this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Both Mario Odyssey and SMB Wonder are only innovative in a vacuum where Mario is the only platformer franchise. Which for a lot of people I imagine is the extent of their knowledge about platformers.
The things people call "innovative" about Mario Odyssey are just half Kirby and half Banjo-Kazooie. Yeah Odyssey's biggest maps are way bigger than Banjo-Kazooie, but SMO runs on hardware that can emulate the N64, and it still has quite a few maps on the smaller side
SMB Wonder... I don't actually know what people call "innovative" about SMB Wonder, but I've seen people call it "innovative." It's the best 2D Mario made in the 21st century and it has a pretty cool gimmick. What's innovative about this?
Don't you think people just mean that it feels like a Mario game at the same time as feeling fresh? That's certainly how I felt. It's "innovative" in the sense that there are things that you didn't expect, and that's fun and exciting. I could be wrong, but I don't think anybody means "innovative" in that it's ground-breaking in the larger gaming world or even in the platforming genre.
You're right. I think this person is just anti-Mario.
"Innovative" isn't the term I'd use to describe that, but it makes enough sense.
Said another way: the game is innovative (for a Mario game), NOT the game is innovative (for a platformer)
Does a map have to be large though? Theres value in a map being exactly as large as it needs to be to fulfill its creative vision.
I genuinely think the push for bigger maps has been a significant toxic influence on game design. Just look at Yooka-Laylee or even Banjo Tooie TBH. That's to say nothing of the modern open-world genre.
I feel the same way about photorealism. I want artistic interpretations much more than I want rote simulations.
I think Odyssey sucks but I need to give Wonder credit for at least being engaging with its zaniness even if it isn't truly "innovative". Games need more whimsy.
This was especially evident after the re-release of sunshine and Galaxy. Sunshine had smaller, tighter levels. Galaxy had more ambitious levels that put fun over eye candy. I replayed them both after beating odyssey just to make sure it wasn't rose tinted glasses.
I like all three of those games, but calling SMO "half Kirby and half Banjo-Kazooie" is incoherent to me. Bigger maps don't make your game more fun, go too big and all you've managed to do it make it more tedious to get from point A to point B. Also, kirby's power ups don't work the same way SMO's do - almost every SMO powerup changes the way you interact with the game world, whereas a kirby powerup just gives you new ways to dispatch enemies (which was already trivially easy).
SM Wonder is good but not quite at the high bar achieved by Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze or Rayman: Legends