I beat a game!!: Super Paper Mario
Mario-related RPGs are a sketchy bag for me: Super Mario RPG is an awesome game any way you slice it, and Superstar Saga was a LOT of fun, what with one of the best localizations I've ever read, a fun and somewhat innovative system: it was a good time for me. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door I found to be tedious and boring, without the same sense of fun that the other games had. I picked up Super Paper Mario on a whim, out of a desire to give my Wii some lovin', and because I had a credit from returning Drakengard.
It's a far from perfect game, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Where the earlier games put platform mechanics onto a traditional RPG structure, SPM does the exact opposite--it puts RPG mechanics onto a platformer. That's not unheard of--many platformers let your characters level up, gives them hit points--but the blend here is excellent. Both your character and the enemies are given hit points, and stomping a goomba doesn't squash him outright but deducts hp based on your attack score. Levels are structured like a platformer--think of Simon's Quest or Zelda 2, but less mazelike--most levels are a straight path from left to right, with a few doors for detours. It's fun. There are jumping puzzles--not as complex as the average Mario game, but it's still a Mario game and you will need to bound back and forth from time to time. Part of me misses playing a regular platformer, and given the choice between the two I'll fire up Mario 3 for the millionth time, but as platformer-light, it's decent.
Actually, now that I'm starting to write it up, I'm having a less positive view of it: my praise seems slightly forced. Let me back up a second.
In a way, the game purports to be The Best of Both Worlds--half platformer, half RPG--but it suffers because it doesn't fully commit to being either. It's platformer in the sense that you're jumping and bopping things; it's an RPG in the sense that it's got a lot of story (and a LOT of text...I don't mind reading at all, and most of the text was funny, but it felt very excessive--if I felt bored with it, I can imagine how someone younger who isn't a strong reader is going to feel.) But the platforming segments feel somehow perfunctory: fighting enemies is pretty fun throughout the whole game, but the jumping isn't nearly as challenging as a Mario game should be. The RPG elements beyond hit points and stuff is confined mainly to dialogue and fetch quests--entertaining if excessive in the first case, and always tedious in the latter.
There are *MANY* levels where I was honestly tempted to give up just because I didn't want to go through an area. It seems padded. One area, Princess Toadstool is magically asleep or something, and you need to find a magical fruit to wake her. It's a vaguely maze-like area that you have to wander through, there are three or four incorrect fruits scattered around, so basically the level consists of exploring for a tree, bringing it back, finding out it's not the right one, exploring for another tree, and so on until you finally get it right. That's not an uncommon occurrence in the game, although it tends to happen more and more during the later levels. The first few chapters are a lot of fun--quick action, interesting level design, *entertaining*, and had the game continued in that vein it would have been a lot stronger.
One of the main gimmicks of the game is the switch from 2-d to 3-d. The main view is of a traditional platformer--2-d plane, moving from left to right--but early on you get a power which lets you shift the view to 3-d, so you're viewing Mario from behind. Items are behind pipes and things. Pathways are hidden in front of the screen. (I ain't so good at describing this bit.) It's good in its execution, and there *will* be a lot of levels where you're stuck and then slap your forehead because you forgot to simply switch perspective. There's a meter which deducts health--a minor amount, but enough to eventually be an inconvenience--if you stay in 3-d mode too long, so you're not able to overuse the system. (I wouldn't anyway--you move more slowly in 3-d for some reason.)
Most of your special abilities--in this case, little creatures called Pixls which follow you around--take the form of keys: one shrinks you, one is a bomb, one lets you ground-pound--and I've never been a fan of powers-as-keys: I think their uses should be a bit more fluid. Some of them--the bomb, for example--are useful as attacks, but the vast majority have no use outside of a few limited and specific situations. That's not terrible, but the other characters you get--Toadstool, Luigi, Bowser--act as keys as well, even though they're ostensibly playable characters. Each has a special move or two, and you'll need them from time to time, but none of them can switch perspectives, which is the most useful skill in the game. They all also move more slowly than Mario, so it really becomes a case of there being a very high jump so you switch to Luigi then switch back, or needing to float over a gap so you switch to the princess then switch back.
The game goes out of its way to feel fresh and interesting though, and I do like unexpected genre changes from time to time. One boss--an otaku who kidnaps a character--has a sequence where you face him in a dating sim. A segment where you have to determine which is a real character and which is a shapeshifting imposter is resolved through a quiz show. One encounter takes the form of a traditional RPG battle. One level is a space shooter. I always like it when a game distracts you with different types of challenges from time to time: it keeps it exciting.
And the game *is* really funny.
It's an uneven experience but a relatively short one--17 hours with no sidequests. But it's a testament to both my lack-of-time and my gaming ADD that it took me two months to beat. A good 10 of those hours were spent over two days, and then I got about an hour in a week. If the game had been less repetitive I would have played harder.
It's a far from perfect game, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Where the earlier games put platform mechanics onto a traditional RPG structure, SPM does the exact opposite--it puts RPG mechanics onto a platformer. That's not unheard of--many platformers let your characters level up, gives them hit points--but the blend here is excellent. Both your character and the enemies are given hit points, and stomping a goomba doesn't squash him outright but deducts hp based on your attack score. Levels are structured like a platformer--think of Simon's Quest or Zelda 2, but less mazelike--most levels are a straight path from left to right, with a few doors for detours. It's fun. There are jumping puzzles--not as complex as the average Mario game, but it's still a Mario game and you will need to bound back and forth from time to time. Part of me misses playing a regular platformer, and given the choice between the two I'll fire up Mario 3 for the millionth time, but as platformer-light, it's decent.
Actually, now that I'm starting to write it up, I'm having a less positive view of it: my praise seems slightly forced. Let me back up a second.
In a way, the game purports to be The Best of Both Worlds--half platformer, half RPG--but it suffers because it doesn't fully commit to being either. It's platformer in the sense that you're jumping and bopping things; it's an RPG in the sense that it's got a lot of story (and a LOT of text...I don't mind reading at all, and most of the text was funny, but it felt very excessive--if I felt bored with it, I can imagine how someone younger who isn't a strong reader is going to feel.) But the platforming segments feel somehow perfunctory: fighting enemies is pretty fun throughout the whole game, but the jumping isn't nearly as challenging as a Mario game should be. The RPG elements beyond hit points and stuff is confined mainly to dialogue and fetch quests--entertaining if excessive in the first case, and always tedious in the latter.
There are *MANY* levels where I was honestly tempted to give up just because I didn't want to go through an area. It seems padded. One area, Princess Toadstool is magically asleep or something, and you need to find a magical fruit to wake her. It's a vaguely maze-like area that you have to wander through, there are three or four incorrect fruits scattered around, so basically the level consists of exploring for a tree, bringing it back, finding out it's not the right one, exploring for another tree, and so on until you finally get it right. That's not an uncommon occurrence in the game, although it tends to happen more and more during the later levels. The first few chapters are a lot of fun--quick action, interesting level design, *entertaining*, and had the game continued in that vein it would have been a lot stronger.
One of the main gimmicks of the game is the switch from 2-d to 3-d. The main view is of a traditional platformer--2-d plane, moving from left to right--but early on you get a power which lets you shift the view to 3-d, so you're viewing Mario from behind. Items are behind pipes and things. Pathways are hidden in front of the screen. (I ain't so good at describing this bit.) It's good in its execution, and there *will* be a lot of levels where you're stuck and then slap your forehead because you forgot to simply switch perspective. There's a meter which deducts health--a minor amount, but enough to eventually be an inconvenience--if you stay in 3-d mode too long, so you're not able to overuse the system. (I wouldn't anyway--you move more slowly in 3-d for some reason.)
Most of your special abilities--in this case, little creatures called Pixls which follow you around--take the form of keys: one shrinks you, one is a bomb, one lets you ground-pound--and I've never been a fan of powers-as-keys: I think their uses should be a bit more fluid. Some of them--the bomb, for example--are useful as attacks, but the vast majority have no use outside of a few limited and specific situations. That's not terrible, but the other characters you get--Toadstool, Luigi, Bowser--act as keys as well, even though they're ostensibly playable characters. Each has a special move or two, and you'll need them from time to time, but none of them can switch perspectives, which is the most useful skill in the game. They all also move more slowly than Mario, so it really becomes a case of there being a very high jump so you switch to Luigi then switch back, or needing to float over a gap so you switch to the princess then switch back.
The game goes out of its way to feel fresh and interesting though, and I do like unexpected genre changes from time to time. One boss--an otaku who kidnaps a character--has a sequence where you face him in a dating sim. A segment where you have to determine which is a real character and which is a shapeshifting imposter is resolved through a quiz show. One encounter takes the form of a traditional RPG battle. One level is a space shooter. I always like it when a game distracts you with different types of challenges from time to time: it keeps it exciting.
And the game *is* really funny.
It's an uneven experience but a relatively short one--17 hours with no sidequests. But it's a testament to both my lack-of-time and my gaming ADD that it took me two months to beat. A good 10 of those hours were spent over two days, and then I got about an hour in a week. If the game had been less repetitive I would have played harder.
posted by R. Goodness at 12:11 PM
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