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Zer0's Text Review - Paper Mario Sticker Star (SPOILERS)
13 years ago
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Ok, so as you may have or have not heard. Paper Mario Sticker star is the latest installment in the Paper Mario Franchise for the 3DS. And you may have heard a lot of people giving this game praise for its innovation and incredible graphics and the like. However I played the game and saw it to the end and I can be honest in saying: THIS GAME SUCKS!!!!
To start off ill be talking about the different aspects of the game itself and talking about its good and bad traits.
STORY:
To say the story is near nonexistent is putting it kindly. I mean I know there are really simple plots in games from time to time. But the Paper Mario franchise was prided for having some of the most compelling stories I've ever seen come out of Nintendo in a long time (Earthbound and Mother 3 are still in my top ten when it comes to story). I mean you Fought a corrupted princess peach in Thousand Year Door and you were faced with quite possibly the most twisted villain in the Mario series: Dementio in Super Paper Mario. But here you're fighting against Bowser. A Bowser that doesn't ever say one line of dialogue as far as I can remember. All due to the face the Royal sticker on him drove him utterly bat shit insane.
In short Bowser uses royal sticker to cause chaos. And its up to Mario to sop him. You collect fight and then whoop Bowsers fat ass. No twist no Bowser being controlled or some darker power at work nothing more than the bare bones plot. Only the bones have been ground into paste now and mixed with water and glitter to make a shiny sludge of a game. And not to mention the fact that once the sticker star gets reclaimed, Bowser Tries to grab it again. Why wasn’t he locked up? Why isn’t he being hung at the Gallows for his numerous crimes? And then it ends with Kersit stopping him and the whole cast (Bowser included) just laughing the whole thing of like some shitty 90's cartoon ending. Which is a kick to the balls to anyone who shed a tear for Bleck and Timpani at the end of Super Paper Mario.
CHARACTERS
They’re boring and flatter than paper and act just as wooden as the material they’re made from. Mario almost has no personality in this one and it feels like it could have been some other character that was in charge of fixing all this mess. Hell even the toads could have done something about this considering Mario was sitting with his thumb up his ass while he watches the toads try to stop Bowser from grabbing the Sticker Star.
Peach is nonexistent in this game, which isn't so much a step down from the last paper Mario game as it is a plummet into a crevasse with sharp jagged rocks at the bottom. Bowser, which I stated before, has no dialogue, which means no funny lines from him or jokes about his weight from kammeck (btw where the hell is kammy did she die?)
Now for the NPC's ...They are ALL toads!!!I'm serious besides wiggler-who I now hate- there is no one else besides generic toads around. Where are the Piantas? Yoshis? the Ravens? the nice Koopas goombas and Bob-ombs? The Merlon Family? What did peach do? Order a grand crusade of ethnic cleansing in order to propagate the master mushroom race? Seriously, I can’t recall one toad that wasn't just boring as fuck.
Oh and of course we cannot forget the sidekick. Kersti...GOD DAMN its like if Tippy was an utter bitch on PMS constantly. only with half the personality and being utterly spoiled. She is so unlikable I wanted to put her in a shredder at least 50 times. She's ungrateful pins the blame on others and an utter Bitch. I'd use another word but I don't want to be insulting. and to top it all of she sacrifices herself in the final battle to make you powerful enough to stop cardboard Bowser and then at the end Mario revives her by using his wish to bring her back to life. WTF?!? if it were me, I would have wished for Bowser and his fucked up family to be banished to the planet of the Shroobs or Uranus or some far off world so none of this bullshit ever happens again. its...Its just a another slap to the face after Nintendo just kicked you in the balls.
Next I need to talk about the dialogue, which is sometimes funny with the paper jokes, but what really sets me off is the paper jokes again. in the old games they were told like popup books with the characters being made of paper yet they don’t realize it. never in the dialogue is there a paper pun. you get drawn into the story and forget you are made of paper. hell even though you do turn into paper objects in Thousand-year door, it never once dragged me out of the experience. here characters fold and bend in a 3D environment, which looks cheaper than the N64.
MECHANICS
This is something I've been hearing a lot of game reviewers say the sticker mechanics and puzzles were the best part of the game but let me ask you this. HOW DO YOU END UP SOLVING THE PUZZLES?
Simple you stick and unstick objects with stickers. if a Bowser tape is in your way. you unstick it. if something is missing you stick something to replace it. It’s sticking and unsticking its never anything different. you don’t activate a bomb to go off to reveal a hidden passage you don’t do block puzzles or anything that requires actual though. and most of these puzzles are just trial and error just to figure out what the right sticker is need for such a bullshit puzzle. like the "THING stickers" that you get from "real world items" which again breaks the forth wall and tells you this is nothing more than a book that had no feeling of depth or interest. and mainly the goal of the game is to make sure you have "ALL of the things" (bad joke) just to make sure you can go to the next world which feels like a return to "Super Mario RPG" but a game like this shouldn't be segmented by Worlds. and here another thing that annoyed me is this one puzzle. you find a loose Bowser tape somewhere and you find that it needs to be stuck somewhere so you stick it. you then go up to the sticker and rip it off to reveal a staircase to the next area of a world. You stick tape just to unstick it. Its total bullshit.
And next lets look at the stickers in combat cause that's all combat is. Stickers its like only being able to use items in a game it adds no depth it just feels like a more arbitrary and desperate way to get rid of the FP system of attacking from the first two games. which is something that never needed fixing. also you find stickers to use everywhere. They’re on every object and they are even dropped after and during battles so you'll never run out. so that actually makes money completely worthless in the shop unless you need to re buy a thing so you can make a thing sticker but then you can just go to the previous world to get it for free. So money is indeed utterly worthless. Even for the slots cause with all the money you have you can basically guarantee a two hit round at the least and just breeze thorough each battle. which gives you no star points you don’t level up and you gain hp through items you find, which is complete crap.
CONCLUSION
I know people in the past have complained about how Nintendo never changes and how they end up doing the same game over and over again. well apparently they took it to heart finally and tried to make things different in this game. but they ended up putting so many gimmicks and changes to the game that it doesn't feel like a Paper Mario game. It’s not a paper Mario game. Hell it barely Feels like a Mario game at all.
I find it ironic that everyone complained about change from Nintendo yet when they finally do change something. the "Fix" the one franchise that didn't need "fixing". now I'm not saying that change is bad or anything. I'd like to think of this game as an experiment for Nintendo. They wanted to see what would happen if they totally changed the game mechanics of a game and see what happens. and I'm all for that.
But what I do fear is that Nintendo wont learn from their failings here and make the next game just like this and end up alienating their franchise. This is a doomed evolutionary line for the way this game is played. Unless Nintendo fixes their problems they may end up dooming themselves.
Overall this is not the worst game I have played "Final Fantasy and the four hero's of light" still holds that shit stained honor. but this game is by far the weakest of the Paper Mario series. and I think Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw said it best during his Super Mario Review and I quote "I believe its time to put The paper Mario franchise to rest. Then smother it to death" and I believe I have to agree with him there.
RATING
Overall my rating for this game is a 4/10 it tried to so too much and ended up giving a sub par story and backwoods mechanics that overall don’t work. If you haven't bought the game. I would recommend passing it. If you already have...well...maybe you can still get 5 bucks back from Game Stop for all your pain and suffering.
With that there is not much more I can say on this subject.
So this is DeathZer0 Signing Off. Later Guys.
To start off ill be talking about the different aspects of the game itself and talking about its good and bad traits.
STORY:
To say the story is near nonexistent is putting it kindly. I mean I know there are really simple plots in games from time to time. But the Paper Mario franchise was prided for having some of the most compelling stories I've ever seen come out of Nintendo in a long time (Earthbound and Mother 3 are still in my top ten when it comes to story). I mean you Fought a corrupted princess peach in Thousand Year Door and you were faced with quite possibly the most twisted villain in the Mario series: Dementio in Super Paper Mario. But here you're fighting against Bowser. A Bowser that doesn't ever say one line of dialogue as far as I can remember. All due to the face the Royal sticker on him drove him utterly bat shit insane.
In short Bowser uses royal sticker to cause chaos. And its up to Mario to sop him. You collect fight and then whoop Bowsers fat ass. No twist no Bowser being controlled or some darker power at work nothing more than the bare bones plot. Only the bones have been ground into paste now and mixed with water and glitter to make a shiny sludge of a game. And not to mention the fact that once the sticker star gets reclaimed, Bowser Tries to grab it again. Why wasn’t he locked up? Why isn’t he being hung at the Gallows for his numerous crimes? And then it ends with Kersit stopping him and the whole cast (Bowser included) just laughing the whole thing of like some shitty 90's cartoon ending. Which is a kick to the balls to anyone who shed a tear for Bleck and Timpani at the end of Super Paper Mario.
CHARACTERS
They’re boring and flatter than paper and act just as wooden as the material they’re made from. Mario almost has no personality in this one and it feels like it could have been some other character that was in charge of fixing all this mess. Hell even the toads could have done something about this considering Mario was sitting with his thumb up his ass while he watches the toads try to stop Bowser from grabbing the Sticker Star.
Peach is nonexistent in this game, which isn't so much a step down from the last paper Mario game as it is a plummet into a crevasse with sharp jagged rocks at the bottom. Bowser, which I stated before, has no dialogue, which means no funny lines from him or jokes about his weight from kammeck (btw where the hell is kammy did she die?)
Now for the NPC's ...They are ALL toads!!!I'm serious besides wiggler-who I now hate- there is no one else besides generic toads around. Where are the Piantas? Yoshis? the Ravens? the nice Koopas goombas and Bob-ombs? The Merlon Family? What did peach do? Order a grand crusade of ethnic cleansing in order to propagate the master mushroom race? Seriously, I can’t recall one toad that wasn't just boring as fuck.
Oh and of course we cannot forget the sidekick. Kersti...GOD DAMN its like if Tippy was an utter bitch on PMS constantly. only with half the personality and being utterly spoiled. She is so unlikable I wanted to put her in a shredder at least 50 times. She's ungrateful pins the blame on others and an utter Bitch. I'd use another word but I don't want to be insulting. and to top it all of she sacrifices herself in the final battle to make you powerful enough to stop cardboard Bowser and then at the end Mario revives her by using his wish to bring her back to life. WTF?!? if it were me, I would have wished for Bowser and his fucked up family to be banished to the planet of the Shroobs or Uranus or some far off world so none of this bullshit ever happens again. its...Its just a another slap to the face after Nintendo just kicked you in the balls.
Next I need to talk about the dialogue, which is sometimes funny with the paper jokes, but what really sets me off is the paper jokes again. in the old games they were told like popup books with the characters being made of paper yet they don’t realize it. never in the dialogue is there a paper pun. you get drawn into the story and forget you are made of paper. hell even though you do turn into paper objects in Thousand-year door, it never once dragged me out of the experience. here characters fold and bend in a 3D environment, which looks cheaper than the N64.
MECHANICS
This is something I've been hearing a lot of game reviewers say the sticker mechanics and puzzles were the best part of the game but let me ask you this. HOW DO YOU END UP SOLVING THE PUZZLES?
Simple you stick and unstick objects with stickers. if a Bowser tape is in your way. you unstick it. if something is missing you stick something to replace it. It’s sticking and unsticking its never anything different. you don’t activate a bomb to go off to reveal a hidden passage you don’t do block puzzles or anything that requires actual though. and most of these puzzles are just trial and error just to figure out what the right sticker is need for such a bullshit puzzle. like the "THING stickers" that you get from "real world items" which again breaks the forth wall and tells you this is nothing more than a book that had no feeling of depth or interest. and mainly the goal of the game is to make sure you have "ALL of the things" (bad joke) just to make sure you can go to the next world which feels like a return to "Super Mario RPG" but a game like this shouldn't be segmented by Worlds. and here another thing that annoyed me is this one puzzle. you find a loose Bowser tape somewhere and you find that it needs to be stuck somewhere so you stick it. you then go up to the sticker and rip it off to reveal a staircase to the next area of a world. You stick tape just to unstick it. Its total bullshit.
And next lets look at the stickers in combat cause that's all combat is. Stickers its like only being able to use items in a game it adds no depth it just feels like a more arbitrary and desperate way to get rid of the FP system of attacking from the first two games. which is something that never needed fixing. also you find stickers to use everywhere. They’re on every object and they are even dropped after and during battles so you'll never run out. so that actually makes money completely worthless in the shop unless you need to re buy a thing so you can make a thing sticker but then you can just go to the previous world to get it for free. So money is indeed utterly worthless. Even for the slots cause with all the money you have you can basically guarantee a two hit round at the least and just breeze thorough each battle. which gives you no star points you don’t level up and you gain hp through items you find, which is complete crap.
CONCLUSION
I know people in the past have complained about how Nintendo never changes and how they end up doing the same game over and over again. well apparently they took it to heart finally and tried to make things different in this game. but they ended up putting so many gimmicks and changes to the game that it doesn't feel like a Paper Mario game. It’s not a paper Mario game. Hell it barely Feels like a Mario game at all.
I find it ironic that everyone complained about change from Nintendo yet when they finally do change something. the "Fix" the one franchise that didn't need "fixing". now I'm not saying that change is bad or anything. I'd like to think of this game as an experiment for Nintendo. They wanted to see what would happen if they totally changed the game mechanics of a game and see what happens. and I'm all for that.
But what I do fear is that Nintendo wont learn from their failings here and make the next game just like this and end up alienating their franchise. This is a doomed evolutionary line for the way this game is played. Unless Nintendo fixes their problems they may end up dooming themselves.
Overall this is not the worst game I have played "Final Fantasy and the four hero's of light" still holds that shit stained honor. but this game is by far the weakest of the Paper Mario series. and I think Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw said it best during his Super Mario Review and I quote "I believe its time to put The paper Mario franchise to rest. Then smother it to death" and I believe I have to agree with him there.
RATING
Overall my rating for this game is a 4/10 it tried to so too much and ended up giving a sub par story and backwoods mechanics that overall don’t work. If you haven't bought the game. I would recommend passing it. If you already have...well...maybe you can still get 5 bucks back from Game Stop for all your pain and suffering.
With that there is not much more I can say on this subject.
So this is DeathZer0 Signing Off. Later Guys.
its up to you if ya buy it or not. im just stating my opinion on the game.