Super Paper Mario combines excellent platforming sequences with witty dialogue and a very compelling storyline.
Let's start with the storyline. It's awesome. It starts out like a typical Mario RPG. You have to obtain eight Pure Hearts in order to save the world from turning into oblivion by Count Bleck. Count Bleck is a new character that just seems evil at first, but as time goes on, you'll see that he actually has a painful past. The dialogue is as funny as ever, and World 3-4 has got to be one of the most hilarious levels in gaming history, with gaming/anime nerd, Francis. It's a joy. Seriously.
The gameplay is truly brilliant. Not everything is as it seems. You have four characters: Mario, Bowser, Peach, and Luigi. Luigi can jump super high as usual. Peach can float with her umbrella. Bowser does extra damage with his fire. Mario, the character you'll obviously play most as, is the only one that can switch from 2D to 3D. It's really quite awesome how many puzzles work with both dimensions. Not everything is as it seems, and when you are stuck, you might have to flip the dimension to see if you can find something you didn't see before.
The puzzles don't seem to be as hard this time around, but they still provide a fairly good challenge. Most of the puzzles are done in the second and third dimension. For example, you'll have to flip to the third dimension to see these certain blocks. Once there, you must hit the blocks to see them in the second dimension. You can then hop on those blocks and do the required task. It sounds simple, but things get more complicated as the game goes along.
One complaint I have with the third dimension is that sometimes things just seem… barren. The second dimension looks excellent, but the third… Not so much. Sometimes everything just seems empty. For the most part, it's "good," but nothing to be praised about.
The combat plays like the traditional Super Mario Brothers would, except you have a health meter, fortunately. You just walk around, jumping on enemies, but you actually get experience points that raises your stats. The enemies are also a lot tougher than the original Super Mario Brothers' enemies, of course, and sometimes you'll have to do more than just jumping on them to defeat them. You can also use defensive and offensive items, but this honestly just makes things even easier than it is. The game is just… really easy.
Throughout the game, you'll encounter Pixls. Pixls are interesting looking creatures that have certain powers. One grants you the ability to use a hammer. One will uncover hidden objects by pointing to it on the screen. One will give you the ability to ground pound. One will carry you across spikes. There's more, but that's just to name a few. Think of them as the partners you had in the past Paper Mario games, except they don't play a primary role in combat.
Mostly, Super Paper Mario plays a lot like the past two Paper Mario games, story-wise. After you require a Pure Heart, you'll go back to Merlyn and find out where to go next. You then proceed to the next chapter and solve the problem there. Each chapter has a different story to it. Most of the time, a certain group will have a problem that you must solve, and you just so happen to get a Pure Heart out of it. It sounds simple, but the stories are actually… very enjoyable to read. I have never had an RPG's story capture me like Super Paper Mario's. It really is quite brilliant, and I like the colorful charm they have.
To play the game, you flip the Wii Remote on its side, and then play it old school. The motion sensing is not forced, and not used that often. You control Mario with the D-Pad, and you jump and do other actions with the 1 and 2 buttons. It works out better than you'd think.
The graphics are colorful and what you would expect from a Paper Mario game. Although it was originally supposed to be a GameCube game, it still looks like a pretty darn good Wii game. It sounds even better than it looks. There's no voice acting, but the tune every town has are all hummable.
The game is fairly long. It took me twenty-two hours to beat, and there's plenty of more things to do after you beat the game. I admit that finding recipes and fighting one hundred enemies in a row isn't exactly the most exciting thing, but it is a nice distraction from the main game.
In the end, Super Paper Mario is an interesting twist on the Paper Mario series. Think Paper Mario combined with Super Mario Brothers, and you have yourself a winner. The boss battles are fun, the puzzles put up a good challenge, the dialogue is better than ever, the humor is perfectly intact, the characters are all memorable, the gameplay is solid, and the overall game is just awesome. It's one of those games that you'll look back on and smile, because there's nothing quite like it. Super Paper Mario is one of the finest games on the Nintendo Wii, and you owe it to yourself to play it, especially if you are a fan of platformers, RPGs, and most of all, Mario.