Super Paper Mario

Any fans of the Paper Mario off-shoot will probably remember what Nintendo did right in the Gamecube installment, Thousand Year Door. Sure the story was the better part of a hit or miss and the game overall wasn’t that impressive, anyone who actually played it start to finish, as I did, will know what I mean when I say it harkened back to those of use wishing for a new Super Mario RPG. So when the newest title in the franchise was announced for the Wii, I immediately thought that it would blow the windows out of my house (in a good way.) Imagine my disappointment when I actually played the game. Those looking for improvements upon the mild successes of the past game will have to keep looking because this is a simple Mario platformer, nothing more. Which is a real shame because this had the potential to be so much more.

You have to start by giving a bit of credit to the developers on the story. This is not a game of Mario running off to save the oft-kidnapped Princess Peach. It does start out that way, but this is quickly replaced by Mario and a combination of supporting characters off to save not only his world, but every world from utter oblivion at the hands of the fantastically named Count Bleck and his evil book of dark prophecy. So Mario must go through eight unique worlds each consisting of 4 stages to get the “pure hearts” needed to save everything. So you might read that and think that maybe there is some depth at least, well no, there isn’t. But the game is kid friendly and though us old people might not find much enjoyment in it, I am sure it suits its target audience just fine. And hey, the princess isn’t in danger for the majority of the game so, good on ‘em.

So I mentioned at the top that this is a platform game. This is unfortunately the worst part of the game. Not because it is done poorly, it is a Mario game after all one of the grand daddies of all platformers, no when I say it’s the worst part I just mean it is bland. Thousand Year Door did so many things right and though they fell just short of being something fantastic, Super Paper Mario strips everything away and leaves us with just another Mario platformer. They attempt to make this title stand out with some gimmicky 3D-ish effects, but it isn’t enough to get my praise. For the interest of being thorough, I will tell you about it though.

Each world Mario goes to you gain a new ability. The first of course being what they think is their most exciting new feature. Anyone who has played a Paper Mario game knows how Nintendo likes to play with their paper theme. The last saw you turning Mario into things like paper air planes and the like, this time you can flip him outside of his 2D perspective. Mario himself, being made of paper, is still flat but you will find that a lot of the environment that makes up the worlds has hidden depth. On top of that, you gain a little traveling companion from each world which grants you additional abilities such as the butt stomp, the pick up and throw, etc. As you pick up team mates, they also have a unique ability, Princess has her umbrella float thing, Bowser breaths fire, and Luigi does, well not much. So that’s the long and short of it.

That about wraps up my experience with Super Paper Mario. It is a step backwards for people like myself looking for more in their Mario games then just the mundane and ordinary. In an attempt to give their “target audience” more of what they want (Re: Pokemon) they have driven away fans looking for something more fulfilling. And with the progress made in Thousand Year Door, this just really puts a stamp on my feelings towards it. So I can’t recommend this game to you. Unless you just love jumping on goombas to kill them like you’ve done since you were born (most likely.) For everyone else, play Thousand Year Door instead. There is a good chance that if you have a Wii, it plays Gamecube games. This one may sound good on paper, but in reality it is not. (Ha!)