Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS, first time, 23 hours) It's been my luck that anytime I've heard about this game its been nothing but shrill hyperbolic whining, usually amounting to a very loud statement of 'its not like the other games so worst thing ever'. I've heard that said about the rest of the series after TTYD but most of the games have plenty of people running counter to them; except this one. I've heard like exactly one person say Sticker Star is fine and as such it's made me morbidly curious to see if I could manage to find the good in it when the hate seems so overflowing. And even if I couldn't sometimes its interesting to play through something because its bad, besides if I could have an okay time with Megaman X7 I bet I could put up with this. I had to see if it really was that bad.
Welp.
This was a reminder that a majority voice can be such for a reason. This game is just so much like to detail every bad decision made here could possibly be a huge essay unto itself and frankly I'm not to keen to get into all of it but I'll at least go over the biggest things that stood out to me:
First off despite having a set up with encounters like the first two games its not really a RPG at all. The battles are barebones with such huge restrictions there is rarely any strategy to them and with how you attack. Through a stock of stickers you've collected you're either clearing everything in a single move or spending a shit ton because you aren't allowed to actually choose your target. Throw in the damage immunities like being unable to jump on spiked enemies and such getting prepared for all of this is way too big an ask your first time through. Sure, a bunch of stickers are just plastered all over the environment for you to gather but more often than not they are generic ones which only help so much. On top of that there is no progression with the only incentive to fight being money which comes so easy that you'll quickly learn to just avoid fights as much as possible. It all begs why the heck there is even a combat system in the first place cause this just feels like a massive chore.
Piggybacking off the stickers you end up finding everyday objects lying around to turn into stickers which function like big nukes or utility in combat. Problem with those are you never know the effects they'll have and with them being consumable (and a hefty price to replace) you're always going to feel afraid to use them. This is especially egregious since any other stickers DO get an explanation. Worse yet they also are key to many puzzles in the levels discouraging you from experimenting with them even further. Really they should have just made certain stickers only applicable to puzzles and others combat. This can make the bosses down right impossible if you don't have the right things to throw at it, though many say the solutions to the bosses are cryptic and nebulous but I don't agree with that as most are hinted at and logical enough even if kinda dumb. More the issue I have with them is they are puzzles in the strictest sense of the word and they want you to beat them in one way and one way only. Like sure puzzle bosses in RPGs always have an intended solution but having multiple ways to tackle them or figure them out is what makes that fun not just up and saying 'have X item? If not then you lose'. This is especially bad on the third boss where even if you do employ the thing that is supposed to circumvent its poison if you don't use it at the absolute PERFECT time it'll get destroyed and you'll barely have a chance after that. Really not a fan of having to rely on slot reels to get extra attacks too, I'm awful at those.
Then what probably really sticks in most peoples craw are the puzzles. Now again many people make these out to be way worse than they really are as the solutions are usually hinted at enough and make enough sense. I think it may have been a case where people really weren't expecting that this is actually a Mario take on a key based adventure game so much of the sign posting being rather subtle was probably missed by many out the gate. However where it messes up so bad is in communicating much of anything to you in a few spots that is so terrible it tanks the game big time. The most infamous of these of course being the dust devil in the second world that requires a vacuum to remove. Well, the vacuum is no where to be found in the second world, nothing hints at its location and you're only suggestion is a lone rock with an outlet on it. Hell I think Kersti your Tattle equivalent for this game only mentions "
GEE IT WIMDY" and nothing more. Its bad enough since in the first world you used an electric fan to move a windmill without a socket so your rules aren't being consistent but more than that to get what you need you just have to wander over to the harbor next to the main hub town and go pick it up there with zero inkling that's where to go. Also in the process you're pretty much guaranteed to trigger another boss encounter you can't solve yet which again feels very adventure game but comes off so awkward here. Another one that really bothered me is in the 4th world you get to crib on Luigi's recent schtick and rid a mansion of Boos. As you go on you'll find they give certain tells in the envrioment so you know where to get them out of hiding easily enough and teaches you they will do such things to tip you off so long as you keep a sharp eye out. I ended up stuck in that place for an hour trying to track the last one down because its hidden behind a clock with zero hint its there and if I didn't just resort to whacking everything with a hammer out of frustration I would have needed to get a guide. I'm not veteran of adventure games and the like but making your player figure crap out by stumbling around in the dark really does not seem like the way to make a good puzzle and when there isn't much else too engaging about this game such moments like this; even if there is only like 4 of them I can think of, are fatal.
Now I wouldn't be surprised if there were some npcs that may have offered a hint somewhere but theres a problem there too. Remember all those charming designs from the first three games? All the NPCs full of personality and the like that made you want to stop and see what they were all about? Well this time around you get Toads. Just Toads. And not even ones that have a spin on the design just flat out
palette swaps. Worse still none of these guys really have personalities to speak of but instead are just personified non sequiturs. Yes they say some goofy things now and then but that's not a proper joke or character! Of all the things that I dislike about this game this one bothers me the most since I can forgive a ton so long as you're game is charming to look at and read dare say much as I found the last three games to have great gameplay I think my absolute favorite things were the art and writing and you couldn't even bother with that. Its like the team they put on this didn't have any proper writers or artists among them or something.
That said it does still have some charm even if the direction they went in I don't care for. The first two games were meant to be a pop up book which was the way to go I say since they gave you the excuse to do the paper thing but still be able to have detailed environments and stuff. Now they swerved into full on paper craft which while not nearly as cool to look at does still have its charm, though not so much with the writing which must bring up that everyone is gravely aware that they are paper and must make every pun possible about it which is just annoying. I do like the soundtrack though which have some
nice tunes with a bit of a
big band thing going I think? Whatever the case its one of the
highlights of the whole affair. Weird comparison I'm sure but a thought that popped in my head listening to it is this is Mario as done by Aardman productions. Just with paper instead of clay.
So yeah I suppose I'm not in complete agreement with all the braying about this one since I do see some good points here and there. Much as I don't like the battle system yes sometimes wiping things out with a single attack is satisfying. Even if I don't prefer it that new art direction is pretty well realized and they do work it into the gameplay decently; not bad music either. The things that really matter though? While not as bad as people make it out to be they are a dud plain and simple and some of those blunders are absolutely massive. I only really went over about half of them too since there are many, many MANY other little things that just end up adding up and up and really wearing you down. This was a brand new team but they clearly did not understand anything that made the previous games great or just flat out wanted to make it their own thing come hell or high water. Well if its the later I can kind of respect that, to be perfectly honest as a creative myself if you give me a project I don't care for I'll just flip the table and walk out but even if this was made into a new series or side thing it wouldn't fix all the issues it has. Too bad because a platformer adventure game hybrid is a cool idea I'd love to see done right but this certainly wasn't it.
I don't want to give all the shrill TTYD purists an inch but I have to agree this one is bad and should be skipped. Even if its not as bad as I've heard it made out to be its still unacceptable. Such is the risk of going in such a wild new direction I suppose sometimes you're just going to trip and fall on your face, but with luck they learned from it. Problem is I still hear so much frothing hate for Color Splash too I'm not sure whether I can take anyones word for it without seeing for myself. Well, certainly not going to go look right now as this really burned me out but eventually I'll see if they were able to do better next time.
Rating-2 Metroid (NES, emulated on 3DS, first time) With Metroid Prime 4, er Beyond, finally revealed my youtube timeline has been filled with a bunch of Metroid vids and of course I have to listen to them. Thus I'm now in the mood for the series and needed a palate cleanser after Sticker Star. Truth is though I never properly played through the original truly, I mean sure I did get to the credits but never without invoking the divine name of
Justin Bailey, taking up
Narpa's Sword or
Declaring that Ridley's days are numbered (though that last one would just crash the system funny enough). I never actually confronted Kraid or Ridley once. I attempted to give it a go when I unlocked this in both Metroid Prime and Zero Mission but just couldn't get into it. I think I was always waiting to try out a hack that
added a map and touched up the sprites but now I figured nah, why don't I finally play the original as intended first and just see how far I get. Worst come to worst I'll look up a map or something.
Well I ended up blazing though it in a couple days. My main fear was that rooms are copy pasted and can get confusing as if you're constantly being gaslit on whether you've been in a particular place. That does happen but surprisingly I didn't have too much trouble getting my bearings and moving forward. Helps that these days the world is
absolutely microscopic compared to what we're all used to
these days with the genre. I also swear there were a lot more dead ends and traps than there are in reality, which no surprise the last time I played this a lot was when I was nine or so. Really there's only like two traps though one of them really is a freaking bastard. Also helps my playthrough of Dread last year really trained me to shoot every single surface possible which is where most of the major upgrades are hidden. Also not nearly as tough as I remember either since muscle memory kicked in with a trick to get the ice beam real early and while yes things can hit you pretty hard without the Varia suit being able to stun things (and slow the game to a crawl with multiple shots) helped loads and I was able to get to Ridley and beat him with only getting a game over once.
Still doesn't change the fact the thing is damn old and one of the first of its kind on top of it. The level design is serviceable but not stellar. Its just kinda dumb how Norfair is like just filled with 12 missile upgrades right at the start with little to nothing special required to get them. Could definitely do with less vertical shafts you can easily get knocked back down in too. Its not terrible but did get annoying now and then. Everything about Motherbrain's room is terrible too and I can't imagine trying to do that without the freeze beam to stop all those damn spaghetti-o's spawning and knocking you all over the place. But you know its a product of its time, you have to expect some stuff like this.
Gameplay aside though its still has a lot of charm! We've all heard the the music from this one all over the place and its crazy how well it fits with the visuals. Like I'm not one of those "oh minimalism always better" kind of people and I love Zero Mission but Norfair here definitely has an atmosphere here all its own that the remakes lacks. Won't say one is better than the other but they both stand out. Also I'm sure everyone has seen the instruction manual but
I'm gonna point it out anyways. Just look at all those charming cartoony drawings. Thanks to this thing I started sketching stuff like this in my notebooks at school all the time. This is the kind of thing that makes people our age nostalgic for instruction manuals.
So this certainly shows its age, it's pretty basic and has been thoroughly eclipsed, hell I've already started a play through of the sequel and I think I like it a bit better. But even then I still had a nice little time with this and I say it still holds up. Sure it may be hard to love for younger generations but doesn't change the fact its a good classic.
Rating-7