Friday, September 30, 2016

Super Paper Mario Part 3: Odds and Ends


Greetings yet again, weary web travelers! Sit and gather round the fireside for toasty tales of amateur game analysis. Don’t actually do that though. What, did you bring your laptop on a camping trip? Knock that off, there’s friends to tolerate or s’mores to be swiped! Only reason to bring a laptop while camping is to look up how to avoid a deadly bear mauling. I’ll give you a hint: It’s not by sitting out in the open with a laptop, you doofus. By the time your browser loads “Buzzfeed’s 11 Most Shocking Bear Accidents” the animal will be enjoying it alongside a midnight snack of your succulent flesh.

And what’s the alternative? That you’re started an indoor campfire next to your desktop? I appreciate your dedication to verisimilitude, but this blog isn’t worth a case of fatal arson! At best, it’s worth a few felony misdemeanors and some light insurance fraud. Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yes. Super Paper Mario. We gon’ talk ‘bout it mo’.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Super Paper Mario Part 2: RPG Mechanics


Welcome back, spambots and tumbleweeds that make up my recurring viewers! Last time on our thrilling adventures of hobbyist armchair game blogging, we cracked open Super Paper Mario. We took a break for the more literal minded among you to tape your game discs back together, but now you’re all back, for some reason. Today I’ll be talking about the gameplay unrelated to the old run-and-jump. Specifically RPG elements. So enough intro! As a famous man* once said: “Let’s-a go!”

*Though for the life of me I can’t remember who. I think it might’ve been a wrestler. The Great Gorgonzola or something.

Numbers That Go Up


Super Paper Mario handles RPG elements poorly.

There. We’ve got it out in the open, and now we’re gonna break it down, piece by piece. We’ll start with one of the most basic elements of an RPG: leveling up.

Just don’t level up Resistance, you casual.

Friday, September 16, 2016

Super Paper Mario Part 1: Jumpin and Jammin



Introduction


The first two Paper Mario games are some of my favorites of all time. The first game was a light-hearted storybook adventure with a colorful cast of characters and locations. It created combat that was fairly simple, but in doing so actually drilled down to the essentials for refreshingly minimalistic gameplay. It offered the strategy of turn-based RPGs with none of the unneeded complexity, and an added boost of tactile/timing based challenge.

The second game, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was an improvement on the already excellent original in several ways. The combat received a plethora of small but notable tune-ups, the dialogue was funnier, the plots were more varied, and the soundtrack was phenomenal. The series was an amazing one, and eventually I’ll have to do them justice with their own write-ups here on the blog. Especially since…well, it’d help to keep things positive. You’ll note I said the series was an amazing one.

Friday, September 9, 2016

Genericide Update: Illegal Ear Lending

Friends! Countrymen! Lend me your ears! Or, y’know, don’t. I have nothing important to say. Also, readers need not be citizens of the US to lend me your ears. Out-of-countrymen are also welcome to lend me your ears. But in interest of stimulating my local economy, only countrymen are permitted to lend me the full ear. Foreigners will be limited to lending me their outer ear, no further into the canal than the ear drum. If I catch any illegal immigrants trying to lend me their Cochlea we’re going to have to get the authorities involved.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Villainous

So the Super Paper Mario articles crawls onward, but have been further delayed for a couple reasons. The first is that I haven't found the time to listen to the soundtrack, particularly since my internet has been a cavernous hellhole of agonizing sloth and dropped connections this week. The second is that the hulking three part article is now large enough that it'll need four. I'm not sure how much longer it will be but I don't want to keep actual content withheld so long. In the past, I would sometimes pepper these droughts with short stories I'd written for classes years back. I still have some I've never posted here, so I thought I'd post another. Initially I was going to throw in my opinion on it, but I've decided it's better to let it stand on it's own. Enjoy.
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