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mirokulove's Super Paper Mario (Wii)
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| [January 14, 2008 05:18:51 PM]
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GAMEPLAY:
One aspect of the gameplay that I discovered in my second hour of playing is that you can actually play as Peach. This isn't new to the Paper Mario genre, but in the earlier games you controlled her for a brief amount of time during miniature in-between chapters. She also couldn't jump and had no attacks or special abilities. Her chapters consisted of mostly walking around her prison and happening upon certain helpful situations. However, in this game, she is an actual playable character. She has a jump attack and can glide across distances using her parasol, you can access her at any time from the menu and some situations can't be solved without using her.
Another thing I found amusing was that many of the characters display a 4th wall-ish knowledge of the fact they're in a game. At one point, a character was explaining how to do a special attack by pressing the 1 button, and then they commented that the mystic being who watched over everything would understand what that meant. Also many characters throughout the game comment on Mario's magnificent mustache. In fact, some characters will only help him out because of it. Some characters even comment satirically on the earlier Mario games. At one point Luigi states that he's bored and how wonderful it would be if some badguy happened to randomly kidnap Princess Peach.
DESIGN:
This game was extremely innovative because of Mario's new flip ability. He can flip between 2-D and 3-D. The 2-D environment plays out very similar to an early side-scrolling platformer. However, when you flip to 3-D you can avoid enemies, walk around obstacles, find secret paths, and read inscriptions on the other side of things. In one case, there was a giant row of spiked boulders completely blocking the path. Any way across was certain death, but if you flipped into 3-D you could simply walk by all of the boulders because they only existed on one plane. The game relies heavily on this ability and it is the way to solve almost all of the puzzles.
The level design was very clever and borrowed immensely from the earlier Mario games. There is a large number of familiar enemies such as Goombas and Koopas, but there are a fair number of new enemies as well. There are tons of secrets to be found in the 3-D mode and every level has hidden coins or enemy cards that increase your attack power. Some platforms are only accessible in 2-D or 3-D, requiring a bit of thinking to overcome some problems. The music in Super Paper Mario is also very similar to the first NES game. Many of the songs are simply revamped remixes (including the dungeon songs).
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| [January 13, 2008 05:15:59 PM]
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SUMMARY:
Super Paper Mario is the third installment of the Nintendo Paper Mario games. Like it's predecessors before it, the game starts with Peach being captured by another nefarious evil-doer and Mario has to save her using his jump attack and other various paper-related abilities. However, this time around Mario doesn't have his trusty hammer, and the only ability he has is that he can "flip" between the 2-D and 3-D dimensions.
GAMEPLAY:
The characters in Paper Mario are just as adorable and clever as in the first two games. There are familiar faces such as Luigi, Toad, Princess Peach, and Bowser; but the game also introduces something called a Pixl. Unlike in the earlier games, instead of Mario having various Yoshi or Goomba companions, he has pixellated rainbow helpers (each with a specific ability). Also, instead of being able to only use one at a time, every one you've collected stays with you and follows you in a line. While this makes it much easier to use them quickly, it lacks the feel of the original games.
The battle system is also completely different. Instead of having hammer and jump attacks that do more damage depending on the timing of a button press, Super Paper Mario plays out more like an original Mario platform game. The enemies no longer have a separate battle screen, they side-scroll across and die after a few jumps to the head. Mario doesn't have any of the special "Star" attacks he had in the other games and has also seemed to have lost his hammer, leaving him with jump as his only attack. This is very cleverly done to mimic the old NES Mario game (including a mushroom that will turn you giant every once in a while), but in doing so, it loses what made the original Paper Mario so successful: a mixture of an old school Mario platformer with an RPG battle system.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Jan 14th, 2008 at 16:44:13.
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mirokulove's Super Paper Mario (Wii)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 13 January, 2008
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