IGN Reviews Super Paper Mario - 8.9 - Page 2

I HATE IT WHEN THEY PUT BIG STORYLINES AT THE BEGINNING!!!

I was afraid of that. And here I thought Nintendo had figured out that some people like to pick up a controller and play, not feel like they're following along with a movie for a half hour. They got the 2D mario game part right, now if they would just take out all the extra crap and let people play the game they'd be all set.

Personally, I think it's going to turn a lot of people off ... because they didn't make it a 2D Mario game. Especially the casual gamers Nintendo marketed the Wii towards. My girlfriend hated it immediately, and I let her play after skipping all the text. She tried to hold the 1 button to dash and realized it didn't work, then messed with the controls and put it down after about 10 minutes. Surprised she gave it that long actually. It's more of an RPG than a traditional Mario game.

It's too slow and methodical to be considered a true 2D Mario game, and it's too complicated for all the people who buy it expecting a 2D Mario game. It's a niche Gamecube game in a niche genre disguised as a Mario game of old. The Paper series, with its RPG elements, has always been embraced more by the hardcores than the casuals, and I really don't see this game plugging the massive release gaps. At least for me, so far. If other people are enjoying it I'm happy for them ... I'm seriously disappointed.

Going to stop posting. I think I've made my disappointment clear already.

I was under the impression that SPM was ALWAYS being advertised as the "for hardcore gamers" game.

Maybe that was just my impression, but I kept hearing the "who says they don't have hardcore titles on the Wii" in regards to SPM.

I haven't purchased it yet, but I do plan on picking it up in the next couple weeks.

Its a really fun game, although I agree that the 2D platforming sections aren't as good as I was expecting. Letting the 1 button run would have been a great start to making it feel more like a 2D Mario, they could have easily used the B button for using Pixls. Also, its a little weird getting used to the aiming when you're in 3d, and a paper-thin object trying to jump onto another paper thin object.

I also agree that its way too easy. Also, I just finished Chapter 3-4, so this might change, but where are the enemies? So far the most I've seen on screen at once has been hidden in 3d behind an object, running in a straight line to combo in jumping off of them. Other than that, there's probably only 3 or 4 enemies on screen at a time. If there were more, that'd help as well.

Like I said though, I'm really enjoying the game, its just not the end-all be-all game that I was hoping for.

The game is fun and once you get a few pixies it certainly increases Mario's abilities, but I really miss the old wall jumps at butt stomps of previous games. I suppose with the complaints of the game being too easy, the ability to wall jump would have made it ridiculously so. Still it doesn't quite seem like a true Mario game without those extra abilities. I look forward to getting to the point where I can play as Peach, Bowser, and Luigi

From my experience so far, I must say Super Mario World is still the king of 2D games. I might download it tonight for the VC.

I agree with many of the above comments. Although you can access the menus by hitting 1 & 2 simultaneously, so you don't have to reach for the +/- keys. The game seems too simple. I finished chapter, and everything was very easy. All obstacles can be bypassed by switching to 3d mode. It was a nice break from playing Tiger Woods, which I also picked up yesterday. Now that game is pretty hard and frustrating at first

I did the same thing actually. I was severely disappointed. And I agree about the controller shaking. It just isn't natural in the sideways position, and screws up a fairly fun, if repetitive part from the previous games.

Eh. I'm kinda disappointed by some shallowness in it, but otherwise, it seems to be a great game. Just like TP though, not exactly the 95% or whatever average all the press wants to give it.

Nintendo never learns apparently. People want games to be difficult enough to where they could die. With so many people complaining about Wind Waker having enemies take away 1/4 of a heart and then replace it back soon after... you would think they would have made enemies in TP take away more and the same with this game. But I guess they won't learn. They could always add a difficult mode to these games where things take away more power, but they just keep pumping them out too easy. I thought TP had reasonably difficult puzzles, but enemies were usually easy.

It sounds like they should have offered an Easy Mode as a selectable option, but instead they made it the only choice. Boo.

They do make harder games from time to time, BTW. Pikmin and Pikmin 2 weren't hard exactly, but there were plenty of times I felt like I was in danger of running out of time or of sustaining unacceptable losses to my little army of vegetables.

Wow, how can anyone not like this game? Sure its easy, but its not super duper easy. Personally i think its about the same difficulty as mario sunshine if not a touch harder. If yer looking for uber difficulty, not sure you should be looking at something with mario in the tittle.

Its is 2d, with a cute trick. Its not like the new super mario bros, but Im glad its not. It doesnt have the insane jumping mechanics, which i personally dont miss. Its exploratory element I find more rewarding.

Easily the most fun I've had on the wii, at least without 4 other ppl around.

Oh and as for missing some of the old mario 2d mechanics, butt stomp, run etc, the newer attacks easily make up for it, at least in the novelty factor. Im glad they didnt stick the same old stuff in there.

I picked it up yesterday and was cussing at the game the 1st 15 minutes becuase of all the reading and no playing i was doing. But when the action started it was really pleased. I had a huge grin on my face when i took the mushroom spinich and grew the whole screen and smashed everything. I love all the nostalgia stuff too like how they incorperated the old SMB world music, the NES mario and all that. Im really enjoying it. Particularly cause its a game my 6 yo can watch me play and my wife like's watching.

I haven't played a Mario game since SMW on the Super Nintendo. My wife and I both really enjoyed the original Mario games, and we still occassionally pull out the Super to play Mario 3.

Is Super Paper Mario good for us? I admit that I was REALLY looking forward to this one, as I thought it might be good for my wife and I to play around with, but now I'm getting worried. She hasn't been taken with the Wii as much as I'd hoped, but I thought that perhaps this might be ok.

Any thoughts?

I love the game, but then again I am a huge Paper Mario fan. But the game does make me weep inside knowing that almost 17 years after the release of the amazing Super Mario World, we still have not seen a proper 2D follow-up on a console.

Super Paper Mario isn't that awesome evolution to the classic Mario formula that many have hoped for. While it's a pretty good game, despite some boring parts, it isn't what you're looking for at all.

I have to agree. It's a definate rental though. Get it from Blockbuster for a week or two until you beat it. And save your cash for Super Mario Galaxy! .

For the people saying it doesn't feel like a classic 2d Mario game because its missing things like butt stomps and wall kicks, you all know that stuff wasn't even in the classic Mario sidescrollers except for Yoshi's ability to stomp in Yoshi's Island until New Super Mario Brothers, right?

You know, I kept wondering what they meant by butt stomps and wall kicks. Hard as I tried I didn't remember them in the classics and I was starting to think my memory was failing me. You make a very good point.

After reading this thread I think I will rent it before buying it.

Mario could wall jump in Sunshine. Butt stomp dates back to Mario 64. I guess those aren't sidescrollers, but they're still well-established Mario canon. (And Yoshi's stomp comes from Mario World.)

The reason it doesn't feel like a classic 2D Mario game isn't because it's lacking moves from the later games ... it's because the pace is tediously slow with lengthy and inane stretches of dialogue, and because it's a Paper Mario RPG game at heart. Anyone expecting the immediate and simple fun of a 2D Mario is probably going to be disappointed. It's a side-scrolling RPG.

Just for the record, nobody should take this to mean its a bad game, because it really still is great, just not quite as good as I was expecting/ hoping for, and I think thats the general consensus.

Yoshi never stomps in Super Mario World, unless you're counting the yellow Yoshi's ability when eating a koopa shell to shake the ground and kick up dust, but he never does the butt stomp thing.

"Mario could wall jump in Sunshine. Butt stomp dates back to Mario 64. I guess those aren't sidescrollers, but they're still well-established Mario canon. (And Yoshi's stomp comes from Mario World.)"

People were specifying the 2d Mario sidescrolling games, things like the wall jump didn't appear in the 2d titles until 2006's New Super Mario Brothers.

"The reason it doesn't feel like a classic 2D Mario game isn't because it's lacking moves from the later games"

I wouldn't know, Nintendo choose to just put this GameCube title out on the Wii, leaving people still with GC's out to dry such as myself. So I was just commenting on what others had said in here earlier, I have no 1st hand experience with the game.

just thought I'd point out that butt stomps and wall jumps (and TRIPLE jumps ala Mario 64) are present in New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo DS. I thought this was a great game, and could easily be considered a true sequel to Super Mario World.

Click the "open" arrow at the link below to see the moves in action:

http://mario.nintendo.com/

I've rented this game and have played for a bit (I just played a bit as Princess Peach) and I think it's pretty good. The first level up to the dragon is easy but it's engaging and the very simple puzzles still have a satisfying feeling when I discovered the solution.

It's not a heart stopping, action packed graphical tour-de-force -- but I think this game came at the right time. It's nice to kick back and live an RPG in the original Mario world.

The ground pound/butt stomp is actually present in Super Paper Mario!

It's kind of a shame that Nintendo isn't capitalizing (yet) on the old 2d scrollers of yore. This Wii thing seems to be catching on with a pretty broad cross section of people, and I'm sure there are more like me who would appreciate a modern throw-back to that genre.

Yes, I know it's early. And I've seen the reports of Galaxy coming up. But I'm not that much into the 3d expansive worlds (I'm one of the 2% who actually suffer from motion sickness while playing FPS games). I'm not sure if Galaxy, which looks like it's going to try to be more of a legitimization of the Wii hardware, is what I'm looking for either.

It would be kind of fun to be able to gather my family (my wife and two boys ages 6 and 4) around something other than bowling or Cars. Not to hijack the thread, but does anybody have any suggestions either currently available or upcoming?

I just want more sports games and zelda games.

I remember I got bad motion sickness when OoT came out and so I took OoT and the N64 back for a refund. They somehow agreed to refund the opened game. Then I thought well I would try it again and bought it all again, only they no longer had gold cartridges. lol But anyway then I got used to it. But still some games give me motion sickness also.

I agree completely. I'm enjoying this game immensely, although it helped to be forewarned about all the reading at the start.

I have to say that I really like the graphics. I've never seen anything quite like them, with the 2d characters still having some 3d-type qualities. It's very stylish, and I like it a lot. Everything is very smooth, with no real jaggies except when it's by design. There's also some great humor in it. Without giving anything away, there's this dragon-like character in the first chapter who goes through some pretty funny stuff before you battle him. I only wish the sentences didn't go by so quick -- it was hard to read all of them, and some of them were priceless!

I just finished chapter 1, so who knows what the rest will be like, but so far I'm having a great time. Can't wait to get home from work and play some more!

-Dan

Like all Wii games I've seen, it completely lacks 3D antialiasing. In this game, I find that it looks especially bad, though, since everything has a cartoony style. What make the aliasing really stand out, though, is that 2D antialiasing is enabled within textures. The bowser character is a good example. The spikes on his back are orange with a black outline. On the inside of the black line, the boundary will the orange fill color is smoothly antialiased, because it's all within the same 2D texture, and it looks beautiful. The outside edge of that same black outline, where it is composited over the background using 3D rendering (even when Mario has not "flipped", I'm pretty sure), is completely jaggy. The juxtaposition makes the aliased parts look even worse than they normally would on a cartoon-style game, which is already worse than in a realistic game.

It's a good game. I'm enjoying it a lot. But I don't think it's right to call it "very smooth" except maybe in comparison to N64 Paper Mario.

You're observations are probably correct. I guess I've just become so accustomed to 3D aliasing that I take it for granted. I wish you hadn't pointed it out. Still, I think in general the game looks pretty cool.

-Dan

Agreed.