E3 2017: Exploring New Donk City In ‘Super Mario Odyssey’!
Earlier this week marked the first public playable appearance of Super Mario Odyssey, and boy, did the 7th layer of hell open.
If you weren’t there by 6 AM waiting for the West Hall doors to open, chances are you weren’t going to be able to play the game that day or at all! Luckily, I braved the morning craziness and can successfully report back on what I played and what I though about it. So pick up a chair and listen to the magic that is the Super Mario Odyssey E3 2017 demo.
The demo contains the choice of two worlds that you can choose: The Metro Kingdom also known as New Donk City, and The Sand Kingdom. I’ll be covering what happens in the New Donk City demo. The big sell of Odyssey is that the game is a return to it’s 3D open world roots ala Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine. While New Donk City may looks small in the trailers, it’s a pretty big place once you’re dropped in and playing the game itself. This opens up with Mario and Cappy on a building being instructed to meet up with Mayor Pauline (YES! That Pauline.). Now usually the objective of the demo is to meet up with Pauline and help her assemble a music band for a performance at night, but you can easily ignore it to explore the city, and here’s when things get fun.
Instead of doing the preferred mission, I decided to take advantage of my 10 minutes by aimlessly wandering around New Donk City trying to find as many secrets and other moons as I could. I gained one of them by throwing my hat onto a random civilian playing with an RC car (which was briefly shown in the trailer). The RC car did not control well, and as a result ended up being more frustrating than fun, but that’s something that can easily be fixed before the game launches. As for other secrets, I found plenty of other moons by just walking into a random alleyway and finding a small house which had a slot machine I could gamble on for coins, hearts, and moons. It was so bizarre, and yet amazing to find. I was also able to posses many other things during my demo such as a pair of binoculars, a ball of lightning, and more! All controlled well and felt great to use
In the end, Super Mario Odyssey is an amazing game with a massive amount of potential. While Zelda: Breath of the Wild may still be getting a lot of love and GOTY nominations, there’s no doubt in my mind that Mario is about to give Link a run for his Rupees this October. I personally can’t wait for more reveals about this game, but to be honest, I may just go media blackout on this game from now until release. Seeing as how much this demo has gotten me excited to play the full version, that may be all I need right now.
