Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey has been selling Switches since 2017, and I'm not fighting that consensus. Cappy turns every enemy into a new way to move, and going from a Goomba shuffle to a T-Rex stomp mid-level still makes me grin. New Donk City remains the best hub Nintendo has built, all verticality and hidden moons stacked into a real skyline. I've played through it twice, once solo and once with my kids sharing assist mode on the second Joy-Con, and it holds up both times. Moon hunting past 400 turns into busywork. The story was already finished by then, so I stopped chasing. This is the safest exclusive on the entire console, buy a Switch, buy this, done.

Mario Odyssey is the kind of game that reminds you why movement in a 3D platformer matters. Cappy turns every enemy and object in the world into a puzzle, and Nintendo keeps finding new uses for that idea right up to the final kingdoms. I went in expecting a polished platformer and stayed for the sheer inventiveness of it. Collecting Moons never felt like busywork because the world kept surprising me. The only reason this is not number one is that Mario Kart serves almost every type of player walking into a Switch library for the first time. Odyssey is barely a step behind.

I have played a lot of open-world games that promise discovery and deliver checklist tourism. Odyssey is not that. Each kingdom is compact, dense, and full of moments that feel genuinely handcrafted rather than procedurally distributed. You find a Power Moon by noticing something slightly odd in the background and following the instinct. That loop stays satisfying for sixty hours. The post-game doubles down on it. On Switch it runs flawlessly, looks great in both handheld and docked, and has never given me a single technical reason to complain. No caveats. For anyone picking up a Switch and wanting one game to justify the purchase, this is the one.

Ghost of Tsushima convinced me that a game world earns your investment when it feels like a place rather than a level. Odyssey does that for children in a way that is genuinely rare. New Donk City, the food kingdoms, the underwater sections, each area feels distinct and surprising in a way that keeps kids exploring rather than rushing toward the next objective. The Assist Mode catches children who are still learning 3D movement without making them feel like they are playing a different game. I would have put this first if Mario Kart were not quite so universally immediately accessible. As a pure game it might actually be better.