When you think of sensational action sequences and explosive sets, you may think of big-budget productions likeUncharted ortomb raider . Let me introduce the dark horse contender: the lowly proMario and Luigi with its goofy animation and gags, which has carved out a healthy niche in the realm of visual spectacle.
Let's take, for example,Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam . One ability in the recently released RPG turns the battlefield into a squash court and sticks enemies on the back wall for a top-notch smash. Another technique will conjure up a large rocket that Mario and Luigi ride, jump off, and consequently bank on one of the plumbers, who must cling to life while the player aims their dilapidated spaceship straight at the bad guys. Most impressive are defense sequences in which your group must work together to counter enemy attacks, using precise timing to launch a boomerang at a ghost, or participate in an extremely high-stakes paper airplane race.paper jam may not have super-detailed textures or 1080p graphics, but it's certainly interesting to look at, and much better.
In the fifth partMario and Luigi , a pair of plumbers no longer get stuck in Bowser's stomach and get sucked into Luigi's dreams. Here, they stay in the real world, joined by their parallel twin from another universe, the two-dimensional Paper Mario, who has been banished from his home due to some bumbling mistakes of Mario's greener brother. In the end, Bowser captures both Peach and her ultrathin counterpart, and as always, the hunt continues. Desert, forest, ice mountain; by now you know the exercise.
Like other gamesMario & Luigi , paper jam is a traditional turn-based RPG with time-based attacks and defenses. This means that if you want Mario's jump attack to be the most effective, you need to press the A button when he landsstraight on the enemy. It also means that if you don't want to lose every battle, you need to pull off some sneaky defensive moves like jumping over Koopa projectiles or hitting fireballs at the enemy with a well-timed hammer blow. Some of these attacks can be very sophisticated; the more you make progress, the more you will be asked to do.
What's great about this system is that it requires both mental and physical strategy. Not only do you need to make careful decisions about when to heal and when to attack, you also need reaction skills to anticipate if an enemy fireball will come from above or below. If you don't have the dexterity to perform a particularly difficult move, you won't be able to use it. Can't figure out how to throw bombs with Luigi while hitting them with Mario's hammer? Use something else. Or die.
Of course, you can also just switch to easy mode and wade through everything, but what will be interesting there?
It's immediately clear that AlphaDream's developers have listened to feedback from fans and critics alike; long tutorialsdream team have been shortened, and the fast-forward button now hangs teasingly in the corner during every cutscene. New ideas and abilities are introduced gradually, but each enemy feels a little different, and in ~28 hours I enjoyed almost every battle I took part in. Other RPGs can learn important lessons from timed attacks and defenses.paper jam .
In a few hourspaper jam will also give you access to a new mechanic called Battle Cards that expands your abilities in interesting ways; one can increase power and the other can deal damage to whoever has the most health on the battlefield. The game also supports Mario, Luigi, Toad, Bowser, Peach, and Yoshi amiibo, which I didn't get a chance to test because I'm not an amiibo fan.
PacePaper Jam, generally fast-paced, although it starts to slow down towards the end and eventually turns into a set of tiresome distractions. The game often asks you to rescue the stolen Paper Toads, which means solving a series of elementary puzzles and mini-games that are fun on their own but feel too repetitive towards the end of the game. Also unfortunate are Paper Battles, a set of mini-games where Mario and crew capture a giant cardboard figure (Mario, Yoshi, etc.) and use it to fight paper monsters. Defeating these paper enemies is a repetition exercise, as each enemy has the same weakness, so there is no real choice to make. The idea is interesting, but it just doesn't work in practice.
It's also a shame that AlphaDream's designers and artists weren't able to use their creativity to come up with new characters or plot points. One of the reasons people look back with such love at games likeSuper Mario RPG andPaper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, are their unique stories and roles;paper jam Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to expectations.
At least the dialogue is as great as ever, thanks to Nintendo's talented team of translators and editors at Treehouse. In true Nintendo stylePaper Jam's makes full use of the paper trick, offering all sorts of jokes, puzzles and clever witticisms.
Apart from some troubles in the finale,Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is fun and worth playing even just for combat. What could be more satisfying than using Paper Mario to turn your enemy into a giant kite that the three of you can fly to great heights to smash them back to the ground.
