Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: RPG
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
People tend to knock Nintendo for ‘rehashing their old
franchises’. On every Nintendo system, there’s always Mario saving Peach from
Bowser and Link saving Zelda from Ganon. However, you do have to blind yourself
in order to not notice that each core game in not just those series but their
other series’ such as Metroid, Star Fox and Pikmin undergo either change which
is built into the core aspect of the game or significant refinement with each
entry and sport a level of polish no other developer can hope to achieve
(especially in this age of annual releases with half-hearted additions).
Whether it’s in terms of hardware which enabled more
accurate sword play in Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword or simple and clever game
play design such as Super Mario Galaxy and all the gravity shenanigans,
Nintendo always tries to shake things up one way or another. Sadly, it doesn’t
always work.
If I do another list of ten of my favourite games, Paper
Mario: The Thousand Year Door on Gamecube would be on the list (along with
Beyond Good & Evil and Halo 2). The beautiful aesthetics which render every
character as paper cut outs with houses that fold open when you enter, not to
mention the general wackiness of the whole experience, cast of brilliant
characters, hilarious dialogue and twist on typical RPG (Role Playing Game)
tropes made it something special in the Nintendo catalogue, but for this entry
I’m not sure if Nintendo and Intelligent Systems rushed it or simply had no
idea how to handle it.
As always in the Mario universe, something happens,
Bowser crashes the party and kidnaps the princess, in this case the maguffin
being the ‘Sticker Star’ which is split into five pieces and spread across the
land. For reasons that are never even vaguely hinted at being explained you can
only use one use stickers to perform attacks in battle, as well as various
world based puzzles, making the game more a huntathon for the right stickers,
which are dotted around the world in boxes and on walls. Actually, there’s
hardly any RPG aspect to the game at all with no levelling and your health is
only increased if you find an increase in the world somewhere and your sticker
count increasing when you defeat a boss.
As I said, each sticker gives you precisely one move in
battle, ranging from letting you jump on your enemies as normal, hit them with
your hammer, use fire flowers and more, which really asks why you need the
stickers in the first place. However, if you run out of stickers mid battle
then you’re flat out of luck and you have to flee. With the abundance of
stickers on walls and in boxes, not to mention the fortune you’re practically
showered with at the end of each battle and level so you can buy more stickers,
you’ll rarely run out but being reduced to that level really shouldn’t happen.
The next significant change is the level structure of the
game, rather than the chapters the previous three Paper Mario games enjoyed.
Once you’ve saved the main town Decalburg, you’re free to go to one of four
worlds and attempt to complete their levels in whatever order you wish, but
that facade is soon pulled away when you realize you need to find 3D objects in
the world you can turn into one time use stickers to progress (such as using a
fan to turn a windmill or a trumpet to wake up a massive sleeping worm),
meaning you can only really tackle one world at a time or until you find the
required object. It also means you don’t get to enjoy the structured sub
stories such as the amateur wrestling league and Agatha Christie train mystery
in Thousand Year Door or the insanely nerdish Fort Francis in Super Paper Mario
(which features several brilliant jabs at over the top nerd culture), instead
going through a few linear levels to the boss castle, defeating it and doing it
again.
The final significant cut to the game is the lack of
companions on your journey. The varied cast, usually made up of creatures that
Mario would usually battle such as the mushroom like Goombas and the turtle
like Koopa Troopers, brought plenty of laughs, some tears and proved useful in
navigating the world and obstacles in previous games but now they simply don’t
exist, leaving Mario and his sticker collection to do the job and also leaving
you at a disadvantage in battle.
Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the series’ jump
from RPG to side scrolling platforming between Thousand Year Door and Super
Paper Mario worked to a degree as it kept all the quirks and zaniness of the
originals, even if the gameplay itself wasn’t quite as solid or varied. Paper
Mario: Sticker Star, however, is a stripped down, bare bones pretender, like a
fat fan wearing the skin of his favourite celebrity. Sure at a glance it looks
like him and says vaguely the same lines, but look at it for a few more moments
and you’ll realize it very defiantly isn’t what you were hoping for and he’s
still holding a dripping knife.
Verdict: Don’t Buy
Image Sources: Nintendo.com, Nintendo 3DS Blog, Just Push Start, Destructoid
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