VIDEO GAME: Paper Mario – Sticker Star (2012)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Paper Mario: Sticker StarYear: 2012Rating: ETime Played: 592 minutes / 9.87 hours I've endured a lot of bad video games in my time. Most overstay their welcome and I eventually just want to get to the end. Others have such cryptic puzzles that I have to give up and use a guide or walkthrough to get me to the end credits. If there's a skill issue, I have generally just reduced the difficulty so I can experience the full game. It is then a rare case when I legitimately give up on a game. Paper Mario: Sticker Star is one of those games. I had heard rumors of this games infamy. I figured I could use any of the above techniques to get through it. At almost 10 hours in, I caved and looked at what I needed to do to finish the game and realized how frustrating this task would be. Not only did I have to backtrack through basically every...
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VIDEO GAME: Paper Mario: The Origami King (2020)

by benmweilert1 Comment
Paper Mario: The Origami KingYear: 2020Rating: ETime Played: 1,590 minutes / 26.50 hours About ten years ago, I think Nintendo perfected a "craft" vibe with games like Kirby's Epic Yarn that they've been milking for a decade now. These games look hand-crafted in a way that's extremely charming and visually stunning for how homemade they appear. The Yoshi series has used this craft aesthetic multiple times, but the franchise ripe for such things is none other than Paper Mario. In The Origami King, the paper-craft feel of origami is merely accentuated by the plot and game-play. As a pseudo role-playing game, The Origami King has a peculiar way of executing its battle mechanics. Each battle is a ring puzzle that requires the player to line up enemies or find a path to the center to attack the boss. The boots and hammers Mario uses are breakable, but easy enough to acquire and equip that it wasn't frustrating to lose them in mid-battle....
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