05.24.07
TL;DR
I realize that I have been somewhat succinct in my posts of late. This was merely a matter of necessity, as I have not really had too much time to be able to spend writing. That, of course, changed this morning, but while this post still is not going to be as long as I want it to, it will have some substance to it. Which means I’d wager 80% of the casual readers have just clicked off to another page.
The whole impetus for this post came after seeing a ‘bitter breakup’ note regarding Super Paper Mario. The individual quitting the game cited excessive text as his reason for ending his run. Of course, the legion of Diggers who saw his post leaped to his defense, as many agreed, disagreed, posted encryption keys, and called each other rude names. That’s all irrelevant, mostly. My issue is, of course, the fact that lengthy amounts of text could be considered a ‘downside’ to an RPG-style game.
Let’s face it, anyone who has any knowledge of the Paper Mario line knows they’re RPGs. And naturally an RPG is known for having a significant portion of non-action. Now, one can be forgiven for assuming after the ad blitz and videos posted that SPM was a standard Mario platformer, and I do agree that maybe the game could have been better served by being a pure platformer. The action phases were pretty good, and the decision to use a hub area rather than a world map served as a relatively large deterrent to my happiness with the title.
That said, the storyline was worth the reading. At least, I felt it was. Looking at it from the perspective of the target age group, it might have been a little bit more than the average player would expect, but at least it was well-written. I don’t think it was unexpected or detrimental from the enjoyment of the game; as a matter of fact, faced with that or another collection of barely-cohesive minigames, I’d much rather read the story and play what platforming is available.
That’s not to say I’m completely enthralled with the game. I did agree with the point that there needed to be more to the game. 32 stages are just not nearly enough, even with two potentially 100-stage marathon sessions added on. It needed to be twice as long, at the very least. Moreover, the hub area concept was good in theory, lousily executed in practice. I think that we, as gamers, are officially over the idea of a hub area in non-RPG games unless it’s really, REALLY well-thought-out and really well executed (or, as a compromise, optional after a certain point). Finally, yeah, some voice acting beyond the standard Mario-style utterances would have helped greatly; but as a counterpoint, it would have almost certainly broken the ‘Mario style’. Mario games have traditionally done just fine without voice, so there’s no reason to assume that’s going to change– plus, well, while I think Charles Martinet is a good choice for those brief exclamations, I doubt his ability to speak for extended periods in Luigi’s voice without making people throw their Wiimotes at the screen on purpose. (If they get Jen Taylor to voice the Princess again, though, she’d almost certainly get a pass, but there had better be a Cortana-out-take.)
Anyway. No game is perfect, and given what’s available on the Wii right now, Super Paper Mario is pretty close. (No comment on Twilight Princess, as it is a 3-D Zelda and I’d be too biased to make a judgment.) Doesn’t mean I haven’t moved on to other titles on other systems, of course, but the money was well spent.
Oh, and I am a little upset that there’s going to be a Raving Rabbids 2. ‘Cause, y’know, Raving Rabbids was literally impossible to complete on the Wii. I don’t mean it was a little tricky, I mean it was actually not possible to achieve the final goal and have a 100% unlocked game save. Ubisoft is on my garbage list.