Super Paper Mario Review

Super Paper Mario Review | February 1, 2013
Nintendo Exclusive Title

Super Paper Mario is a 2D/3D action platformer role playing game. All the major players are here Mario Lugi, Princess Peach, and Bowser. These are the four playable characters, each having different powers that open up certain levels. Mario can flip from a 2D world to the 3D world. Luigi can jump really high. Princess Peach can float for a while and block attacks with her umbrella and finally Bowser can breathe fire. A new villain named Count Bleck has tricked Princess Peach and Bowser into marrying each other. This evil marriage creates the Chaos Heart that Count Bleck uses to take over the universe. Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach create a temporary alliance with Bowser to stop this evil and they can only do that by finding eight Pure Hearts of the land.

You play through the levels and you have to find Pure Hearts to unlock the next part of the game. It sounds simple enough but for some reason Nintendo makes it confusing. You are trapped in a world called Flipside. You find a heart, you find a pillar, you unlock a door. Four of the pillars are in Filpside and four are in another world called Flopside. It gets confusing and at times and frustrating because you are always mixing the two worlds up. You waste too much time trying to find the next level instead of playing the next level. There is no voice acting which is not a problem for most Mario Bros. games but this is an RPG. You have to read through so much dialog over and over again to figure out what is going on. This is where the Flipside/Flopside problem comes into play. You spend so much time reading this stuff by the time you get to the end you don’t remember where you are supposed to go. There are also very few save points. This becomes a problem because many of the levels look the same and you will get lost. So you can quit and lose all your progress or play for another couple of hours and hope you figure it out. It got old and made us want to put the game down and stop playing or not play it for a while.

The controls are great no issues with either the 2D or 3D elements. You do spend most of your time in 2D which is good because the graphics are not great even for the Wii. Remember this is a RPG so the power ups work different than other Mario games. The game over all is just medium, not great but not bad either. At times it is difficult and frustrating which once again makes you want to take a break from the game. This is never a good sign. It is worth buying in under $35. It is fun but not being able to save a lot holds it back.

7.5 out of 10
OK Game