Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)

by Piyoz on Jan 12th, 2014

Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the Nintendo 3DS is the most awkward game I’ve ever played.  Yes, more so than Shadow the Hedgehog. More so than Super Paper Mario. What do I mean by ‘awkward’? For every aspect of Sticker Star than I enjoyed (graphics, humor, animation, dialogue) there is another aspect that I disliked (story, battle system, puzzles, battle system, battle system).

The opening scene tells us that the Mushroom Kingdom is celebrating its regular Sticker Star Comet Star Bit Festival in which a comet comes down from the sky and people pray to it to grant their wishes. But look out! Bowser shows up and wants the star for himself! He ends up breaking the comet into six pieces which scatter all across the realm. Then he kidnaps the princess or whatever. A representative of the comet is a sticker being named Kersti (because that’s the kind of game this is), and she takes it upon herself to recruit Mario against his will to assemble all the star shards and Royal Stickers so that their power doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Believe it or not, the opening sequence is even less interesting that it sounds. The game sets you in Decalburg (get used to these puns) which acts as a hub between your quests to the different corners of the Kingdom: the grasslands, the desert, the woods, the icy mountains, and the jungle. Each stage in these five areas is a linear chain of wandering enemies and puzzles. Both the puzzle solving and the battling require stickers. Here’s how it works:

Battles in Sticker Star work way differently than previous Paper Mario titles. You don’t have a list of Jump, Hammer, Item, and Star Power actions. You see, when you’re walking around in the field, there are stickers stuck to the environment. Just peel them off and they go into your sticker book. In battle, you face your opponent (probably some kind of Goomba or Koopa or Spiny since this game doesn’t create any original enemies), and your attacks come from prying up a sticker and using it on your opponents. Then your sticker is gone. One sticker per attack.

A battle system where you find objects in the environment to use in combat sounds like a cool idea. On paper. But think about it for a second: your attacks themselves are a limited resource. Every time you enter a battle, you lose at least one of this resource. That’s one less resource than can be used on the mandatory mid-boss and main boss battles. You only lose abilities from entering standard combat with enemies running around in the field. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to bypass these battles entirely. I spent the whole main game running past Shy Guys and avoiding Lakitu Spinies. There was a time when I spent all my normal Jump and Hammer stickers, and the only enemy left was a Goomba with one health. I had to use a special Shiny Jump just to finish him! Why isn’t there a default attack type, and then special attacks that use up stickers?

Because of the lack of EXP and level-up system, there is no reason at all to actually fight when you don’t have to. Besides that, the combat itself is never explained. Sticker Star employs Action Command just like previous games (press A before you jump on your enemy to double damage). This time around, the game leaves you to figuring out how to attack and block. Boy, I really miss how wordy the Thousand Year Door was. I’d rather a game over-explained than not explain at all. There’s more about this battle system that I dislike but I’m going to move on to the puzzles.

In each stage, there are a few puzzles for the player to solve. They involve placing stickers from your book onto parts of the environment, or removing stickers already out there and placing them elsewhere. The latter is pretty simple since removable pieces are easy to spot and only have one other place on the whole map. The former is a little tougher. You see, in addition to stickers there are Things. While the whole world is made of paper and cardboard, these Things are actual things. An electric fan. A baseball bat. A battery. An air conditioner. A balloon. A pillow. These Things are used to solve puzzles and defeat special bosses.

Sticker Star, however, never explains where Things go or how they’re used. There’s an unspoken logic to it. You have to use the Heater to melt snow. Use the Hook to go fishing. Logical stuff, right? Well, how am I supposed to know that the Baseball Bat is needed to defeat a Pokey? Or that the Sponge is needed to beat a poisonous Blooper? The game isn’t always clear on what Thing needs to be employed to solve a problem. You’re given no clues so you have to guess blindly. And what if the Thing needed is hidden in a cave some place you’ve never explored? How should you know where to find it? Or what Thing it even is?

While the whole battle system and puzzle logic is flawed, there are definitely redeeming qualities to Sticker Star. For one, the art design. In the Thousand Year Door, Mario is made of paper and that’s part of the game’s logic. In Sticker Star, everyone is made of paper and the world is made of cardboard. Therefore, things bend, fold, tear, and have the general qualities of their material. People know they’re made of paper. And it’s really interesting playing in a world made of arts and crafts materials.

Sticker Star has no real characters or plot. It does, however, have funny, memorable moments. The owner of the ice world sticker shop is frozen in a block of ice. The Boo’s Mansion level has an impromptu disco script that made me get up and put my weight on it. Birdo comes over and gives you a Thing that is a Goat. A Goat! Birdo gave me a Goat! I turned to my friend and declared that I received a Goat for Christmas.

In the desert tomb level, I was opening a bunch of mummy sarcophagi only to find inside one of them a Shy Guy with a sombrero strumming a guitar. Now that’s just random. There are dozens of these small scripts and moments in exploration or using Things that are so funny and creative that I wanted to try each one and see what the creators could think of next.

All things considered, Paper Mario: Sticker Star is a disappointment. The previous three games were excellent. They had top-notch RPG game play but also had a certain Super Mario charm that never seemed to dissipate. Sticker Star has that charm. It just doesn’t have that excellent game play. It’s like the designers didn’t think through the sticker-based combat. They tried to do something different but just ended up making a slightly less awful version of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories GBA. Sticker Star doesn’t hold a candle to its RPG/platformer predecessors. It has the flair, but not the content. All bark and no bite, I guess you could say. At around twenty hours, it was worth the eight dollars I payed for it.

3/5
Alright

Categories: Reviews