Cheat Code Central 96

Super Mario Odyssey feels like a new glove that fits like an old glove, the new high point of a decades-long evolutionary process that is so smooth, so finely-tuned, that playing it nearly feels like an extension of yourself. It creeps up on you, the scale and design of it all, in a way that often doesn’t dawn on you just how purely grand it is until you stop playing and reflect on your experience. In a year full to bursting of huge, great games, Super Mario Odyssey stands out by acknowledging what’s cool and works about games today. It trims all the fat and doubles-down on not a gameplay loop, but a gameplay flow that feels effortless the whole way through. Even when you lose, when a challenging bit sends you sailing into the Nintendo-y abyss, you just keep going. Super Mario Odyssey is here to remind us how uniquely compelling jumping and flipping around a colorful video game space is and lets us indulge as long as we can stand it.