have on the Pro Controller.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah, I've always liked that setup for dual analog. Also this game has a metric fuck ton of collectibles, which we know of as moons in this game. Power moons. So some of it you can get through like main story and a lot of other things are just optional, but they have so many jam packed in per level. What was it like 50 per level?
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's busy per level. And you might like visibly see six, but then they'll have other ones just kind of tucked away in like small things like, oh, you can buy one at a shop. Yeah. Oh, if you get a cowboy hat and the dog is also wearing a cowboy hat, the dog will take you to a moon. Did you try that in post arena? I didn't know that one. No, I missed that. I found that one accidentally because I would just, I put on the cowboy outfit and then the dog had a cowboy hat. I'm like, hey, look at us.
00:21:53
Speaker
And it barked and then ran off and I chased it and it dug up a fucking moon. That's great. Or sometimes they have like these little puzzles or quizzes with a sphinx. Which are always ridiculously simple and then the sphinx is like I should have asked a harder question. Did you get it wrong? Try again for no penalty. That is like
00:22:17
Speaker
As an aside, the try again with no penalty is kind of the philosophy of this one, even more so than Super Mario 64. There's a couple areas where dying or falling off the map or something would cost you a bit of progress, but for the most part there's checkpoints all over the place.
00:22:37
Speaker
You only lose a few coins when you die instead of lives. Yeah. It used to be in the older ones like Super Mario. If you lost all your lives, it kicks you out of the world. You literally have to start from the beginning of that painting. In 64, anytime you die, you can kick out of the level entirely. And if you lose all of your lives, you have to restart the game or go from like a save state. Okay.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's even more. Which I think is just like kicked out of the castle then. Yeah. Or you might have to reload. I forget. But yeah, it's not crazy penalizing for things. It always felt good to try things out and then get it correct and be rewarded for it. And if you fuck up, you try again. Like there were some boss fights where I definitely died.
00:23:28
Speaker
Cause, uh, I goofed on some inputs or like the toaster rain a boss, like the, the head, the giant head with the two hands. I slipped on some ice once or twice. Right. It wasn't nice. Um, and then I died thrice. Um, right. I'll stop. But that last step was completely unrelated. Up to and not more than two ice.
00:23:58
Speaker
But you died three times. The story is not checking out. That's what going on here. But like then you just you go back in. That's it. Yeah. And then you get it correct and you move on. And the the game is really.
00:24:15
Speaker
It's somewhat forgiving as far as health is concerned.
Favorite Areas and Level Design
00:24:20
Speaker
If you are possessing a creature, I kind of expected that the creature would die if it took damage, but Mario still takes damage, so you share Mario's health pool.
00:24:31
Speaker
But a lot of areas will have a shop. Most areas actually have a shop where you can, like you mentioned, pick up the moon and then a health upgrade, which will increase your max health only on that world, which the game doesn't really convey to you that well. Is it overall max? Or is it like a temp health? It does increase your max for that world, is my understanding. OK. Because I did drop back down.
00:24:58
Speaker
And then later I picked up some hearts and brought me back up to six. So if you're having trouble with a boss clear, that would be helpful. Yeah. And a lot of times you're pretty much guaranteed to hit the shop well before you would get to the well before you would get to the boss. And so some of the early levels actually have the shop really close to the start of the map.
00:25:28
Speaker
where you can like cash in some of those coins and get the health upgrade for the entire entire level. Basically, it's kind of a subtle balancing where they put the shop in different locations in Bowser's kingdom near the end of the game. The shop is like right before the final encounter. But some of the earlier levels, they put the shop literally near where the Odyssey excuse me, where the Odyssey touches down.
00:25:53
Speaker
The Odyssey being a giant hat because design team, I guess. Well, it's the ship from the hat world. I just like how they're kingdoms and not worlds.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah. And they're also kind of like on a globe, which is the weird part to me. Like that's, that's, that's kind of a non sequitur. It doesn't really make any sense. I liked the binding of paintings a little bit more and super mario 64 rather than these are all just very, very geographically different locations on the same world, which makes less sense.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah, it just falls under the Nintendo fun, the creative diversity space of we need a nice level, we need a fire level, some common staples of different biomes, if you will.
00:26:49
Speaker
Did you have a favorite area before? This is before I ask favorite morph. Right. And if you disagree with me, I will pause this recording, drive over to your house and give you a smack. So I have I have some candidates for some different reasons. Metro Kingdom is probably my top contender because what's weird is it's the most mundane in a way. It's literally just like
00:27:18
Speaker
a city basically like New York or something, taxi cabs, just humans, which is a little bit weird in a Mario game. But that
00:27:28
Speaker
Uh, the fact that they pulled it off and they made it feel like it could fit in a Mario universe is kind of what was really cool to me. Um, and the, um, the final, there's usually a story for each kingdom. You like run here, get this heart, run here, do this, whatever ends up with a boss fight. And then.
00:27:48
Speaker
The main stuff is complete. You can keep getting moons if you want and then leave. And the conclusion for Metro Kingdom was freaking awesome. This whole retro side scroller, Paulina is singing in the background. The whole thing is great.
00:28:09
Speaker
And I love that. Yeah, they do a good job of blending in like some classic Mario. So I think in most levels, you actually might have a go into a pipe and you're now 2D Mario. And it's just classic. Hey, do you remember playing Super Nintendo? Of course you do. Or if you don't, it's really easy to pick up. You go left to right and you jump. There you go. Yeah. Mario Jump Man Mario. It's like a nice little tie-in.
00:28:35
Speaker
Like they have so many small asides for, hey, here's like a platforming puzzle. Hey, here's a 2D section. There's so much variety. So nothing ever feels like, oh, I'm doing the exact same thing over and over and over again. No, there's like 50 different small things. So it always feels like fresh gameplay. Or sometimes they had like 2D worlds where you're 2D as long as you're tied with this certain color background.
00:29:06
Speaker
If you go off of that color background, you get popped out and you're now 3d again. Yeah. I think Kirby has done something sort of similar with like Kirby Epic yarn, um, where they, they have that transition. It's always really cool when you jump out the top of the 2d sections and Odyssey. Um, cause there's no like roof on a section and then you just go back to 3d Mario cause he jumped off the 2d plane. That's really cool. I like that.
00:29:32
Speaker
That feels good. Do you have a favorite kingdom? I'm looking at the list here and justify your answer, please.
00:29:51
Speaker
I actually liked just because it was a very focused area. There's like a race course with a racing minigame, which is kind of like Mario Kart-esque, except with way more bouncing, which I found hilarious.
Bowser's Role and Boss Fights
00:30:06
Speaker
Um, and then the main area just had like, it's one open space with a bunch of, a bunch of moons. And I'm like, I'm going to farm here. So a lot of moons for the, uh, ahead on the next area. Thematically, I hate to say it, but I actually really did like Bonneton.
00:30:26
Speaker
Okay, not a bit of the nightmare before Christmas vibe. It's very night time. Yeah. Yeah. Very nighttime feeling. The moon's out. There's always like this hazy mist. And you're on these different hat platforms. You have spooky hills and stuff. I don't know. I just thematically, I really liked it.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah, it was a really good opener too. It set the theme for like basically the plot of the game is Bowser is trying to marry Peach and he's getting stuff ready for the wedding. There you go. So each area has like something very specific like these flowers or this wedding cake or... Yeah. S2. You know, for the reception.
00:31:15
Speaker
And so he's basically ruining all these kingdoms by taking their national treasure, much like Nicolas Cage, and just getting it all together for his wedding.
00:31:26
Speaker
And the Cap Kingdom introduces you. So this is literally the first area of the game. Mario's been anti-aircraft gunned, and the Cap follows him down. And it's kind of like ruined. It's clearly been besieged. Bowser's messed the place up. So it helps. Nintendo does this a lot, but they do
00:31:52
Speaker
um non-narrative storytelling they're just like okay balzer's the bad guy not just to mario which is always the case because of the love triangle i guess i don't know
00:32:04
Speaker
but also Bowser's bad guy to the rest of the world. I mean, you've seen Peach. I don't know. Is that a convincing enough sentence? I have seen Peach. Yeah, he's just the bad guy for bad guy's sake. I don't know if he's thick in this game. Yeah, he is large.
00:32:27
Speaker
I like how he's become better over time. Like he looks like an actual character versus again, playing 64, a polygonal mess. Yeah. But they still keep a lot of the same theming for him, which is nice. And then when you have like the interactions with him,
00:32:50
Speaker
It wasn't like a crazy difficult boss fight. None of them really are. No. It's like the simple like, hey, here's your mechanic. Do it three times correctly, and you win. Yes. But they're fun. With Bowser, he throws out his, he's in like a wedding tux, a white hat. And he kind of like throws it out. So you take over the hat. You wear the giant hat.
00:33:18
Speaker
But the hat also has boxing gloves because Bowser's a dirty cheat. So you walk up with these gloves and you just punch the shit out of him and his own head. There was a there was a mechanic related to that that I thought was of note because much like Mario 64, where you fight Bowser multiple times, you fight Bowser multiple times here, I think twice in both games.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, one's in the Cloud Kingdom, which is like a brief interim. And then I think at the end. Yeah. And Moon Kingdom. Moon Kingdom, yeah. But they do a little mix up where the mechanics are slightly tougher. But if you remember the previous fight, then you have a head start on learning them. But he does this thing where after you've been punching him, he'll do a tail swipe. And the first time it might hit you, I think that happens in the Cloud Kingdom.
00:34:14
Speaker
And then on the Moon Kingdom, he's like, oh no, double tail swipe. And then for the final hit, triple tail swipe. And you can kind of anticipate the triple, but the double might throw you off. And it's one of the very few points in the game where they're actually like, we kind of expect most people will get hit by this, but as soon as you get hit by it, you'll know exactly what to do.
00:34:40
Speaker
for the retry and it's, it just reads really, really easily. Like basically what I'm trying to convey is compared to other boss fights where sometimes you might die, but you're not really sure exactly what you should do to fix. And this one is just like, Oh, at this specific point in the fight, he'll do two tail swipes. I'll jump over two and I'll keep punching him, which makes it really easy to learn and progress.
Innovative Puzzles and Favorite Morphs
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah, this goes back to like, you're never really held back that much. You're always kind of showing this is where you go, this is what you do. It's not hand holding, I wouldn't say. It's just very direct for this is what you need to do. Yes, it's intuitive. Yeah. Like when you get certain morphs, you're like, Oh, I now know this opens this range of possibilities. Yeah.
00:35:38
Speaker
There was one particular morph I wanted to mention, because it made me feel, it lets you feel witty for this. There's a magma orb morph that can swim through liquids. And if ever you land on land, then it dies. And you go back to being Mario, because Mario's a murderer. And there is a section where there's a contiguous piece of land, and you needed to,
00:36:08
Speaker
get while in more form to the other side of it and there's these tomato enemies that you can hit once and they just like ooze out into a puddle but the puddle stays there
00:36:24
Speaker
And the solution is to get those tomatoes in some configuration of these... You kill them in such a configuration, you make these puddles on the ground, and you can jump into the puddles as the ooze. And when I figured that out, I was just like, take that, Mr. Nintendo, freakin' solved your game. And he's like, yeah, we made the game this way. But it gives you that sense of pride and accomplishment that EA doesn't give me anymore.
00:36:51
Speaker
No, it's definitely nice to have the option. It's not like laid out of like, it needs to be here. It's, you can make your own path in that, for that specific example, for like whatever you feel is comfortable for like a jump distance.
00:37:07
Speaker
And like, I think the main reason you figure it out is you kill one of the tomato enemies and then you see like this pool of red. It's essentially still magma, but you walk over and it damages you and you're like, Oh, Oh yeah. So anytime you get to like put those pieces together and then utilize that morph, it feels really cool. One of my favorite morphs and should be your favorite morph is motherfucking pokyo.
00:37:33
Speaker
I love it. So it's like this very small bird. I don't know if it's been other games, but this is in the Japanese Bowser Kingdom level. What is that called? It's Bowser Kingdom. Bowser Castle. Yeah.
00:37:50
Speaker
But the action on it is it just sticks out its nose really quick. It just stabs out. So it feels really cool to kill enemies with it. But all of it sticks its nose into a certain type of surface, you're kind of stuck in there like a dart. You can move the right stick to fling yourself in a direction and then stab back in the wall.