System: Wii
Rating: E (You can tell they worked hard for that E rating. They can’t even mention death without resorting to comical euphemisms.)
Let’s get this out of the way: I was disappointed with this game. I was eager to play it because, hey, look at the title. Super Paper Mario. Enough said, right?
Gameplay: 3/10
What we have here is a cross between RPG and platformer. Though to be fair, it’s more the latter than the former. Sounds great, right? Wrong. The gameplay in SPM is just bland and uninteresting. It doesn't come close to either Paper Mario's RPG gameplay, nor classic Mario's platforming. It tries to combine gameplay elements from these two but leaves out the most important part: quality.
Too much of the game is spent backtracking through places you've already been, looking around for pointless trinkets. It tries to be “innovative” by introducing the ability to flip from the standard 2D view to 3D for a few seconds to find things or get past obstacles. However, this ends up being nothing but a gimmick that quickly loses its novelty.
The big problem here is that the game is so easy that the gameplay boils down to frustratingly repetitive snooze fests of wandering around the levels, more often than not looking around for whatever useless thing you’re currently looking for. But hey, at least the RPG elements keep it interesting, right? RPGs are wonderful at escaping their innately repetitive gameplay, aren’t they? Ha, if only. Sure, you level up by killing enemies, but all it does is give you a higher attack and higher HP. Leveling up never feels like an accomplishment in SPM. In fact, you barely even notice it. Plus, since the game was apparently made for grandmas and 1-year olds, there is zero incentive to level up and become more powerful. Because of the horrible difficulty level, even items, an integral part of RPGs, become pointless.
You can control other characters as well as Mario, but the others just seem like afterthoughts. And what’s up with only being able to flip dimensions as Mario? You don’t have to be a genius to realize it’s annoying to have to switch characters to flip all the time if you want to play as someone else, especially when it could have been easily remedied. And this isn’t all. There’s just a general poor use of the controller buttons all throughout. All of which could be very easily fixed, which makes it pretty inexcusable.
Oh, right. I haven't even mentioned the lazy gratuitous use of dumb, pointless filler. Running on a hamster wheel? Running back to the beginning of a level several times just to hear a password? Typing "Please" over and over and OVER again? Being teleported to the beginning of a level and having to run through it again just to bring random junk to some grannies? Having to run through levels you already beat while chasing someone? Running through a place that's entirely composed of a white background with a thin line for floor for several minutes with nothing happening?
Now, I can tolerate nonsense like that once or twice. But this game has so much of it. Seriously. It's like they're not even trying anymore. It's like they got into a meeting and were all like "Hey guys, SPM isn't long enough. Let's patch the playtime up by forcing the player to go through pointless boring trash! Brilliant!"
Difficulty: 1/10
I’ve already mentioned the game’s difficulty problem in the previous section, but one of the most shocking things was how stupidly easy this game is. Paper Mario's never been known for difficulty, but this time they really crossed the line. It's ridiculous. You could play the game bound, gagged, blindfolded, and you STILL wouldn't need to use any items. Bosses are especially bad. They all die just from you glancing in their general direction. Super Paper Mario is so unbelievably easy, it’s borderline offensive. Ultimately, this is a big contributor to the game’s boring gameplay. Unfortunately, as I’ve explained above, SPM’s gameplay has deeper problems than simply being too easy. A game can be easy and still be great. This one is not.
Story: 4/10
This leaves us with the story, which has been known to be enough to make me like a game. Too bad this one is a huge MEH. You can tell that it tries to be special (at least by Mario standards, which isn't saying a whole lot), but I could never bring myself to care about the plot. At least the bad guys were mildly entertaining. The classic Mario characters will always be welcome. And of course Bowser is always at his best when he‘s in a comedy role, though his screen time gets royally slashed once he joins your party. The game has some funny and witty dialogue here and there, to be sure, but a vast majority of the dialogue you’ll be seeing is just empty words, not to mention uninspired and embarrassingly cliché ones at that.
Yes, I know, platformers never have good stories. Perhaps SPM has a good story in comparison to other platformers, but this does not mean that it is actually good. The point here is that this is not a game that should be played for the plot.
Graphics: 8/10
Hey, what can I say. While they’re nothing new or special, the graphics are cute, and work well.
Music: 5/10
Eh, for the most part the music is all right. To be honest I barely remember it. I suppose this means it was nothing special, but at least it wasn’t offensive or intrusive either.
Length: 5/10
The game is about 20 hours long. You can probably add more if you do all of the extra stuff, but hey, I don’t plan to subject myself to that kind of punishment. I’d probably fall asleep if I did. 20 hours isn’t bad for this kind of game. Still, I can’t help but think that it would be considerably shorter if it didn’t have all that pointless filler I talked about in the gameplay section.
Fun Factor!: 5/10
This isn’t a surprise. Not a whole lot of fun to be had with such boring gameplay. However, the reason it gets a higher score than the gameplay is because, believe it or not, this game has a few redeeming qualities, namely, its humor and general wackiness. The game throws some cool and funny things at you here and there, like a mock traditional turn-based RPG boss fight or a dating sim parody. Unfortunately, while these things prove to be amusing, they are not enough to make the game good in my eyes. As it stands, Super Paper Mario is just plain old mediocre.
Paper Mario 1 was great. 2 was even better. SPM isn’t even deserving of the Paper Mario title. While I won’t say that it is a terrible game, I can’t recommend it.
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