![]() Unusually for an Intelligent Systems game, the balancing feels off, with normal enemies a cakewalk and bosses a nightmare. In the absence of those more traditional RPG elements, it means there's no long-term reason for battling either, so the procession of simple victories can become a drag. The normal foes, beautifully presented and imaginative as they are, fall over to standard stickers. It's an elegant approach that guarantees variety across battles, because you're always using and acquiring new stickers from whatever's around, but as a system it's very light on tactics. Stickers are one use only, and for maximum damage you have to tap along to the rhythm of that particular attack as it plays out. As a 3DS showcase, Sticker Star really is the bee's knees. The normal foes, beautifully presented and imaginative as they are, fall over to standard stickers." Many of the levels feature 'wraparound' structures that see the backgrounds rotate as Mario's moving through them. Mario still has a health bar but he won't be levelling up or increasing his attack power instead, everything is tied to stickers, with shiny and flashy versions of these presenting the upgrade path. It's a very streamlined system that junks almost all role-playing elements. The Wii's Paper Mario tried real-time battles, with somewhat mixed results, so Sticker Star returns to turn-based fights. ![]() Every one goes in the sticker book, which is your all-purpose problem-solver. The stickers beg to be pulled free - Mario's straining animation a masterpiece in comic exertion - and pop loose with a burst to the skies before fluttering earthwards. Every Mario item you can imagine is represented in sticker form, from mushrooms and fire flowers to frog suits and boomerangs. It's a world that's been exquisitely crafted from top to bottom, and the glue holding it together is the gum-backed stickers dotting every surface. Try hitting Mario's hammer on the floor repeatedly and counting how many different types of dust cloud it sends billowing out. The snowflake effects in the obligatory ice world are simply exquisite, while the enormous amount of care that has gone into incidental details shows. When it comes to bespoke 3D tricks, Paper Mario has several sticker albums full of them, the most instantly appealing being a weapon called the 'Slaphammer' that sends foes careening back and forth on your screen. To an extent this has always been the Paper Mario series' gimmick, but the shift into 3D brings it to stunning life - and that's just the environments. The game plays with this constantly hiding secret entrances between layers, filling the levels with objects to be hammered and hopped on and at its best, hiding solutions in plain sight. So you're looking at a 3D space filled with 2D objects that can be hiding things immediately behind them, hence the frequent use of tilted angles. The world consists of '2D' images of its paper characters, which flip over when they turn around, set on a fully 3D background. The aesthetic is a straight descendant of the previous Paper Mario games but is utterly transformed by 3D and, beyond even that, its masterfully controlled camera. First things first - Sticker Star is so good-looking that it validates owning a 3DS. Sticker Star's earlier worlds are used to familiarise the player with an unusual combination of styles, both mechanical and visual. Let's-a go! I don't think I was killed by a normal enemy once during Sticker Star, but several of the bosses required multiple wars of attrition before victory. Peach is gone, the Toads are squooshed against the walls, and a mystery comet has been scattered to the four winds. Sticker Star begins predictably: the Mushroom Kingdom's various denizens are enjoying a sticker festival, when up turns Bowser and throws a spanner in the works. Matched up to Intelligent Systems' most visually brilliant take on the paper Mushroom Kingdom yet, this is one of the wittiest and most surreal Mario games in years. This self-mockery has always led to the finest work of Nintendo's supremely talented localisation team and Sticker Star once again delivers the goods. Paper Mario is a world about Mario, one built out of in-jokes and fourth-wall-breaking nods, where the biggest gag is that everyone's been through this before. It's funny to think of how many different Marios there have been - and it's this aspect of the character that Paper Mario has always riffed on. Ever since Nintendo's rise in the 1980s, he's been an icon: the embodiment of pure gaming joy, a wah-hooing hero eternally saving Mushroom Kingdoms in between entering every sporting event going. ![]() The thing about Mario is that, as much as he looks like a little dungareed chap, he's not really a character.
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