Super Paper Mario

System: Wii
Release Date: 2007
Published By: Nintendo
Reviewed by: Darien
Rating:

Unlike the rest of the Paper Mario games, Super Paper Mario is not an RPG. It has some elements of raising levels and such, but it's definitely a side-scrolling platformer. The main trouble with the game is that it seems to be attempting to replace actual variety in level design with added weirdness - in fact, it's also attempting to replace the style and humour of the previous Paper Mario games with extra weirdness. This becomes an issue because the weirdness is not terribly compelling.

As I implied above, the dialogue in this game is distinctly less funny than in the previous games, and has to resort to fart jokes and funny speech patterns to get laughs. The visual design also lacks the endearing pop-up-book motif, instead opting for a style that looks like, ah, well, like somebody just drew some shit on the screen at random. The game is also very easy; the series has never been noted for its challenge, but this one's easy even by those standards. So what does this all add up to? A game that seems like it's pitched to a young audience. The only problem with this theory is the subject matter - as odd as it seems to me to type this, this is rather a dark and serious, umm, Mario game. Yeah, I know. But the fact remains that this game is very serious and moody, and deals with subjects such as death and free will that seem to have no place in a Mario game.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward and not very Wii-ish, as Mario runs to the right and stomps on mobs on his way to the goal. He's given several special powers, such as the ability to flip around sideways and change the game from 2D to 3D. It's an interesting idea, but in practice it's a bit of a pain in the ass and isn't really used for any especially interesting purpose. Boss battles are basically the same as other fights, but there's probably some weird trick you have to figure out before you can get into position to hit the boss.

Loot isn't a lot of fun in this game. There are no badges to equip this time around; instead, there are "cards" with pictures of characters from the series on them. If the card is of a mob in the game, you now do more damage to that mob, trivialising things even more. If it's not, it does nothing whatsoever. A whole large quantity of the game's rarest loot is actually character cards and serves no real purpose, which is a bit annoying. On top of that, the tasks required to obtain the rare treasures (and, actually, some tasks required simply to progress the game) have all their challenge replaced with absurd amounts of repetition. I suspect I'm speaking for the majority when I say that challenging tasks are preferably to simple tasks repeated for large amounts of time.

I probably sound like I'm really down on this game, but it's not altogether bad. It's just disappointing. If you pick it up, you'll probably have some fun with it, but I don't imagine you'll be too sorry when it's over.

Buy this game from Amazon.com!