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The game is so expansive in its scope that it’s hard to know what to write. With Breath of the Wild, and then also Tears of the Kingdom, the game felt huge because of the size of the world, the enormity of the task, and the freedom you had to approach it how you wanted. Breath of the Wild actually prevented me from posting on here for a bit. Odyssey is different – the worlds are smaller and disconnected, the tasks are short and targeted. It feels ideal for a handheld game in many respects, where you can turn it on, explore for a bit and find a couple of moons, and then put your Switch back in the bag as your train arrives at Charing Cross. Yet it also works as a large open world, where everywhere in sight has something that makes you think there’s something new to do, and very often there is.

I’ve been to the city, and formed a band – the 2D sections here were fantastic. I’ve been to a pink kingdom where they make stew. I’ve been back to revisit worlds I passed by quickly before, looking for new moons. There are a few staples in each world – the note paths, the tower of goombas – but even these have idiosyncrasies to vary the game. There are so many ideas packed into every area that I cannot even choose what to highlight.

I have around 350 moons now, and have opened Bowser’s Kingdom. I can’t quite bring myself to go there, though, because it feels too final – I don’t want the game to end, and even though I know I’ll be able to carry on moon hunting afterwards, the fact that some of my lists are barely half full makes me want to skulk around the existing levels just a bit more.

I am not good at Smash Bros. I can beat many people, but that is because they are less good, not because I am in any way competent. At Edward’s birthday party some of his friends were asking to play Smash Bros, and we put on a seven-player game, with everyone else on one team and me on the other. I lost, but only just.

It was more balanced when I had a couple of people on my team who had played Smash once before, all up to the point where a giant (ninten)dog jumped up to the screen just as I was starting to fall off the side – and so I couldn’t see where to boost to. Stupid dog.

I got Mario Odyssey shortly after it launched – there was some special deal at The Game Collection, I seem to recall – and I played it for a bit. However, at the time I was still deep into Breath of the Wild, and the more expansive and cohesive nature of Odyssey (compared to the more discrete levels of Mario 64, or Mario Galaxy, say) meant that it felt just a little too similar to a large story game for me to keep going at it. Of course, by the time I finished Breath of the Wild – many months later – Odyssey was buried deep at the bottom of the backlog pile. I’ve taken it to various places in the Switch case, but have never been tempted to put the cartridge back in.

Until yesterday, when I was travelling up to London, and realised that the Donkey Kong Bananza cartridge had helpfully been taken out of my Switch 2, replaced with Pokémon Sword. Edward seems to have multiple Pokémon games on the go at any one time, including multiple instances of the same game across different Switch consoles; he makes use of the fact that Pokémon is one of the few games that doesn’t work over the cloud synchronisation service on NSO, and plays on his Switch Lite, my old Switch, and my Switch 2.

Anyway, this is a very longwinded introduction to say that I was planning on playing a platformer, but I didn’t have the game I planned to play, so played Odyssey instead.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. I appeared in the desert, outside the Mexican-inspired village, and tried to work out what I should be doing; luckily the words “The Hole in the Desert” had been shown as the level loaded, and a big light shown from a hole under a large inverted pyramid. Did I make that thing float? I can’t remember.

Anyway, after a lot of faffing around with bit and pieces in the level, including finding another moon in a crate which I had to steer a Bullet Bill to hit, as well as experimenting with the controls, I jumped down the hole and traversed the icy platforms underneath, until I reached a boss battle. It didn’t take me too long to work out what to do. The boss comprised a giant floating head and two floating hands, which attacked by trying to hit me, or clap with me in the middle. When one punched the floor, after jumping out the way, I threw my cap at it and possessed it, which then meant I could steer it around and punch the boss in his face with his own hand.

“Stop hitting yourself!”

Overall I added a few more moons to my total, taking me over the number I need to travel to the next area – and I also found a wibbly painting which allowed me to teleport to the metro area early (but only to a very small platform, with no way of getting anywhere else. The temptation is to stay, to find more moons that may be hidden away, but if I do that I know I’ll never progress. Next time I play – hopefully with less than an eight-year gap – I’ll move on.