As divisive as the Paper Mario series has been, it’s undeniable that the brightly coloured and playful likes of our truly 2D plumber are welcome in all the current doom and gloom. Revealed only a couple of months ago, and promising a whole load of fun around origami, it was honestly hard not to look forward to another instalment of ‘Nintendo messing around’ in 2020.
Everybody loves Sonic. There, I said it. The series has suffered a lot in the last ten years or so, but it’s legacy is undeniable. This can be seen pretty strongly in 2014’s Freedom Planet, a game clearly inspired by the ‘Blue Blur’.
Freedom Planet has a predictable but nonetheless charming story, following Lilac, Carol and group of other anthropomorphic characters as they try to save the world from destruction from a powerful force from another world, led by Lord Brevon. Along the way, they meet various other increasingly ridiculous characters from the different warring nations that form the majority of the games setting.
Our story begins with our plucky fox protagonist being dragged into the pages of an ancient tome called the Book of Ages. This book just happens to contain the various worlds that Lucky’s family and their friends used to protect. Sadly, along with Lucky, a bunch of villainous cats (sure, why not?) called the Kitty Litter were pulled in too and in no time at all they’re wreaking havoc everywhere.
I can’t believe that I’m typing this, but how many games allow you to play as a cute singing bird that prominently has its round little butt in display during the opening cutscene? As far as my (admittedly low amount of) research has yielded, there’s only one – Joysteak Studios’ adorable title, Songbird Symphony.
This review was originally posted on Nintendo Scene on 26th October 2017.
The Nintendo Switch launched in March this year, and it has had an incredible year so far, but it’s hard to deny that it did feel like something was missing. Obviously, when Nintendo has a new console, it isn’t long until a new Mario title comes to it, and the Switch was missing it’s outing with Nintendo’s premier ex-plumber. It’s pretty much undeniable that Super Mario Odyssey impressed from it’s first showing, but then again Mario has a formula that is very hard to get wrong, no matter the format or setting but hadn’t set the world alight in a few instalments. What is needed was a new set of features that truly excited the player base again, and it looked like the latest attempt was going to be a sentient hat. This all said, how is Super Mario Odyssey?
Reu The Gamer 