![]() But I forgive that, because they earn so many points by removing turn-based combat that Super Paper Mario would have to release flesh-eating beetles into my house before I started seriously marking it down. Now, while I applaud every step a game takes away from JRPG territory, and advise it not to stop there, the platforming is kind of bland and samey, which is weird for a Mario game. And the stupid, effeminate, blouse-wearing turn-based combat is replaced with wholesome, traditional, masculine head-stomping. The gist of the game is that it's like a cross between Paper Mario and the old Super Mario platformers hence the title, I suppose, so all the Paper Mario talky talky puzzle solvey is broken up by platforming segments. Thankfully for Super Paper Mario, both of these issues have been removed, if only to make room for new ones. ![]() It had turn-based combat, something I find about as exciting as using the toolbar in Microsoft Word, and it also had this creepy obsession with getting Princess Peach to take all her clothes off, which probably came from sexually repressed story writers working too many late nights. ![]() But after all that it was by no means perfect. It was imaginative, witty, and charming enough to totally bypass my usual male instinct to steer clear of brightly coloured cartoony graphics for fear of catching the gay. I played the last Paper Mario, Thousand Year-Door, on the Gamecube, and I thought it was a sparkling diamond in a dark, depressing sea of vomit. dark" thing right now - maybe they've been drinking a lot of Guinness. Nintendo seem really into the whole "light vs. Which may sound familiar to players of Twilight Princess or the Metroid Prime series, which have already worn that particular idea down to a bloody stump. Super Paper Mario mixes it up by introducing the concept of an evil dark world parallel to the normal light one. You play as Mario in some bizarre, Keanu Reeves-themed universe where everyone is a cardboard cut-out, and the main plot involves A) some big villain's devious plot to destroy the world, B) a lengthy quest to acquire seven or eight colour-coordinated magical MacGuffins that have been scattered to various themed lands for some utterly contrived reason, and C) the princess getting kidnapped at some point, because kidnap ordeals are the sole moments of interest in her otherwise miserable, parasitic existence. ![]() There are three games in the series now, and storywise there hasn't been much variation between them. It feels weird that a character like Mario, who is about as big a sellout as a character can get without turning tricks for pennies off the New Jersey turnpike, can lend his visage to a series of games with a surprisingly anarchic sense of humour.īefore I continue, let me add that I know full well that Super Paper Mario has been out in American for yonks and in Japan for like three yonks, but in Australia it's only just been released, and I want to review it, so I'm going to, and if you have a problem with that then feel free to close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears for the next three or four minutes and pretend I'm reviewing Clive Barker's Jericho or something. Over the years, there have been two exceptions to this rule, firstly EarthBound, a quirky cartoon SNES RPG that plays like a cross between the Cthulhu mythos and The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, and secondly the Paper Mario series. I've always felt that if I wanted the kind of experience most JRPGs offer, I'd just watch a random anime series boxset while pausing it every five minutes to fiddle around with the remote control. ![]() Japanese RPGs and me have this little understanding: I don't play them and they can suck as much as they like somewhere far away from me. ![]()
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