Overview
Today on the show, I'm going to review one of the most popular games to hit Wii - Super Paper Mario! Originally released on April 9th, 2007, Super Paper Mario is the third game in the Paper Mario franchise. Intended to be made for the GameCube, the game was slowly pushed back and then released on the Wii. Let's see if this game stacks up to its predecessors!
Single Player
As with previous Paper Mario games, there's no multiplayer element in this one either, so the game consists entirely of a Single Player mode. When you begin Super Paper Mario, the storyline will seem quite familiar - Princess Peach has gone missing once again. When Mario and Luigi set out to Bowser's Castle, assuming of course that Bowser is up to his usual mischief, they find themselves caught up in evil Count Bleck's plan. Count Bleck has arranged a marriage between Bowser and Princess Peach, which triggers an event as foretold in the Dark Prognosticus, a book which predicts the end of all worlds. This results in a void being opened up in reality and Mario having to collect the seven life hearts in order to defeat Count Bleck, as told in the Light Prognosticus.
The Good
The gameplay in Super Paper Mario is similar to that of the previous Paper Mario games, with some new features added, and some old features removed. The player has to traverse through the usual 8 chapters, collecting a life heart at the end of each of the first 7, with the 8th chapter being the final boss fight. Just like before, you're able to recruit various partners in the game called Pixls, which help you traverse the terrain, attack enemies and so forth. New to Super Paper Mario is something called the "3rd Dimension". By pressing the ‘A' button, Mario can switch back and forth between 2D and 3D in every level. Why? For example, if a wall is blocking your way in 2D, simply switch to 3D in order to find a hidden switch, etc. Unfortunately, there's a time limit to how long you can remain in the 3rd Dimension - if time runs out, you lose 1 HP and return to the 2D world of the level.
Action Commands make a welcome return to the game, and are made much more effective by the fact that the Wii Remote itself is used to perform them, such as shaking the remote a certain way or drawing lines on the television screen.
Since Super Paper Mario was originally intended for the Nintendo GameCube, the graphics in the game are identical to those seen in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, with some slight effects and animations added. Items return as well, but some of the familiar ones seen in past Paper Mario games now take on a different effect due to a change in gameplay which I'll talk about in the next few paragraphs.
The challenges in the game are quite unique and may take a while to figure out at first, but when you do discover them, you'll be amazed at what the solutions to them were. The sound and music have the same feel to it as in the previous two games, so there's no change.
The Bad
First of all, the graphics in the 2D worlds look pretty awesome, but as soon as you switch to 3D, the landscapes begin to look a bit bland. This sort of takes away from the 3D perspective, which is critical to the entire game.
Next comes the storyline itself. There's so much text to read in this game, it's crazy! Younger players will wonder to themselves if the whole game consists of just reading text, or if they'll actually get to play. The irony to this is that the text can be quite funny at times if you read it, but you'll often get bored and wish the characters would just shut up. Of course, this may lead you to keep pressing the 1 button on the Wii Remote to skip through the text quite fast, however, if you do this, you might miss a key point on how to defeat a certain enemy or reach a certain part in one of the levels.
The last and worst change to the Paper Mario franchise is the battle system. In previous Paper Mario games, every time you encountered an enemy, you would engage in a turn-based battle with them, similar to those seen in Final Fantasy and Pokémon games. This provided unique gameplay elements and strategy, since you could outfit Mario and his partner with different attacks depending on the situation you were faced with. In Super Paper Mario, however, the turn-based system has been completely eliminated and replaced with a "real-time" system, like in the old Super Mario Bros. games, where you simply jumped on an enemy to defeat it. Although this new system results in a faster-paced gameplay, it removes practically all of the strategy previously required in past Paper Mario games.
