I’m sure that you’ve heard of our favourite Italian man with the tash at some point in your life. After all, he celebrates his 26th birthday later on this year (he’s only 4 years older than me – never knew that!) Anyway! Mario is famous in the gaming world – he is the mascot for Nintendo and he appears in more than 200 different games, which range from racing, to sports, puzzle and of course RPGs.
The game is currently being developed by Intelligent Systems, which is owned by Nintendo themselves. Intelligent Systems have produced more than 50 games; including all of the “Paper Mario” series and the “Fire Emblem” series, although only a few titles by the latter have managed to escape Japan.
Despite its announcement at E3 this year – the net is being very tight lipped about the storyline, which is neither a good thing or bad thing. I prefer to know the basics of the story – the introduction so to speak, but any more than that and you can pretty much piece together what happens in the rest of the game. The only piece of information that we know at the minute is that Bowser is up to no good… again. I wouldn’t expect any less of him really. During the annual “Sticker Fest” Bowser scatters six Royal Stickers about the land… and it’s up to Mario to get them back – who would have thought?
What we do know is that they have gone back to the classic turn based combat system, no more of this side scrolling action from “Super Paper Mario.” In the battles, Mario fights, with a support character. Using the stickers found all around the world, you must attack enemies. Such stickers which are used to attack are, the Fire Flower, Scissors, Boots and Hammers. If you’ve played “Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door” then you will be familiar with pressing certain buttons at specific times in order to allow Mario to do additional damage. Once Mario does an attack, for example a jumping attack, a boot sticker is removed from his inventory. Therefore, it is necessary to continually search the environment for new stickers, lest the game end quickly…
Confirmed characters which are making an appearance are Princess Peach, Toad, Bowser, Kersti a paper fairy, a Chain Chomp and of course, Mario.
Kersti is the first companion which Mario gets and she has the ability to “Paperize” objects in the world and turn them into stickers. This then allows Mario to place the stickers onto the map and turn them back into objects. Such an example was shown at E3 where a bridge is turned into a sticker and then placed over a river at another location.
The graphical style is identical to that of the previous Paper Mario games… which I have so creatively called “Paper Style.” The game still has the comedic paper folding abilities necessary to complete some puzzles.
The game reminds me of every other Paper Mario game released. Unfortunately, I cannot think of any game that I have ever played which is similar to it in any way, as it is so brilliantly unique in itself.
So far all we know is that the game is scheduled to be released in the holidays, but as of yet, there hasn’t been a specific date set. It is the first Paper Mario game to be released on a handheld console, the Nintendo 3DS.
Next up on my list of “RPGs coming out” will be… “Pokemon Black and White 2” normally I’m not a fan of Pokemon games (Digimon was SOOO much better) but this is a special circumstance… it is a direct sequel which is new and unheard of…
To be continued…
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.