Super Mario Odyssey
Scored 9.6/10. Pure joy as a design principle. Cappy turns every enemy into a new game.
Mario throws his hat and the hat is the whole revolution: Cappy lets you capture enemies and objects and play as them, which means Odyssey is secretly about forty games in a trench coat, all of them fun.
A WORLD TOUR OF GOOD MOODS
The Odyssey airship hops kingdoms, from a dinosaur plateau to New Donk City, where Mario platforming through a jazz festival on a skyscraper is somehow not even the strangest stop. Power Moons pour out of every corner at every skill level, so the game never stops paying you for curiosity.
WHY 9.6
A slice of the moon count is filler, and veterans will see the credits hungry for the harder stuff the post game thankfully serves. The smile never leaves. That is the review. 9.6.
THE INDUSTRY NUMBER
Two scoreboards live on this page and they never mix. The score at the top is Moe's, argued above and signed. The industry's number, the collective critic aggregate, sits here for reference: Metacritic 97. Same game, two verdicts. Read both, then play it yourself.
