"Collected musings on why it would rock to be two-dimensional : paper mario 2 review"
Collected musings by Meipan the puchi pocket gamer.
If there's one thing that you should know about my taste in video games it is that I only play games that are worth playing with a pink system or controller (re:really cute games!) , and Paper Mario. You laugh, but it's true. That being said, this second edition of the Paper Mario genre and umpteenth volume in the Mario Universe was a very exciting and enjoyable play that I think that even those of you who cannot stand cute, furry, pink things would approve of.
The gist of Paper Mario is that you and all of the other characters are paper and therefore two-dimensional. Whereas the draw of the first Paper Mario was that the character design was unbelieveably cute, the second installment is the obvious brainchild of the game designers putting their heads together and saying, "Dude, if we were paper, we could do some pretty fuckin' cool shit." Paper Mario RPG expands upon the use of paper's form to include paper's function. Mario and his party have learned to become paper airplanes and boats, roll around as little tubes, and fall through grates. These increase the difficulty and interest level of the puzzles, however it does leave you wondering exactly when you will learn the paper football and crumpled up ball of paper abilities.
As with all Mario games the world consists of eight stages. In Paper Mario RPG I felt that each of the levels were more varied than in previous Mario games, and that the thematic material was darker that in the past, of course that also could have been completely my misinterpretation because I played the game in Japanese and I can't say that I completely understood everything.
However, because the language level is about the equivalent of an illiterate park bench, if you are up to the challenge of trying an import game this might be a good one. In fact if you don't actually have to read anything since the important things are written in idiot-proof BRIGHT RED.
As with all Mario games, you know that you will be receiving a quality product if you decide to purchase it, BUT, as with all Mario games, there is something that makes the game really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really suck sometimes. For example, blue shells that hit you when you aren't in first place in Mario Kart, always getting your stars stolen right at the end by the fucking fortune square in Mario Party, and not getting anything awesome for collecting every single frickin' blue coin in Super Mario Sunshine. Well, the kicker for this game is not being able to skip through 15 minutes of dialogue before the final boss, who I must have tried to beat at LEAST a hundred times, but my thumb was so damn tired from hitting the A button that I was at an unfair advantage when the fighting actually started. The first time I suppose you should have to sit through it, but after that a simple 'press start' would be GREATLY appreciated. I mean seriously, there are only so many times you can see a loving and heartwarming scene before you want to kill the closest thing by bludgeoning it to death with your controller. I went through 3 controllers, 2 pet hamsters, and lots of alcohol before I finished this game, but on my last controller I hired an assistant to help me hit the A button while I could plan my strategy for winning the game. This helped immensely so I stongly encourage you to do the same for the sake of small animals everywhere.
That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and I hope that you have just as much fun with it as I did. Overall, on a scale of one to two I give it a chu! Bye-bye!