Paper plumber flat

by ERIK LEIJON

Somewhere deep within Nintendo HQ, beside the germ and warfare division and opposite the guest coat-racks, the top-secret team working in the Mario-diversification department is tirelessly coming up with new ways to repackage the world’s most recognizable plumber.

Most of the Mario-brand games have been financial and critical winners (with the Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. series becoming mini empires themselves), even if the diversification dept. may have stumbled with the educational Mario’s Time Machine and the Mario Party sequels. Super Paper Mario (Wii/Nintendo, Intelligent Systems) never plunges to those depths, but it may have benefited from a fresh-faced newcomer in the titular role, instead of the iconic and well-travelled mustachioed-avenger.

It’s a tad extreme to say a game would be better off by not having Mario in it, but Super Paper Mario is a decent adventure RPG that feels inadequate compared to its predecessors. The first Paper Mario game, released for the N64 in 2001, was originally meant to be a sequel to the legendary Square/Nintendo double team, Super Mario RPG, but based on some neat artistic innovations, Nintendo decided Paper Mario’s unique mix of 2D characters and 3D environments deserved its own brand. The problem is that Super Paper Mario isn’t a better RPG than any of those games, and as an action title isn’t quite in the same league as last year’s New Super Mario Bros. for the DS. Not only is Super Paper Mario weighed down with the pressure of being the Wii’s first Mario title, but it’s merely a slight aesthetic change from older, better Marios.

The same graphical style is still present, where most of the characters are 2D sprites (and literally flat like paper) living in a quasi 3D world. In the case of Mario, he can alternate from a 2D platforming world to a 3D one with the press of a button, and switching modes is pivotal to solving puzzles because some blocks or pipes only appear with the extra dimension.

In fact, most of the platform jumping lives up to the legacy, even if it’s running at much slower speeds than we’re used to. It’s the daft puzzles and text-based storyline that interrupt the fun parts.

Super Paper Mario hardly feels like an RPG anymore, but the boring and lengthy texts brought back old memories of the lamer adventure games of the SNES era. There is some charming self-referential humour scattered throughout the dialogue, but the story is painfully boring and only the most obsessed fan will not be tempted to hit the skip button. Constantly switching between characters and pixies (tinkerbell-ish sidekicks, each with unique abilities) through the menu screen is equally grating. Super Paper Mario hardly even uses the Wii’s motion sensor capabilities—the only time being when you wave it across the screen like a flashlight, while looking for hidden doors or items.

Super Paper Mario is a passable Mario game and one of the more complete Wii titles. I still think it would have been preferable to create a new protagonist, or to give it to Luigi, because this is not on par with the other notable Mario console debuts like Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario World.

Fantasy deck

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales (DS/Square Enix, Square Enix) is a card-duelling RPG for the Nintendo DS made with younger children in mind (note: extremely cute cartoon animals on the cover), though it has something to offer any DS owner.

Chocobo Tales is a turn-based role-playing game where instead of magic and weapons, players build card decks, with each card representing a different attack. Just as fun is the plethora of stylus-controlled mini-games.