2021: The Year of Paper Mario

 After The Year of Super Mario in 2020, after playing 21 platforming games in 2020 (22 if counting Super Mario 35), I wanted a changed in video game genre. I considered changing over to the RPG (role playing game) genre. I had not played an RPG since my Pokémon days, and I thought it would be nice to get back into them. My only hesitation is that I know RPGs can be an investment in time, and going through both an adoption and a dissertation, I could not afford a game which required an investment in time. I looked for a light RPG, and I assumed that Paper Mario looked like a lighter RPG. I also found myself interested about the recent conversation about the Paper Mario series. It seems like the Paper Mario series has gone from RPG to RPG Light to RPG elements. With the recent Paper Mario games, you either love them or hate them; there is no middle ground. As somebody not blinded by nostalgia glasses, I wanted to see if these games held up by themselves, with or without embracing the RPG genre, and if one can just like Paper Mario games. Therefore, I declared 2021 the Year of Paper Mario! For the year of 2021, I aimed to finish all 6 Paper Mario games. Naturally, it only made sense to begin with the original that started it all, and then play in order of release.

On February 27, 2 months in 2021, I saved all 7 star spirits and defeated Bowser (twice!), thus finishing Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 (via the Wii U Virtual Console)! In my playthrough, I collected 33 star pieces and 28 badges. I leveled up Mario to level 23, giving up 55 HP (maxed out), 55 FP (maxed out) and 18 badge points. I also leveled up all 8 party members to super level and 5 party members to ultra level. And I did it all in a matter of 21 hours. If familiar with the back story of Paper Mario, this game was originally supposed to be a sequel to Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. While Nintendo went a different direction early in development, some of the gameplay still felt reminiscent of Super Mario RPG. For example, the quick time events give the gamer something to do, besides selecting attacks and waiting. At the same time, however, the gameplay feels watered down compared to Super Mario RPG. Mario only has 1 partner to help in battle, as opposed to 2, although these partners can switch out. Only Mario can use items and the special star moves, whereas each character in Super Mario RPG can use attacks, special attacks, items and a defense stance. The level up system rewards increasing HP first and then FP, whereas Super Mario RPG rewards equally improving the characters. I think I prefer the gameplay of Super Mario RPG over Paper Mario. Nintendo had a good attempt at an RPG, but Nintendo should have left RPGs to Square (Enix), the king of RPGs. Similarly, the story of Paper Mario resonates with Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Again, Mario has to collect 7 stars, but this time, the stars are alive (that is, personified), and these stars give you power (which gives the stars more importance than the McGuffin status in Super Mario RPG). The only problem is that big bad boss is Bowser again, instead of an original character like Smithy. Yes, I know Shigeru Miyamoto does not like his original property messed with, and yes, I know it will get worse, but Mario versus Bowser just feels like another Mario game. It's just that now the combat is RPG instead of platforming. And why does Mario have to face off against Bowser? To save Princess Peach, of course! Again, this feels like another Mario game. Just substitute platforming with RPG.

About 2 months later, on May 1, I defeated the Shadow Queen, thus finishing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the Nintendo GameCube (via the backwards compatibility on the Nintendo Wii). During my playthrough, not only did I collect the 7 crystal stars, I collected 73 star pieces, 48 of 85 badges (that's a majority of them!), all 42 shine sprites (thus fully upgrading all partners but the optional partner Ms. Mouz), and I also journaled 95 of 124 tattles. And I did it in 36 1/2 hours. And I have a hot take: the original Paper Mario is better than The Thousand Year Door. I felt the game had both positives and negatives. Let me get the positives worth complimenting out of the way first. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door has more RPG elements. I like how now Mario's health and the partner's health are separate. I also like how the quick time events give something to do as turns play out, not just a set it and forget it. I like story, for the most part. I appreciate how it wasn't Bowser trying to steal the Mushroom Kingdom from Princess Peach. As a matter of fact, both Bowser and Peach have their own subplots, which the gamer can play. My favorite were the Bowser parts, as many of them re-enacted famous levels from the first Super Mario Bros. In some regards, Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door is more of the original Super Paper Mario, with some fine tuning. Now let's get to negative. Somebody should really discipline the game developers, for at sometimes I do not think they understand good game development. It seemed like every chapter involved backtracking with no good reason. I sometimes even thought the developers included so much backtracking to pad time, which it really didn't need. The worst infringement was near the end (semi-spoiler, I guess) when the game has the player travel the entire world map to look for a character, only to find out he was at the starting point! Yes, I know that was the joke, but without any real instant quick travel, it was annoying! The puzzle segments were not always self-explanatory. I got the official Nintendo Power walkthrough packaged with my game, and without it, I would never have solved the puzzles. True to Mario, sometimes the game required platforming, and the platforming felt off. I would press A and Mario would not jump. Mario would fall short to a jump he should have made. Yes, ultimately it is a RPG, so jumping is not supposed to spot on as a platformer, but it should be manageable and not frustrating. Then came final showdown, which was like an Elite Three because it had 3 boss fights in a row, only allowing healing and saving between the second and third. I only survived the first two because I figured out a way to level up between the first and second, thus healing me. But I legitimately got stuck on the final boss. The only way I could get through was through grinding. Those past 2 sentences I should never have to say in a casual RPG, like Paper Mario. Since Mario maxes out at level 30, once the player reaches level 25, leveling up becomes grinding to its fullest definition. No matter who are Mario's opponents, Mario only gains 1 star point (Paper Mario's experience points) per battle. If you do the math, then yes, leveling up Mario to level 30 would take 500 star points or 500 random battles. I managed to get to level 27, but from then, I focused on upgrading my partners. While Thousand Year Door had fine-tuned RPG gameplay and a fresh story, it also had dully repetitious backtracking, puzzles more confusing than intriguing, off platforming and bosses requiring grinding to the right level. Nevertheless, after playing through the entire series, I looked back at this game and decied the positives outweighed the negatives. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door would become my favorite game of the series.

About a month later, by the end of the month of May, I beat Count Bleck and defeated Mr. L & Dimentio, thus finishing Super paper Mario for the Nintendo Wii! This is the 3rd Paper Mario game I have played and finished. In my playthrough, not only did I collect the 8 pure hearts, I also collected all 12 Pixls (which means I did do both Pixl side quests, including the Pit of 100 Trials in Flipside), 46 of 256 cards, 4 of 96 recipes and 999 coins, thus maxing out my coin counter. I earned a high score of 783,270, leveling up Mario (and team) to level 17, giving Mario (and gang) an HP of 50 and an attack of 10 (20 for Bowser). And I did it all in 18 3/4 gameplay hours over the span of roughly a month (more like 8 days because I only played Super Paper Mario on the weekends). Super Paper Mario is so controversial among Nintendo fans, not because it's a bad game, but because the gameplay shifted from a full RPG to a platformer with RPG elements. Yes, if you're looking for a full RPG, Super Paper Mario will disappoint you. If you're willing to try a platformer with RPG elements, Super Paper Mario is a good choice. They do seem to blend the two together well. For starters, some of the levels clearly have their inspiration from the first Super Mario Bros., which will give you a dose of nostalgia. Then inserting the RPG elements allows the developers to provide a new game experience to old level designs by experimenting. It was nice to take damage and not get an immediate game over. By adding elements from RPGs, which not only includes gameplay mechanics but also story mechanics, Super Paper Mario has demonstrated that platformers don't merely have to consist of reaching the end of the level. Platforming levels can have both enemies and NPCs to interact with, which can progress the story.  Platforming levels can have buildings to enter and dungeons to explore. The story does not have to be an overarching premise. It can develop in every world and in every level. It's a shame Shigeru Miyamoto tries to keep the story in a Mario game to a minimum because Super Paper Mario demonstrated that platformers can have in-depth stories, especially thanks to the RPG elements. Speaking of story, this story feels the closest to Super Mario RPG because it has Mario teaming up with Bowser and Princess Peach to fight a brand new boss, whose henchmen consist of both familiar enemies and new enemies. While criticism might come for taking Super Paper Mario far away from the RPG gameplay of Super Mario RPG (from which the Paper Mario series descended), Super Paper Mario has the closest story to Super Mario RPG yet in the series. While I lean more towards the like it than dislike it crowd, I do see it has faults. I don't understand why only Mario can flip from 2D to 3D, besides the fact it becomes Mario's special skill. If this is Paper Mario, where even enemies can flip, every team member should flip, too. Think of something else to give Mario a special skill. On a similar note, it became annoying that every team member's special skill was mapped to a different button. Since the A button has no use outside Mario (because the A button is mapped to Mario's special skill), then map all the special skills to the A button. Speaking of buttons, I also missed the feature where the player could back in dialogue if the player missed something by reading too fast. The B button remained unmapped throughout the whole game; it could've had that purpose. Sometimes the worlds felt unbalanced because one world could take a half hour and another world could take 2 hours. One could argue that the game is too easy. Coins are too easy to get. I maxed out my coin counter a couple times, despite buying 2 warp pipes. I didn't get a single game over (OK, technically I did once, but I would argue that I got softlocked because I got stuck in a place where I couldn't get out and only receive damage). This would especially include the final boss battle, but one could technically argue the final boss battle was so easy for me because I leveled Mario (and team) up so much. For my overall opinion, I will again say what I said earlier. If you're looking for a standard, typical RPG, it's a bad game. If you're looking for a platformer with RPG elements, it's a good game.

Almost a month to the date of finishing the last time, on June 27, I Defeated Bowser, thus finishing Paper Mario Sticker Star on the Nintendo 3DS. In my playthrough, I collected all 6 royal stickers, all 38 comet pieces and all 16 HP hearts, giving Mario the max HP of 100. Unfortunately, I only discovered 4/5 Luigi stickers, and I came up much shorter on secret doors. Altogether, it took me 20 gameplay hours over the span of about a month (according to my 3DS, I averaged 1 hour 57 minutes per session). And now I see why Nintendo fans and Paper Mario fans alike consider Sticker Star the worst game in the series. A little background to preface this review. When planning for Paper Mario Sticker Star, Shigeru Myamoto has 2 new rules for Paper Mario. First, since Paper Mario is a subseries of the Mario series, all characters had to come from the Mario world (i.e. Mushroom Kingdom) and no new characters could be created. Second, since Paper Mario is a subseries of the Mario series, Mario games do not have complicated stories, so the story must be simple. These 2 rules did a great disservice to the Paper Mario series. In order to keep the story short and sweet, the story downgraded to yet again Bowser kidnapping Peach to get ahold of a magical power. In order to keep the story to just Mario characters, there are no teammates for Mario. Mario works alone. Any "ally" (here defined as a non-combatant NPC) has to be a Toad, and there a lot of Toads in this game. All the enemies are familiar from the Super Mario series. Even Bowser's sidekick got downgraded from Kami Koopa to random generic magikoopa. The only original character is Kersti, a crown sticker personified, but she is the Navi of this Paper Mario game, only there to give hints and tips to Mario when lost. This lack of original characters and plot made the story quite bland. Then there's the gameplay. The "good news" (if you want to call it that) they brought back the turn-based battle system, and it even comes back with time hits. The bad news is that Mario does not gain experience points or level up from the battling. It makes you wonder, "Then what's the point of this battle system?" To make matters worse, in order to execute attacks, you must have a sticker, which can be found around the world and in shops. Without the sticker, you're out of luck. Without the experience points and leveling up, alongside needing stickers, the gamer wants to avoid battles. When caught in a battle, the player wants to run away, which he or she can, as long as he or she mashes A enough. Still sometimes, though, the even that won't allow Mario to escape. The gamer asks, "Why do I have to stay and battle?" and the game answers, "Just because." A game where the player wants to avoid the primary gameplay loop is not a good game. By the end of game and by the end of series, I joined so many others by concluding that Paper Mario: Sticker Star is the worst Paper Mario game in the series.

2 months and 1 day later, on August 28, I defeated Black Bowser (man, that sounds racist), thus finishing Paper Mario: Color Splash for the Nintendo Wii U! In my playthrough I collected all 60 basic cards, 37/72 enemy cards (that's a majority of them!), all 27 thing cards, 24/40 artwork (that's a majority of them!) and 20/33 records (that's a majority of them!). I also earned 5/6 banners, meaning I found all the cut-outs, executed over 200 excellent attacks, collected over 10,000 coins, bought over 200 cards, and beat all Roshambo temples. The only banner I did not earn was the colorization banner because I only reached 61% colorization (hey, that's 3/5!). And I did it all in 40 gameplay hours over a span of 2 months real time. Just like Thousand Year Door, Color Splash had both its positives and negatives. Let's start with the positives. Up to this point, Paper Mario: Color Splash is the most beautiful Paper Mario game, in aesthetic and graphics. Everything in the world genuinely looks like paper or carboard, especially with the white border around all the characters (I know that's a hot take, but I think the white border really sells the paper aesthetic ). Someone might even think Nintendo found a way to make a stop motion video game. Nintendo knew if they want to make the focal point of this Paper Mario game colors, they had to bring the colors. Indeed, they truly brought the colors. All the colors in the game were bright and vibrant.  I especially appreciate how they divided the game's world into 6 main colors, and the levels within the world all have shades of those colors (for example Cherry Lake & Crimson Tower in Red World and Plum Park & Violet Passage in Purple World). Also deserving praise is the soundtrack. Up to this point, Paper Mario: Color Splash has one of the most beautiful soundtracks. Koji Kondo has created one of the best soundtracks in his career. The soundtrack covers a wide array of genres, and none of them seem out of place. The game credits 29 musicians, each for their own instrument, and they deserve it. This game definitely needs to be played with television sound all the way up or wearing headphones or earbuds. Then comes the gameplay. The primary gameplay loop from Paper Mario: Sticker Star returns to Paper Mario: Color Splash. The battle sequence is turn-based, but it is not a turn-based RPG, meaning no experience points and no levels, but time hits still reappear. This time, however, it's more complicated. Instead of stickers, Color Splash uses cards. First, the gamer has to select the card on the touch screen. Nintendo must have heard the complaints about the lack of space for stickers because Color Splash has room for 99 cards, and all cards are the same size, just taking up 1 slot. Rarely will the player run out of room for cards (that only happened once or twice for me). Second, the player has to paint the card. After all, it would not be a color splash without paint. Paint increases damage and likelihood of perfectly timed attacks. Players can use cards without paint, but it will do less damage, and it will less likely lead to multiple attacks. Third, gamers have to flick the card from the Wii U Game Pad to the TV. Yes, 3 moves to execute an attack (four if including pressing A/tapping the screen for timed attacks). It felt like a lot to execute an attack, especially next to Sticker Star, in which the player had to merely tap on the sticker. Furthermore, this new primary game loop requires the gamer to have both cards and paint in inventory to execute an attack. Again, yes, technically an attack does not need paint, but it will hinder without it. And yes, some cards come already painted. Furthermore, to be honest, the game provides plenty of opportunities to collect point, as I personally only ran out of paint once or twice. Nevertheless, it complicates the primary game loop. It has come a far way from merely pressing a button to select an attack, as seen in the first 2 Paper Mario games. The complication becomes even less worth it knowing it will not give experience points or leveling up (oh, more HP comes as a result of beating a world boss and recovering a big paint star). Just like Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Paper Mario: Color Splash divides into 6 worlds. Since this Paper Mario game is subtitled Color Splash, all the worlds have color names. Furthermore, the levels within the world all  the levels within the world all have shades of those colors. For example Cherry Lake & Crimson Tower in Red World, and Plum Park & Violet Passage in Purple World. Nintendo deserves praise for that creativity. On the flip side, however, Color Splash has no good reason why the divide the game into worlds and levels. Dividing into worlds and levels made sense for Sticker Star, for the 3DS may not have the power to handle a single, open world. The original Paper Mario had a single, open world on the Nintendo 64, and Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door had a single, open world on the GameCube. Surely, the Wii U could handle a single, open world. Just like Sticker Star, Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka supervised Color Splash, which explains a lot. If unfamiliar with Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka supervise the Super Mario series. Super Mario games always divide into worlds and levels, so naturally, Paper Mario: Color Splash has to divide into worlds and level to feel like a Super Mario game (perhaps to attract a wider audience?). What makes worlds and level so bad is that it makes apparent the pacing of the game. I kept track how long it took me to get each big color star. It took me (in order of getting the stars) 6 1/4 hours for the red paint star, 4 3/4 hours for the yellow paint star, 5 3/4 hours for the blue paint star, 4 3/5 hours for the purple star, 5 1/2 hours for the orange star, 6 3/4 hours for the green star, 6 2/5 hours to beat Bowser, for a total of 40 hours. Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door took a little less (36 1/2 hours), and Thousand Year Door required collecting stars, but it did not feel so slow because it had a single, open world. Splitting the game into worlds and levels made apparently the slow pacing of the game. Once again, because Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka supervised Paper Mario: Color Splash, the game has no unique characters besides the companion Hugh, a paint can (get the pun?). This companion Hugh is not to be confused with the partners of the original or Thousand Year Door (and maybe Super Paper Mario?) because Hugh does not attack. Just like Kersti in Sticker Star, Hugh merely gives hints, and to be honest, Hugh is not good at giving hints. Whenever the gamer wants a little hint, Hugh gives a big and obvious hint, pretty much saying the answer. Whenever the player needs a big hint, Hugh pretty much says, "I don't know, go ask the Hint Toad," which is all the way back at the "hub level" Prism Plaza and requires 10 coins for a vague hint! Just like Kersti in Sticker Star, Hugh is almost worthless. Also just like Sticker Star, Color Splash has a problem with puzzles that it thinks is obvious, but in reality, it is not so obvious. Similar to Sticker Star, nothing feels more annoying than needing a certain thing to solve the puzzle, but that thing is not in the inventory, so the gamer has to either find the thing again or traverse back to the "hub level" Prism Plaza to buy the thing. Also due to Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka supervising Color Splash, the game plot comes down to Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach. At least this time Bowser delays kidnapping Princess Peach to change things up a bit. [SPOILER ALERT!] The game tries to portray Bowser not in control, rather, controlled by the black paint, but this does not really change things up that much [/END SPOILER]. Probably also due to Miyamoto and Tezuka supervising Color Splash, each world's boss is a Koopaling. Although the first appearance of the Koopalings in the Paper Mario franchise, the oversaturation of the Koopalings in the Super Mario Bros. series makes the boss levels in Color Splash feel unoriginal. Even an oversized standard enemy, another staple of the Super Mario series, would have felt more original. While a bit tempting to mark this game as the worst, even worse than Sticker Star, I ultimately recognize this game is an improved Sticker Star, and since Nintendo improved on Sticker Star with Color Splash, Color Splash, by default, ends up higher than Sticker Star.

Once September rolled around, I started on Paper Mario: The Origami King, the most recent and last entry of the Paper Mario series. About a month and a half later, on October 16, I defeated Olly, thus finishing Paper Mario: The Origami King on the Nintendo Switch! This is the 6th Paper Mario game I have played and finished. During my playthrough, I also rescued 353 Toads. And I did it all in about 27 1/2 gameplay hours over a span of about 1 1/2 months. Aesthetically, Paper Mario: The Origami King looks just as good, if not better, than Paper Mario: Color Splash. The paper is so realistic-looking, somebody might even wonder how Nintendo made a stop-motion video game. This is especially noticeable when the game has ripped up paper and paper confetti, which both add to the aesthetic. The colors still vibe like Color Splash, although it had no reason to, which Color Splash did have a reason. New to Origami King, the water also has a paper aesthetic, and its physics work as it should. From a gameplay perspective, my favorite part of the aesthetic was that the enemies were origami, and the friendly NPC allies were flat paper. This made it easy to distinguish friend or foe, unlike past Paper Mario games, in which distinguishing friend or foe came down to past Mario experiences, and even that was sometimes unreliable. The soundtrack is good, just good. The music itself has the quality of the past 2 Paper Mario games. It just doesn't have the variety as Color Splash did. Don't get me wrong, Origami King's soundtrack isn't bad, but I would prefer the soundtracks of Sticker Star or Color Splash over Origami King (probably the only compliment I will give those 2 games). The premise of this game is that Olly, the Origami King (hence the title), wants to turn the world of Paper Mario into an Origami World and make himself king over it. He kidnaps Princess Peach and turns her into origami. He also kidnaps Princess Peach's castle by ripping it out of its foundation and wrapping it with 5 streamers. Mario must unwrap the 5 streamers to enter Princess Peach's castle and save Peach. Don't worry, though, Mario has Olly's sister, Olivia (yes, I know, how creative), to guide Mario. Finally Nintendo goes back to original characters!... well, they sort of go back to original characters. Well, technically, the only original characters are Olly and Olivia, but it at least makes the plot not a typical Mario vs. Bowser over Peach. And Olivia is tolerable as a companion. She has fun going on an adventure, and her advice actually helps. Paper Mario: The Origami wanted to focus on puzzles. Yes, as Nintendo continues to debate what genre the Paper Mario franchise will be, this time it tries a an action-adventure puzzle game. Let me tell you, though, when I say puzzle game, I mean puzzle game. Puzzles saturate this entire game, even the combat. Again, this entry in the Paper Mario series is pretty much stripped of its RPG elements. At the closest to an RPG, Mario's confetti bag increases in size after every boss battle, but that's about it when it comes to gaining experience and leveling up. Mario can gain more HP, but that comes by discovering hearts hidden in areas. Mario can increase attack and defense power, but that comes via buying items in a shop. Again, this creates the problem of encouraging gamers to avoid enemy encounters. To further discourage enemy encounters is the way battles are done. It's no longer a simple turn-based combat. Now the player has to line up enemies to create patterns, which in turn creates maximum damage. I can't count the number of times I paid off Toads to do it for me (yes, that's an option) or I just simply dealt lower damage because I gave up on the puzzle. It made me wonder just a one-worded question: Why? Why is this a thing? Why do it this way? The good news is that the gamer no longer needs stickers or cards to attack. The bad news is that upgraded weapons break, meaning the player will have to buy them again or suffice with the basic weapon, which do not break. The secondary gameplay loop is that you have to beat a vellumental creature halfway as a miniboss to gain a new, powerful attack, and then you have to defeat a boss to release the streamer. The game splits up into 5 "chapters" (besides the tutorial prologue and the final boss epilogue). 5 streamers means 5 bosses, but there is only 4 vellumentals. The vellumentals are earth, water, fire and ice. See something missing here? They could have easily made an air or wind vellumental, making 5 vellumentals and 5 bosses for 5 streamers. For the bosses, Nintendo really grasps the paper aesthetic, as they are all office supplies. Somehow Nintendo made bosses that are both very creative and lack creativity at the same time. Despite my gameplay session lasting 27 1/2 hours, I wish it would have lasted longer. They could have easily made a 6th streamer, an orange one. The miniboss before the final boss could have been the one guarding the 6th streamer, and it could have incorporated part of the final boss battle into that boss, so no need for a 6th vellumental. Yes, I know I shouldn't complain about not enough to do without fully completing the game, but fully completing the game is a collectathon: find all Toads, treasures, ? blocks and holes. That's not fun; that's boring. I would have liked some more secondary gameplay loop, but not the 1st or 3rd one. [SPOILER ALERT!] The final boss was dragged out. Yes, I know that typical Nintendo final bosses have 3 phrases, but the middle phase was unnecessary. The first phase has Olly transforming all vellumentals, and Mario has to figure out the type advantage vellumental. Technically, Mario doesn't have to face all the vellumentals. He can do it in 1 or 2 vellumentals. It all depends on how long it takes the gamer to figure it out, since Olly can replenish health. I would have preferred 1 health bar for each vellumental, instead of recharging health from Olly. The 2nd phase introduces brand new gameplay mechanics, which means it was totally unnecessary. The 3rd phase involves solving one last slide and spin puzzle, which is fair due to the primary gameplay loop, but the only problem is that is periodically is interrupted by QTEs, which can 1-hit or 2-hit kill Mario (also, this Paper Mario entry also has the problem of random 1-hit KOs throughout the game like past entries). The slide and spin puzzle is legit, but the QTEs are not. Either somehow introduce QTEs in the primary gameplay loop or do not bring into the final boss battle. [/END SPOILER]vWhile Paper Mario: The Origami King has realized that the gameplay of Sticker Star and Color Splash is not the way to go for the future of the Paper Mario franchise, it still stands far off from the RPGs of the original or Thousand Year Door. The Origami King truly does sit in the middle. If gamers still longs for the RPGs like the original and Thousand Year Door, they will feel disappointed by Origami King, but outside that, the player will enjoy a major improvement over Sticker Star and Color Splash.

And 9 1/2 months into the year, I have played and finished all 6 Paper Mario games! 🙂 Over those 9 1/2 months of the year, I played 163 3/4 hours of Paper Mario games, which means I averaged 27 2/7 hours per game. During my Year of Paper Mario, I felt the highs and lows of the Paper Mario series. I understand why the Paper Mario fanboys feel so upset. I would agree with the Paper fanboys that the first two games in the franchise rank the highest. I too would like to see them return to that form. Nintendo took the right step forward by abandoning the format used in Sticker Star and Color Splash, but I'm not sure Origami King has the right format either. I will disagree with the fanboys, however, in saying that Paper Mario should abandon their attention to the paper aesthetic. Indeed, I though Nintendo found some cool ways to incorporate it. I just don't think that paper has to take the forefront of the primary gameplay loop. I would agree with the fanboys in saying that the Paper Mario series should return to the RPG elements of the first two games. After all, Nintendo originally intended Paper Mario to succeed Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. I guess that still makes Super Mario: Legend of the Seven Stars the best Mario RPG, and I guess that means that if Nintendo fanboys ever want to see a truly good Mario RPG again, Nintendo must team up with Square Enix, the king of RPGs. Make it happen Nintendo and Square Enix!

What happened in the 7th generation of video games

Now that E3 is all done with, and since I only gave you 4 video game reviews, I would like to get back to reviewing video games. But right now you caught me in the middle of going through the Fable series (currently a triology, but that will change within a year), and once I go through the side quests and achievements that I want, I will be ready to give them a proper review. Until then, to hold you over, I'd like to discuss an observation I made while watching E3. I was watching E3 over the Internet through GameTrailers.com. On the side of the streamming video was a chat where viewers could input comments. As XBox was introducing Kinect games, and Play Station was introducing Move games I saw comments that said, "Kinect is ruining XBox" and "Move is ruining PlayStation." The easy way to dismiss these comments is that they from fanboys of the other consoles, just wanting to get the upper hand on the fanboys of other consoles. But I did see more generic comments on how there is too much focus, maybe even the term "dependancy," on motion control. People are complaining about the new use of motion controls, crying out to go back to the 2 analog stick, 4 shoulder buttons and 4 face button method. I believe they fail to see not only the technological advances , but also the advances in gaming itself. So I'm going to spend this blog justifying motion control as an important movement in video games. Where should we start? We could technically start all the way back to the 1st generation of consoles, but we'll keep it simple for those who do not know the whole history of video games. Let's start with the last generation, the 6th generation.

But before I go into that, we're going to need to define a definition, and then separate into to categories. The term is "gamer." The term "gamer" arose when when we realized the term "nerd" no longer worked. The stereotype that people who play a lot of video gamers were nerds was simply not always true. Someone could always play video games and not be a nerd, and someone could be a nerd and not play video games, or only play video games a little. So the term "gamer" arose to describe someone who played a lot of video games (besides, it has a more positive connotation than "nerd"). But still, the term is too broad. How do we differ the guy who can play any Halo game on the highest difficulty with all the skulls from the 3-year old kid who is playing Sesame Street and Disney Land on Kinect? How do we separate the Level 85 World of Warcraft player from the middle-aged woman who plays Solitaire and Hearts on her computer during her lunch break? How do we differentiate between the person who can play all instruments on expert for both Guitar Hero and Rock Band from the elderly man who is playing Wii Sports for the "exercise" class at his retirement home? So we categorize the term "gamer" into two categories with two news terms and two new definitions. You have your "casual gamers" and your "hardcore gamers" (which I've seen shortened to "core gamers"). Your casual gamers are your the kids playing Sesame Street and Disneyland, the middle-aged playing your basic computer games during lunch break, and your elderly playing fitness games, and many other such examples. Your casual gamers are the ones who are playing merely and purely for entertainment reasons. They are not into keeping track, earning achievements/trophies, or improving. Playing video games is more of a social thing, something you do when people get together. They play video games in the "spare time of their spare time," if there is such a thing. It's not a top prioroity, and they put other hobbies before it. On the other hand, you have your hardcore gamers, or your core gamers. While they still play for entertainment, they take a more serious approach to their entertainment. They do want to improve themselves, so they can play at the highest difficulty. So they do keep track of how well they are doing, and push themselves to do their best. So it is typical of them to be concerned about achievements or trophies. Video games are the first thing they do with free time, even making free time just for video games. Because they have played so much and push themselves to do better, they will be the ones who have the highest level character(s) in RPG games, they will be the sharp-shooters and snipers in FPS games, and they will be the ones who can play any instrument on expert when it comes to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Now that we know these terms, everything else will make sense.

Now we can take our step back to the 6th generation. The 6th generation of video game consoles began with Sega taking the lead with the Sega Dreamcast. The Sega Dreamcast set the standard for the 6th generation, display graphics and gameplay that was new for the time. But the Dreamcast's glory would be short-lived. Sony's PlayStation 2 entered soon after and overshadowed the Dreamcast. That, and Microsoft entering the video game race with the XBox, not only killed the Dreamcast, but also brought to an end Sega's long run at being a first-party, console-making developer. Nintendo, seeing this, knew they would receive the same fate if they did not keep up. Behind in the scenes, they were working on a motion-control system, which we know today as the Wii, but at the time, it wasn't ready. The Nintendo 64 was outdated compared to the XBox and PlayStation 2, and wouldn't last much. So Nintendo released the GameCube, a system with a controller similar to the other systems, but different in everything from graphics to disc size. This system was merely meant to hold Nintendo over until the production of the Wii came to fruition. Although Nintendo did later on admit this, no one needed to say it because everyone knew it. Because of this, Nintendo lost many of its core gamers. All their core gamers went to either PlayStation 2 or XBox. The only hardcore gamers that remained were Nintendo fanboys, who clinged on the Nintendo franchises of old, like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong and Kirby. Nintendo would not die out, but it would fall behind in the console race, with the XBox and PlayStation 2 neck and neck for the lead.

Then came the current generation of gaming, the 7th generation. Microsoft took the lead by quickly ditching its original XBox console with a short life and introducing the XBox 360 in November 2005. Sony would respond to their archrivals in exactly a year with the PlayStation 3. The PS3 rivaled the XBox in many ways, yet had some unique features of its. Still, neither system got a tight grip on the hardcore gamer base. Each fanboy just stuck to the same first party developer of their last system. Then a week after PS3 release, Nintendo joined in the 7th generation with their new system, the Wii. Unlike the PS3, the Wii did not concentrate on matching its rivals. One could tell because a lot of aspects of the new console, from graphics capabilities to hard drive capacity, lacked greatly from the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. Instead, it took the industry in a whole new direction. They introduced the video game world to motion controls. And then the console race went from there.

So where did go from there? Well, Nintendo was ridiculed. A lot of people, from Microsoft and Sony, to the XBox and PlayStation fanboys, from the critics and to the hardcore gamers, pointed and laughed at the Wii. Even third party developers pointed and laughed, followed by them walking out, deciding not to make their third party games for the Wii. It would seem that the Wii would fall even further behind in the console wars, even maybe dying out like the Dreamcast. So it would seem. But that wasn't the case. You have to remember that video gaems have been called everything from entertainment to art, in the end, the video game industry is ultimately a business. And as true with all businesses, it comes down to the income and the profits, in short, the money. Within 2 years, the Wii would sell more than the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 combined. When it came the numbers, both in consoles sold and income, Wii was the leader. There were a lot of reasons for this. Probably because the new technology the Wii offered wowed everyone. It's also possible it sold so well because it was the most affordable of the 3 consoles. But I believe the biggest reason was because Nintendo knew who its target market was: the casual gamer. Nintendo knew it became first party developer for the casual gamer. So it asked itself, "What could Nintendo do to reach more casual gamers, and even make people who aren't gamers casual gamers?" The result was the Wii, and it's all thanks to the Wii motion controls. Since the motion controls were new technology and a new way to game, everyone had to learn how to use them and adapt them, even the hardcore gamers. So this put everyone, even the hardcore gamers, on an equal level. And so Nintendo strengthened its casual gamer audience by turning new gamers to casual gamers. This led to the hardcore gamers to cling to an even stronger allegiance to the other consoles.

Let me best explain this by using a metaphor. Remember high school? Remember in high school there was the popular group, the cool kids, the in-crowd? Now with the title "popular," you would think that means that this group would be the biggest group. But that's not true. In fact, it was usually the smallest group, only containing about 1-2% of the your class's student body (maybe 5% if you had a small, private school). There might have been bigger groups of friends, but they weren't the popular ones. That was that small group of cool kids, the in-crowd. They were the ones who said what was cool or not. Even if the majority of students liked it, if the in-crowd shot it down, it was uncool. Even though the popular group was the minority, they had a voice like they were the majority. That's what happened with the 7th generation gaming consoles. The hardcore gamers, both the XBox 360 fanboys and PlayStation 3 fanboys, were the cool kids/in-group/popular group. Even though there were the less XBox 360 gamers and PS3 gamers, they got control of the third party developers and became the voice of power. And they harshly ridiculed and criticized the Wii. The casual gamers of the Wii, although the majority, were picked on and pushed around, as if they were a minority. And as the Wii casual gamers grew in number, and possible strength, the XBox360 and PS3 hardcore took a harder grip on the on their power, throwing more criticisms. Even the critics joined, hardly paying attention to the Wii.

This isn't the end, though. This is where it gets interesting. What happened next was jealousy. Wii got jealous of the XBox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Although leading in hardware sales and financial income, the Wii wanted to be like the XBox360 and PS3, being popular with the critics and third party developers. XBox and PlayStation got jealous of Wii. Although having the third party developers and critics standing behind them and supporting them with power, they wanted to be like the Wii, in numbers sold and income earned. Here's a better way to look at it. Wii became jealous of XBox and PlayStation because they had the hardcore gamers, and Nintendo wanted the hardcore gamers, too. PlayStation and XBox got jealous of Wii because it had the large audience that is the casual gamers, and they wanted the casual gamers, too.

At E3 in 2010, the big 3 first party developres went out to appease the others' audience. Nintendo went to appeal to the hardcore gamers, and XBox and PlayStation went to to appeal to the casual gamers. It wasn't pretty. Both XBox and PlayStation realized that it was Wii's motion controls that pulled it in the casual gamer audience, so both made their own motion control, both the hardware and the software. And where the one excelled the other one hurted, for XBox had good hardware, but bad software, and PlayStation had good software, but bad hardware. Let me explain. XBox's Kinect clearly was the best hardware. They made a sensor with cameras and a microphone, so there was no need for a controller. Clearly a technological advance for the modern day. The software, however, lacked. Most of their games seemed to be a form of a Wii game (for example, instead of "Wii Sports," there was "Kinect Sports"). All their Kinect games did reach to the casual gamer, but in return, they neglected their hardcore gamer for them. At E3 2009, XBox did introduce hardcore games for the hardcore gamer, but they were your standard controller, with no change. XBox had accidently created a dicotomy in their company. It was either casual gamers with Kinect, or hardcore gamers with a controller, but it could never be both. There was a clear, distinctive barrier between the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers of XBox, and the decider was either the controller or the Kinect. That's what I mean when I say XBox had the hardware, but not the software. PlayStation had the opposite problem. They knew how to naturally incorporate the new Move into the software they had. On the day it was released, you could get updates to many old games to include Move. Altogether, the smartest move (no put intended) PlayStation made was making motion control in their games optional. If you want to use motion control, go ahead, but if you like the classic PlayStation controller, stick with it. Yet the hardware lacked because, let's face it, the PlayStation Move controller is virtually the Wii's controllers except with more buttons and colorful bulb at the end. Heck, I have a habit of accidently calling the PlayStation Move Navigator a Nunchuck because they look and act so much the same. With the Wii clone games, you're pretty much playing an HD Wii. Will someone be willing to $100-200 more dollars to simply play Wii with HD graphics? Probably not. But maybe we're looking at this in hindsight. Maybe if we look at it in the bigger picture, as if it were only the first small steps forward, we'd get a better idea.

At E3 2010, Nintendo didn't do any better. They wanted to reach out to the hardcore gamers, but their idea of reaching out to hardcore gamers was just reaching out to the Nintendo fanboys, whether it be strengthened their relationship to the fanboys they still had, or winning back the old fanboys they lost during the GameCube and Wii fiasco. So what did we see? We saw another Mario games, another Donkey Kong game, another Zelda game, another Metroid game, another Kirby game, another Star Fox game, and they even reached far back as Kid Icarus for the 3DS. While this would technically somewhat count for the hardcore gamer, it is really the hardcore Nintendo fanboy gamer, which is a small fraction of hardcore gamers. What Nintendo needed to do was secure the third party developers on their side (and not just Activision). But I will say it again, look at the bigger picture, instead of the hindsight of back then. This may have been a small step in the big picture.

That's why I was so psyched and excited for E3 this year. All 3 first party developers were now making the big steps to what they wanted to achieve. This year at E3, XBox shrunk the gap between hardcore gamers on controller and casual gamers on Kinect. The best examples are Mass Effect 3, Forza 4 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. All these games are labeled "Better with Kinect" because while they don't require Kinect, Kinect does enhance the playing experience. In Mass Effect 3, a player can choose dialogue by speaking it and a player can command his CPU allies with voice commands. In Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, weapon customization, both the creating and testing, can be done through Kinect. With Forza 4, a player still drives with a standard controller or a wheel controller, but he looks at his mirrors by turning his head, using Kinect. Maybe "Better with Kinect" is the way XBox needs to go, as PlayStation Move did. But hold on before I more onto PlayStation Move. There are games that do look promising that require Kinect. E3 showed us Dance Central 2, Kinect Star Wars, Ryse, Raving Rabbids: Alive and Kicking and Fable: The Journey. But if you look at XBox's website, there's more. Check out Rise of Nightmare and Gunstringer, both games that are Kinect-required, but look like some pretty good story, gameplay and graphics. Kinect definitely has a future, for games that both require Kinect and games that Kinect makes better. PlayStation also took a step forward by closing the gap between casual gamers and hardcore gamers with Move. With Move in their hardcore games, they are introducing more cinematic games to the casual gamer. At the same time, for the hardcore gamer, they keep their PlayStation Six-axis controller for the hardcore gamer who is not comfortable with the Move.

At E3 in 2010, Nintendo made the right step towards getting back the hardcore gamers with the Wii U. They knew they were missing the hardcore gamers, and they knew why they were missing them. First, hardcore gamers like good graphics. Nintendo's Wii U has 1080p graphic capabilities. Second, hardcore gamers like the standard controller. While at first glace we might all see the new Wii U controller as an iPad with buttons and knobs, it is virtually the same as XBox and PS's Six-axis controller, except it has a good-sized touch screen in the middle. Just like the XBox controller and PS Six-Axis, it has 2 analog sticks, 4 face buttons and 4 shoulder buttons. Third, hardcore gamers like third party games. Nintendo knew that there was too reasons the third party developers were not interested in Nintendo: the Wii lacked the graphic capabilities and the online abilities. As I said before, Nintendo's Wii U has 1080p graphics. They also did fix the online capabilites. Once all of that was said and done, Nintendo gladly showed us 10 big name third party developers behind the Wii U, and all these game developers already had game ideas. When the Wii U is released, I believe the hardcore gamers will cautiously and slowly return to Nintendo.

In conclusion, in the beginnning of the 7th generation of video games, Nintendo introduced motion control and introduced new people to gaming as casual gamers. In response, XBox and PlayStation strengthened their relationship with the hardcore gamers. A few years into the 7th generation, each console got jealous of the opposite side, wanting to expand their audience into the other gamer population. This produced XBox 360 Kinect, PlayStation 3 Move and Nintendo Wii U. While rocky at first, all 3 are learning to utilize their new technology to their audience. Kinect is not ruining XBox 360 and Move is not ruining PlayStation 3. Instead, it will improve their systems once utilized correctly. In fact, I would say that XBox 360 Kinect and PlayStation 3 Move is like a half generation, like the 7 1/2 generation. It's not a new system, but a hardware addition to the current system that brings it more up-to-date. Kinect and Move is the future of the XBox and PlayStation, respectively. In a CNN interview after E3, Sony told CNN they were committed to the PS3 to at least 2013-2014, and Microsoft said they were committed to XBox360 until 2015-2016. I think the introduction of Move and Kinect prove this. So hardcore gamers who complain about motion controls will learn to adapt with to the new controls, just like they learned to adapt to 4 analog sticks and 4 shoulder buttons. Heck, I believe if were in some alternative universe where touch screens, voice commands and motion controllers came before analog sticks and buttons, we'd hear the hardcore gamers complain, "Analog sticks and buttons are ruining gaming!" Besides, I seriously doubt these hardcore gamers will completely stop playing video games if it was all motion control. As for Nintendo's Wii U, we'll have to wait and see at E3 2012 if it is just half generation step into the 7 1/2 generation, or if it is a true next generation console for the 8th generation of gaming. That will also determine the fate of Nintendo. It will either bring back the hardcore gamer, or it will be forever branded the console of casual gamers.

Alright, back to reviews for "The Spoiler Review." As promised, we'll start the Fable series with, of course, the original Fable for the original XBox.

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Exclusively for the Nintendo Wii
Rating: 4 stars

With many Nintendo franchises, when Nintendo comes out with a new system, they make a new game to update the franchise. With the worldwide success with Super Smash Bros., Nintendo of course had to come out with a new Super Smash Bros. The game for the Game Cube they called: Super Smash Bros. Melee., called just "Melee" or SSBM for short. While not fully improved to the best it can be, Melee was a big step up for its predecessor. Since for the most part the game play has stayed the same, I'm not going to go too much into that. If you want to, see my review on the first game. What I will focus on this review is the improvements.

The first improvement is there number of extra characters. It went from 14 to 26. 12 more is a huge jump up, taking fully ahold of the GameCube's memory capacity. For the most part, the character additions are good. They add new characters, like the Ice Climbers and Game & Watch, sidekicks, like Falco and Roy, and even enemies, like Bowser and Ganondorf. The bad news is a lot of these characters a virtually repeats of other characters, with the exception of stat changes. Marth and Roy are virtually the same. Pikachu and Pichu are virtually the same. Mario and Dr. Mario are virtually the same. Link and Young Link are virtually the same. Fox and Falco are virtually the same. But this isn't limited to see characters within the same game. Ganondorf and Captain Falcon are pretty much the same, except Captain Falcon is faster and Ganondorf is stronger. Mewtwo is like a cross between Samus and Ness. I'm not sure what's worse: the repeats within the same game franchises or with characters from two different franchises being the same. And I'm not sure I'm a big fan of having characters from Japan only games. Sure the Japanese audience relates, but not the American Audience. And some of these characters can be a pain to unlock. For example, Mewtwo is so hard some gamers just left their systems on for 24 hours instead of try to earn him the other way.

Stages are also improved. There are now 29 stages, much more than the last game, another sign Nintendo is using the full power of the GameCube. Some stages take a while to earn, but once you get them, they are so worth it. With so many stages, it's hard to get tired of them. They give a whole new experience. And once again, they continue to bring back good nostalgic memories to fanboys as they remember these locations from franchise games.

But probably the best addition is adding more to the single player mode. Of course, they kept classic SSB solo mode: 10 stages leading up to Master Hand. But on top of that, they added "Adventure Mode." Adventure Mode is when a player chooses a character, brings them through a level made up from a familiar setting from a well-known Nintendo franchise. While there is still no story to this, it's fun because it allows you to have Nintendo characters go through a world from another Nintendo character. It's more than the typical multiplayer play, while still involving a bit of it. But wait, there's still more. Another mode can be unlocked called "All-Star Mode." All-star Mode is when the player has to beat every character on one life, with only 3 times to replenish health. While this is similar to Classic mode in the sense it's just the regular fighting, it at least gives the challenge to endure. In ordering which solo mode I like, it would be first Adventure mode, second All-star Mode, and third Classic Mode.
Multiplayer also has some improvements. Along with more characters and more stages, more items are added to game play, making it new every time. On top of 3 B moves from SSB, a 4th B move is added with a side B. A new game play is added to multiplayer. In "Coin play" coins come out of a character depending on how hard he is hit. The other player can collect these coins, and the richest one at the end wins. While it's not really popular, it at least makes things news if the gamers need a change up.

Under Training, there are more improvements. On top of the previous training, there is now "Home Run Context," where you have a few seconds to beat up on a sand bag, and then send it launching with a homerun bat to see how far it goes. There is also "Special Melee", which consist as such things as beat 10 wire frame enemies and beat 100 wire frame enemies. Also, there is "Events," which has the player perform a certain task against certain enemies on a certain stage. More events unlock as previous ones are defeated. Simply put, there's more to do in this game, for both the multiplayer and single player.

Even unlocking things is an improvement. Not only do you continue to unlock characters and stages, you also unlock trophies for doing certain things, like getting through a classic mode, adventure mode or all-star mode with a character. More trophies can be unlocked with vending machine in the shape of a gumball machine, using the tokens earned in gameplay. The only problem with trophies is with so many of them, it can take a long while to earn him, almost too long. For example, each character has 3 trophies: one for classic mode, one for adventure mode, one for all-star mode. Do the math: 26 characters x 3 gameplays = 76. A collector would go crazy playing this game so much for these simple trophies.

Heck, even the graphics are improved. No longer are there the 64-bit graphics of the N64, but the Nintendo takes full hold of the graphical power of the GameCube. Characters look more like they game they came from. Even the blank characters have improved. They've gone from Polygons to Wire Frames.

In conclusion, Super Smash Bros. Melee made many improvements from its predecessor Super Smash Bros. I've been trying hard this review not to think about its successor, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but I can't help it. And it shows Melee is still lacking some things. More characters could be introduced, and characters could be much different. Stages could be way different, too. While Adventure was a better solo mode, it still lacked a story. Hello! Super Smash Bros. is the most epic Nintendo crossover! Fanboys have been writing crossover stories for years! Surely professional writers could do it. So while Super Smash Bros. Melee is better than Super Smash Bros., it is still not the best it could be.