Super Paper Mario (Wii)

by Piyoz on May 23rd, 2014

Spoilers ahead!
Super Paper Mario is the second most awkward game I’ve ever played. The elements of game play involved here are clearly a mad scramble for coherence. Intelligent Systems made two excellent and superb RPG’s in Paper Mario and Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door. How could they top themselves? I honestly can’t imagine them making a Wii installment of the series any better than the Thousand Year Door. I can’t imagine any capacity of RPG play, world building and art design that could possibly be improved. Might as well start from the ground up, right?

As a result, we received the 2007 Wii installment of Super Paper Mario. It’s an odd amalgamation of Paper Mario turn-based RPG with more traditional Super Mario platforming. So that’s where the title comes from.

The story of Super Paper Mario is that Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Bowser have all found themselves in another dimension where an explicitly evil Count Bleck is summoning the dark powers of a glowing, magical plot device called the Chaos Heart. There’s a wedding and a huge explosion and nobody knows what’s going on. It’s all a lot to take in. Mario ends up in a weird alternate world city named Flipside. A wizard tells Mario that he has to assemble the Pure Hearts to counteract Count Bleck’s Chaos Heart. Or else all dimensions will be torn apart. Yikes. In the background of Flipside there is the Void, the giant black hole tearing through the dimensions. It acts as a constant reminder of the impending end of worlds. As the game goes on, it grows, showing how the situation is becoming more urgent.

The wizard sets Mario up with a piece of software named Tippi, who looks like a rainbow butterfly that follows him around. You can aim the Wii remote at the TV to have Tippi examine objects in the game. Mario uses Tippi to solve puzzles and advance through eight worlds containing Pure Hearts. Along the way, Mario encounters other pieces of software that grant him new abilities. Some let him ground pound, shrink, hit enemies with a hammer, or blow stuff up with bombs.

And we couldn’t talk about Mario’s abilities in this game without mentioning dimension flipping. Imagine playing Super Mario Bros. Just by pressing a button, you could flip from side-scrolling view to looking forward from behind Mario’s back. This is used to find hidden items, enemies, and passageways in levels. You can’t stay in this mode for very long before you start to take damage. It’s all very strange to experience. I’m constantly reminded of how much better FEZ is at this whole flipping business.

Those enemies I mentioned? If you’re looking for turn-based combat with jumping and hammers, you’re going to be disappointed. The platforming elements here let Mario defeat enemies by jumping right on top of them. Original, right? It’s a pain to do this in 3D, and even in 2D the hit boxes are tiny. There are abilities through software and items, too, but they don’t make things much easier.

At the top of the screen there is your health and your score. You have items and stats like a role-playing game. On the field, you jump on enemies, ascend platforms, and find objects like in a platformer. What some may call a melange I call awkward. This game is trying to blend two different things together in a way that doesn’t accentuate the best qualities of either. All it makes is an RPG inferior to other Paper Mario games and a platformer inferior to old Super Mario Bros. This game excels at nothing. No aspect of this game is impressive.

Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. There is one thing that I really enjoy about Super Paper Mario. It’s the story. Now what I described earlier about the evil Count Bleck tearing apart the dimensions with the Chaos Heart in a Machievellian ploy to end the universe? I bet that sounds like standard fantasy RPG drivel. At first, that’s the impression I got. However, the game doesn’t really spend much time there. Through mid-chapter battles, we spend more time with Bleck’s cohorts: the Scottish menace O’Chunks, the spider girl Mimi, the secretary Nastasia, and the dubious magician Dimentio. They’re pretty strong characters on their own, and their motivations are clear. They want to help Bleck as he aims to “fix” the universe. They repeat this sentiment throughout the game.

Between each chapter, there are these sequences of white text over black. Soft, relaxing music plays and we can hear the breeze. Two characters talk just through scrolling text. There’s a vague story of a guy falling from one dimension into the human world. This guy (Blumiere) meets a human girl (Timpani) who tends to his wounds. The two of them form a close relationship and become very emotionally attached as the dialogues progress. Blumiere returns to his native Tribe of Darkness and finds that he’s not allowed to go back and see Timpani anymore. Because of the social conventions around these worlds, Blumiere is stopped from meeting his beloved Timpani again. In all his anger, he seizes a convoluted item of power related to the plot and begins to wreak havoc across dimensions, trying to find Timpani once more.

Before long we figure out that Blumiere is Count Bleck and Timpani is Tippi. Of course, Count Bleck has traveled to so many dimensions in desperate hope of finding her that he’s begun to lose his grip on reality. Somewhere along the lines, his frustration with the rules of the universe lead him to destroy it all. Or at least try. After Mario and the reunited gang defeat Bleck, he admits to his faults. Dimentio turns on his boss and steals the Pure Hearts in an attempt to kill everyone. The battle against Super Dimentio is amazingly easy.

The twist and turns with these characters and their relationships really caught me off guard. The love story between Blumiere and Timpani comes around to be the main catalyst for an otherwise eye-rolling story. By the end I really feel for Bleck. So when Dimentio turns on him, I hated this secondary antagonist even more. As the world crumbles under their feet, Blumiere and Timpani finally come together and live happily ever after. The way that it unfolds in-game is really very touching.

In every chapter, the Pure Heart that Mario and company seek is revealed at a critical emotional moment. Like when a lost prince is reunited with his throne, when two godly parents show their love for their child, or when two warring factions come to armistice. Only then does a Pure Heart form above their heads. The logic of the game is that you (the player) are bringing peace to unhappy souls in order to counter the hatred spread by Count Bleck. That’s not something that FEZ does.

Color me surprised when I felt moved by some simple 2D cartoons in a Mario game. That’s really where Super Paper Mario shines. All the visuals and audio throughout the game are colorful and vibrant. It’s just a shame that the worlds themselves are so barren save for some doors and strolling enemies. This love story unraveling slowly throughout the game is the saving grace of this title. Because it sure isn’t the game play. What with its bizarre stitching together of jumping and number-crunching.

Even gathering recipes and treasure doesn’t have the same flair it had in previous Paper Mario games. And forget about badges. Super Paper Mario manages to be emotionally and visually engaging, just not technically impressive like its predecessors. There are some fun mini games in a casino in Flipside. Besides that, the engaging human stories are just barely enough to save this game from lackluster game play.

3/5

Decent

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