Super Paper Mario
So the grand idea for North Carolina posting ran into the brick wall of reality about a week ago and I've been too busy and/or tired to post much of anything, never mind a brilliant illustrated narrative of that week. Fortunately, about ten people read this, and nine of them have already heard the stories in person, so all I'm gonna do here is reiterate that hang gliding is very very awesome and that everyone should try it if they get the opportunity. I think the time and expense required to pick it up as a real hobby will prove to be prohibitive, but I'd certainly like to go up to Ellenville and have another lesson or two just for fun.
And now to the main point of this post: Super Paper Mario. Nina got it for me for my birthday, and it's really quite awesome. The more I play the more I find to love. The real basic premise is that it's a Mario platformer with two twists. One, you (and the enemies) have hitpoints instead of lives, and there is an RPG element that allows you to increase your max HP and attack power, but you don't have the movement/battle scene split of a typical RPG. Two, you can "Flip." Flipping changes the perspective of the game by making the world 3D and rotating the camera so that what was previously a left-to-right path is now a front-to-back. The way the elements of the 3D world compress to form a 2D world is quite interesting and allows for a lot of fun secrets and whatnot. Those bits alone should make the game a lot of fun, but they keep adding more fun as you go. Like Pixls, these little assistant guys that you find along the way. You can have one active at a time, and they do lots of cool things. One acts as a sort of grappling hook, grabbing things and bringing them back to you (or triggering switches). Another is a bomb that you can detonate on demand. My favorite so far allows you to become one-dimensional so that you are really thin and can't be hurt if you stop moving. There appear to be many more.
Then you start to unlock additional characters. Right now I have Princess Peach, who can float using her umbrella. You also get Bowser, who breathes fire. I suspect the fourth is Luigi, who I think jumps higher than Mario but Nina thinks I'm just fooling myself about the jumping part. At any rate it adds another element and they don't do too much of that crap where they force you to switch characters every two seconds.
The final two things you learn early on are Recipes and Cards. The recipe thing is fairly simple: you bring an item to this lady and she cooks it for you. Sometimes you get a cool new item, sometimes you don't, and they store the successful ones as recipes in the menu so you can make them again. I was one part disappointed and two parts relieved that recipes didn't require 2 or 3 items at once. The cards are little cards with pictures of enemies or NPCs on them, which you can find or buy in various ways. Each card you have of an enemy gives you bonuses when you fight them, and they provide a nice obsessive collection element. You can also get Catch Cards (of various strengths) which allow you to capture a weakened enemy and turn them into a card.
Again, that would be cool enough, but while exploring I found two awesome secrets. The first is in the wilderness surrounding the town (think home base) of Flipside. It's called the Pit of 100 Trials. Once you go in, you can only leave by dying, finishing, or using an escape pipe that you get every 10 trials. The trials are just rooms with a one-way door in and locked door somewhere in a small platformer level full of enemies. One of the enemies has the key, and I'm sure you get the idea. The prizes are whatever experience, coins, and items you get, plus you get a Pixl card every 10 trials. The first time I found it I went through the first 50 and bailed because I was getting a little over my head and running out of curative items. I made sure to make it to 50 though so I could see the next Pixl I was gonna get (he's a ground pounder).
The second cool find is he arcade, which I found inside a tavern. You buy tokens and then play one of three arcade games to try and win more tokens that you trade for super rare items. The three games are a memory matching game, a shoot everything on screen before it gets you game, and a tip the platform to make Mario get the good stuff and dodge the enemies game. All are fun and free of glitches or stupid irritations, and the hardware performs beautifully throughout. Nina and I beat the crap out of the memory game but my favorite is the tipping one.
One last note, I did find one interesting oversight (or maybe they planned it who knows) with the economy. A shop in one of the dungeons sells a certain item for 50 coins. The shop in town sells it for 100, but that doesn't actually get you anything since they buy at 50% of sell price. The key is that you can make this item into a pretty sweet item with the cook lady, which sells at the shop in town for 96 coins. So with only 50 coins and a lot of time, you can fairly quickly amass as large a fortune as you need. Pretty handy.
And now I feel this has been going on long enough so I'll call it quits for now. I'll try to return to the shorter posts less often model that we're all used to.
And now to the main point of this post: Super Paper Mario. Nina got it for me for my birthday, and it's really quite awesome. The more I play the more I find to love. The real basic premise is that it's a Mario platformer with two twists. One, you (and the enemies) have hitpoints instead of lives, and there is an RPG element that allows you to increase your max HP and attack power, but you don't have the movement/battle scene split of a typical RPG. Two, you can "Flip." Flipping changes the perspective of the game by making the world 3D and rotating the camera so that what was previously a left-to-right path is now a front-to-back. The way the elements of the 3D world compress to form a 2D world is quite interesting and allows for a lot of fun secrets and whatnot. Those bits alone should make the game a lot of fun, but they keep adding more fun as you go. Like Pixls, these little assistant guys that you find along the way. You can have one active at a time, and they do lots of cool things. One acts as a sort of grappling hook, grabbing things and bringing them back to you (or triggering switches). Another is a bomb that you can detonate on demand. My favorite so far allows you to become one-dimensional so that you are really thin and can't be hurt if you stop moving. There appear to be many more.
Then you start to unlock additional characters. Right now I have Princess Peach, who can float using her umbrella. You also get Bowser, who breathes fire. I suspect the fourth is Luigi, who I think jumps higher than Mario but Nina thinks I'm just fooling myself about the jumping part. At any rate it adds another element and they don't do too much of that crap where they force you to switch characters every two seconds.
The final two things you learn early on are Recipes and Cards. The recipe thing is fairly simple: you bring an item to this lady and she cooks it for you. Sometimes you get a cool new item, sometimes you don't, and they store the successful ones as recipes in the menu so you can make them again. I was one part disappointed and two parts relieved that recipes didn't require 2 or 3 items at once. The cards are little cards with pictures of enemies or NPCs on them, which you can find or buy in various ways. Each card you have of an enemy gives you bonuses when you fight them, and they provide a nice obsessive collection element. You can also get Catch Cards (of various strengths) which allow you to capture a weakened enemy and turn them into a card.
Again, that would be cool enough, but while exploring I found two awesome secrets. The first is in the wilderness surrounding the town (think home base) of Flipside. It's called the Pit of 100 Trials. Once you go in, you can only leave by dying, finishing, or using an escape pipe that you get every 10 trials. The trials are just rooms with a one-way door in and locked door somewhere in a small platformer level full of enemies. One of the enemies has the key, and I'm sure you get the idea. The prizes are whatever experience, coins, and items you get, plus you get a Pixl card every 10 trials. The first time I found it I went through the first 50 and bailed because I was getting a little over my head and running out of curative items. I made sure to make it to 50 though so I could see the next Pixl I was gonna get (he's a ground pounder).
The second cool find is he arcade, which I found inside a tavern. You buy tokens and then play one of three arcade games to try and win more tokens that you trade for super rare items. The three games are a memory matching game, a shoot everything on screen before it gets you game, and a tip the platform to make Mario get the good stuff and dodge the enemies game. All are fun and free of glitches or stupid irritations, and the hardware performs beautifully throughout. Nina and I beat the crap out of the memory game but my favorite is the tipping one.
One last note, I did find one interesting oversight (or maybe they planned it who knows) with the economy. A shop in one of the dungeons sells a certain item for 50 coins. The shop in town sells it for 100, but that doesn't actually get you anything since they buy at 50% of sell price. The key is that you can make this item into a pretty sweet item with the cook lady, which sells at the shop in town for 96 coins. So with only 50 coins and a lot of time, you can fairly quickly amass as large a fortune as you need. Pretty handy.
And now I feel this has been going on long enough so I'll call it quits for now. I'll try to return to the shorter posts less often model that we're all used to.
posted by SomeJerk at 8:49 AM
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