"Great Story + Obtuse Game play = Quite possibly the most overrated game of the year. Get it anyway."

I'll be blunt. I like this game. I like it a lot. While I might like the game, I don't like it as a game. In spite of being a modern throwback to the Mario platform games, it takes its homage to the classics in a half hearted approach and the end result is a generic platform game that should rate dead last in any ranking of the main line Mario platform games.

The game however has one saving grace that makes it wholly acceptable and worth the purchase. It contains oodles of Nintendo fan service, a wonderful sense of fourth wall breaking humor, a beautiful 2D/3D hybrid art style, and this warm fuzzy feeling provided by every game in the Paper Mario series so far.

Regardless though, the game play is stale. Very stale. Lets hit this by the numbers.

Art:

The game has a wonderful artistic sense much like Paper Mario the Thousand Year door. Most of the actual visuals are fairly rehash of the Paper Mario style. The actual paper theming isn't stressed as much in Super Paper Mario as it was in the other two Paper Mario games. Instead, there is a much more prevalent digital theme. For instance, instead of an origami folding paper bridge appearing for instance, you'll see it unfold as a pseudo-wireframe. The only things maintained from the paper theme are the drawing style and the 2D/3D clashing nature, but the execution is much different from usual. When in 2D mode, there is absolutely no sense of perspective. This game should not be confused for a so called '2.5D' game as such.

There are some areas where the art work more or less suffers a lapse. Particularly, level components look completely bland. 90% of terrain is devoid of features and composed of right angles. This becomes especially prevalent while in 3D mode. To be quite frank, the game becomes exceptionally ugly when you flip. Everything about the levels is devoid of any kind of organic feel.

Once in a while, you'll get a healthy serving of retro art, which again, qualifies mostly as fan service.

Presentation:

Presentation is the selling point of the Paper Mario series. Needless to say, presentation is why this game is rated so high. The story immediately pulls you in and compels you to enjoy a lackluster game play experience. Actually, the story isn't particularly interesting so to speak... most of it is fairly predictable. There are some amusing twists of course and some excellent foreshadowing, particularly on the part of one of my newfound favorite Mario villains of all time... Mr. L. What this game has that makes it so compelling to play though is heart warming characters and scenes that will make you hold your sides as you laugh. I'm not going to spoil any of these scenes, but suffice it to say, this game is worth purchasing for them, worth playing for them, and worth replaying for them.

The game contains, in addition to great humorous dialogues and situations, a large number of retro throwbacks. If you grab a mega-star, your current character will turn into an enormous version of himself and his/her graphic will be replaced with the SMB1 incarnation. Similar stuff happens with other items, and these items even lead to certain story interactions that are quite rich.

Game play:

Game play is where this game falls apart. It tries to take the puzzle RPG elements of Paper Mario and fuse them with the platform game style of a Mario platform game. The end result is a hodgepodge of fusion elements that don't really produce a complete game. I'll divide this segment in to two parts for emphasis.

As a platform game:

As a platform game, Super Paper Mario is trash. The action is for the most part lacking. Levels are, for the most part, broken up into platforming and puzzle solving segments. The platforming segments are almost entirely devoid of variety. The features of the platform gaming are minor. You have your standard pixels, most of whom are useful only for breaking up the action more, items which aside from the healing items are mostly pointless since you can deal out ten times the damage in less time just by having Bowser breath on them, and... thats it. Each of the characters has a unique ability or two to set them apart from one another. I'll only go over the first three so as not to spoil anything...

Mario - Can flip the world into 3D and duck
Peach - Can float and guard with her parasol.
Bowser - Has extreme girthyness (deals double damage) and can breath fire for massive damage.

Frankly, the only reason to use Mario at all is because you have to use the 3D flip so much in this game that its mind numbing. Once you get into the game, you end up finding yourself 3D flipping for pretty much no reason 3 out of 4 times just so that you can check to see the game isn't hiding something from you. The end result is annoying. It doesn't really make any sense why it is that only Mario can 3D flip either.

Anyway, back to the main point... the platform gaming for the most part isn't as terrible as it is generic. It is however made terrible by all the breaking up that comes out of the RPG game play fusion style.

Overall, the platforming is destroyed most by how the levels are segmented (lots of random hiding of stuff in platform areas) and by the lack of variety more than anything. Super Mario Brothers 3 for instance had tons of variety with unique interactive objects in almost every level and an enormous amount of variety in the actual pathing and design of the levels. Here, everything is pretty much a generic linear path with minimal interactivity.

As an RPG game:

The RPG game play lacks on an equal scale of the action game play. Unlike in the previous Paper games, there are no badges, so immediately the point of leveling up is minimized. There are no flower points either. Basically, all you are going to get is either an attack power or 5 health points from leveling. The result of that is absolute zero character customization and an extreme lack of depth.

Looking for secrets is pretty much pointless. Items have minimal use aside from healing items and all the well hidden items are pretty generic. There are a couple not-so-secret dungeons where you can get some items that aren't complete crap, but for the most part, nothing is worth collecting.

One big item the game kinda vaguely encourages to collect are cards. They contain a profile of a character, an enemy, a boss, or pixl. There isn't really any point to them. You can make a little money by harvesting high level enemy cards though. What you'll do with that money is anyone's guess since you don't ever actually need to spend a thing in the game.

The puzzles are without exception lame. They all rely on either fetching random crap or flipping the stage into 3D. The only alternative is that you'll have the standard boxed pixl puzzle where you have to use an obvious pixl power to figure out the puzzle. All of the uses of the pixls are the same every time though, so it isn't quite as variable as Thousand Year door was for instance.

Challenge:

This game is too easy. I could go into it, but the challenge doesn't really exist enough to cover. This is a turnoff to me.

Bottom Line:

You aren't buying this game because you want to have a fun game to play. You are buying it because you are a Nintendo fan who loves retro throwbacks and has a passion of any sort for the characters. There is humor in it for anyone, and it will make you feel good. Replay value is pretty close to absolute zero and the game is too easy.

I find it sad that this game is unanimously reviewed well while plenty of other Wii games out there have actual good game play and are being reviewed poorly for things such as being too difficult or having a weak story. I highly recommend you play this game, but don't expect it to be some wonderful surreal experience. Approach it as though you are watching a movie with light gaming intermissions.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/07