Entertaining and nostalgic, but not without its foibles.

User Rating: 7.9 | Super Paper Mario WII
I will state the main points here to save people some time if they don’t feel like reading too much:
Is It Fun? Yes, you will be entertained, although annoyed by some excessive text and pacing issues at times.
Platformer or RPG?: Platforming with transient RPG elements.
Easy to Play?: Yes, at worst you learn from basic trial and error; the game does a good job of pointing you in the right direction. Minor wiimote D-pad or configuration issues for the large fingered.
Difficult?: Depends on your experience, but nothing that will have you throwing your wiimote across the room or into the television.
Worth Buying? Depends, lot excessively long and can make an excellent weekend rental. Good for purist (100%er’s). You might want to wait until the price drops.

I would be remiss to not state my history concerning this game and thus my biases for any readers to understand. Growing up since the “Good Old 8 Bit Days” especially with platforming games like the original Mario Bros and Megaman games; the recent trends (especially for a poor college student who can’t afford more than one system so I stick with Nintendo systems) have not had copious re-imaginations of the genre. As such, it is important to mention that after 15+ years of practice at such games, well… difficulty might be limited. I also have not played the previous Paper Mario games. That is enough digression for now; I will try to answer some of the questions I asked too. As my own personal rating system is slightly different I will submit to the ends that gamespot reviewing in my grading and progression of the review:

Gameplay:
Super Paper Mario (SPM) is a modified platforming game with minor RPG elements. The platforming aspect of the game is superb, but also forgiving as there are only a handful of moments of truly precise platform jumping where it is either make the jump onto a minimally sized pillar or fall into “the pit of doom.” Being a large fingered male I would make a side note that I often had some minor difficulty concerning the size of the D-pad of the wiimote: for example as the playable character Bowser, the Down D-pad command causes him to breathe fire and ceases his movement. In several cases this occurred at times I really did not want it. To the point of gameplay and the wiimote, I would also take point in arguing that the special moves for the switchable playable characters could have been switched to the A button (which for everyone but Mario becomes worthless). My last little rant against the control scheme would be that activating the menu requires the 1 & 2 buttons pressed in synch, which sometimes would activate a jump or pixl and could have been transferred to the B button instead (again this is my first wii game to have really played through and hopefully developers will add wiimote customizing scheme or programming features in the future). The RPG elements of significance is that you level up through experience from killing enemies with a variety of attacks, from jumping and fire breath to several pixls (basically interchangeable abilities/“characters”to the 1 button), thus you do an amount of damage through an attack vs defense value and that you have your own hitpoints. The use of items is the traditional RPG style, of which a little wiimote pointing of shaking is involved. The puzzles (often pixl ability related) are simple and uninspired. In the end the gameplay is an excellent and nostalgic platforming experience with RPG elements making it slightly more entertaining (albeit far easier); with most of the non-platforming elements are transient at best.

Graphics:
The graphical nature to the end of making things “paper” is unique and interesting. As the gamespot reviewer mentioned: once you flip to 3D, you realize that it is mainly empty space. Given that the paper aspect and nostalgic feeling work, the worlds in SPM do not go far to titillating the eye (not that it was particularly expected). While nothing “wow’s” you, nothing is a glaring hindrance to your visual experience. The one problem is that the once flipped, there is only one, non-pivoting camera angle, which can irk at times. I believe “Nothing Special” would best describe SPM graphics.

Story:
The story… save all worlds from utter destruction by collecting Pure Hearts; well what can really be said? While this game attempts to make a heartfelt story, it falls short and all twists and turns gaming veterans (probably anyone who’s had much experience with fictional narratives at all) will know exactly what’ll be happening. While many might complain about a lack of voice acting and a lot of text; the text is well written in certain points, including several surprising gameplay moments and moments that you just sit back and laugh for a while. That being said, the majority of the text is rather fluffy and pointless drivel. I personally found myself simply clicking straight through it to get back to platforming. It’s a nice story, but you are more likely to want to get back to the action rather than reading through all of the text.

Sound:
Something that really depressed me, especially in regards to the Mario franchise. Each game prior has made an effort to make a handful of songs truly recognizable (the original overworld theme/underground/water/castle from the original, most of the music from Super Mario World or for instance, who could not know the “Slider” music from Mario 64?). In this case SPM has rather uninventive, sometimes annoying musical scores for the bulk of the gameplay. The boss music and character themes are a little better, but nothing like some of the more recent game musical scores.

Value:
The game has a decent amount of replay value, especially since you can play back through with all your abilities in tact. There is a plethora of collectables (cards, recipes items) and some extraneous pixls. While most of this can be all well and good, there is little significance to actually taking the likely 30+ hours to collect everything, but have almost negligible impact on your game. Obviously this is great for purists and non-completionists just will not care. To this end though, I would recommend renting, as it can be beaten easily within 15 hours of play.

Overall:
Unless you are a purist, likely SPM is best as a rental for the casual players. It is definitely worth playing, especially if you miss platforming or want to experience the genre in an “old school” sense.