Paper Mario is back, and as good as every!
Super Paper Mario is the third Paper Mario game to date. SPM keeps a similar story line to the rest, but it takes a new spin on the series. Instead of being a RPG it is now a Platformer with some RPG elements from the past games.
Super Paper Mario beings with Mario and Luigi in their house when a Toad comes up to them and tells them that the Princess has been stolen! What a shocker! So Mario and Luigi go off to save the Princess, but what they find is very, very, disturbing. The Princess hasn’t been stolen, she is marrying Bowser!:O Luckily, sorta, this is actually a trick by the fiend Count Bleck to revive the Chaos Heart, a vile thing that gives him power to destroy all worlds. As such Mario sets off on an adventure to stop Count Bleck.
Mario is then transported to the town of Flipside. To stop Count Bleck Mario meets a person named Merlee. Merlee tells Mario about the Pure Hearts, they are mystical items that are needed if Mario ever wants to stop Count Bleck. So Mario heads off to the first Pure Heart.
Each Pure Heart has its own world with 4 levels in each world. To complete the level you must jump, fight, and flip you way to the end of the level. You hold the Wiimote on its side and use the D-Pad to control Mario. You use the 2 button for jumping and the 1 button for Pixl abilities; will get to them later. As you go through the levels Mario will gain the ability to flip from 2-D to 3-D with the press of the A button. This is the main mechanic of the game and is used in many puzzles in the game. Don’t know how to get past that wall? Flip! Can’t find where to go next? Flip! With all the advantages of being in 3-D why not stay in that mode all the time? Why because you get hurt if you stay in 3-D too long, that’s why! The only bad things about the controls are the gimmicky controls that you use for some items, it clearly shows the game is essentially a GC game; it was originally planed to be on the GC but switched to Wii.
SPM is a Platformer and as such you should know what to do. You jump, stomp on enemies, go through pipes, eat Mushrooms to gain health… What doesn’t eating Mushrooms make you bigger? Glad you asked that. SPM has a health meter instead of a hit me and I’m dead thing like other Mario games. And you can get stronger if you gain a level by beating enough opponents. If you ever played a past Paper Mario game you should be familiar with these RPG elements, but sadly that is the only RPG elements in the game. Now then, Mario isn’t the only one in the game. As you play you will be joined by Peach, Bowser, and Luigi. Each one has a special ability to help you progress. And your journey you will meet and collect characters called Pixls. The Pixls have a wide verity of abilities to help Mario and co. on their quest; such as Boomer who can, as you might have guessed by the name, blow up bricks and cracked walls. While the Pixls do add a lot of depth to the game there are so many of them that you will rarely use half of them. While you are playing SPM get your reading glasses read, because there is a truck load of text in this game. Especially at the beginning of the game; the first cut scenes have text after text after text. I mean it is very funny at times, one of he funniest games out there. But it just gets annoying after a while. And there are no voice-overs at all. Okay, let’s go onto the graphics of the game. They are what you would expect from a Paper Mario game, and a ported GC game. It has the classic Paper cutout look of Paper Mario games, and there isn’t anything wrong with that. And the backgrounds have a very stylized look to them that is great. But some things, mainly opponents and some item boxes look weird in 3-D. Besides that the graphics are great. As with many games sound is a little iffy. SPM has the tunes of other Mario games, and new tunes. None of the music or sound effects will impress you. But I can’t really complain too much. It gets the job done but nothing is really that good.
Overall SPM is a great game and every Wii owner should own it. It’s a fairly long game and has a great story and is very funny. It has great graphics and controls well. This is a game that you should not miss.