I overall forgot how fun this game is. Does it innovate or provide any crazy revelations for the platforming genre? Not really no, but it succeeds in two key areas: it's fun to play and it's very well designed. Mario 3D World is essentially what I'm looking for when I'm playing a Mario game; great course design that never overstays its welcome, fun level gimmicks, fun powerups, fantastic music, and in the Switch version the movement speed is cranked up to 11. Perhaps one could argue that the original Wii U courses weren't designed well for this speed increase but that just makes it all the more fun to sequence break stages and whatnot. This game also has a ridiculous amount of content packed into it with a plethora of extra stages to play after finishing the game, and a secret final level that's actually challenging (looking at you Odyssey). I'm not willing to 100% the entire game just yet as getting top of the flagpole with every single character in every stage sounds extremely tedious and repetitious so all green stars and stamps are good enough for me I guess.

Who knew that my favorite entry in the Mario franchise would be the one where he turns into a cat