Why SPM Sucks

ralphfan

ralphfan

Thank you based god
OK, I've said it many times in many threads. Let's just stick it in one thread and debate and yell, etc. Anyway, here goes.

When SPM was announced, we expected something great, like the first two games, right? A detailed plot, cool new enemies, interesting sidekicks, etc. In all, a good RPG. Right? Well, in most of those aspects, as well as a few others, SPM failed miserably.

Let's see...oh yeah.

IT WAS A FUCKING SIDESCROLLER.
It's supposed to be an RPG. So far, Mario has had zero RPGs on the Wii. Yes, there have been handheld RPGs, but we've already got decent platformers in SMG, SMG2 (in a few days) and NSMBWii. I, for one, was expecting to be in real turn-based fights with enemies rather than pausing the game to switch Pixls again and again and again.

PIXLS SUCKED.
OK, I'll admit to making a generalization. Not all of them sucked. Some were innovative, like Carrie and Barry. A lot of the others were just new versions of previous sidekicks. But why was Bobbery OK if Boomer was lame? Didn't we already have Bombette? Well, here's the thing. Bobbery had flair. He had a goddamn personality. He was actually interesting. He had a backstory. Then, there's Boomer's dialogue scene:

[quote author=Boomer]
1. You stay up wonderin' if anyone ever gives presents TO Santa Claus.
2. For some reason, you clean your room before a test.
3. When someone says, "Let's just be friends," you think, "Yeah, whatever."
4. You don't really understand why I'm askin' you all these questions.
5. You think shoppin' online is a wonderful and magical experience.
6. You once put on a shirt inside out but didn't bother reversin' it before goin' out.
7. You wanna be sleepin' when you're awake, but when you're tired, you wanna wake up.
8. You're gettin' real tired of these questions.
[/quote]

a. WHAT THE FUCK? This is really dumb. Which goes for most of the Pixls, actually. One of Slim's few lines is, "OOOOONNNE! TWOOOOO! THREEEEE! FIIIIIIIVE! FOUUUR! SEVENTEEN!!!! THREE-POINT-ONE-FOUR!!!! ONE MARZILLION!! TEN!!!" Thudley gives you "Girth Points". How interesting and relevant to the plot!

b. That's pretty much the only lines Pixls have.

And then Piccolo is the single lamest excuse for a sidekick ever assembled. And you have to do way too much work to even get him.

[quote author=Mario Wiki]
1. The player must go to Merlee.
2. The player must go to Merluvlee.
3. The player must go to Bestovius.
4. The player must go to Watchitt.
5. The player must go to Merlumina.
6. The player must give the autograph to Watchitt.
7. The player must give the You-Know-What to Bestovius.
8. The player must give the Training Machine to Merluvlee.
9. The player must give the Crystal Ball to Merlee. In exchange for the Crystal Ball, she gives the player a Random House Key.
10. The player must take the key to the first floor of Flopside and look for the locked door near the card shop.
11. The player must use the key to open a door.
12. The player must open the big chest inside to get Piccolo on their team.
[/quote]

I'm sorry, I thought doing all that work meant you got something decent in return, not a pile of feces. He's useful in the Underchomp fight, though.

THE PLOT SUCKS.
OK, there are many things wrong with the plot. I'll break it down for you.

CHAPTERS ARE TOO SHORT.
Breaking up the chapters into 4 parts was one of Nintendo's worst sins. It practically removes the opportunity of side quests and prevents the plot from being detailed. In TTYD, you could explore an area and/or complete the tasks. In SPM, there is nothing to explore. You just go. It removes the great quality of side plots.

THIS IS A VIDEO GAME, NOT A CRAPPY ROMANCE NOVEL.
OK. Timpani and Blumiere. Hell no, man. I understand having it as a minor side plot, but this is the main thing. Why? It is a crappy, stereotypical romance novel that does not belong in a video game. It's just too stupid. Gee, people with alter egos that love each other? ORIGINAL!

STUPID ENEMIES.
Know what was so nice about the first two PM games? Not only did they have normal Mario enemies, but they made them even better! All the types of Goombas and Koopas were pretty nice to see. And now, introducing SPM's main enemy!

44._Squiglet_Card.JPG


Looks like a shitty drawing made by a preschooler to which adults are forced to respond with, "That's great!"

preschool.png


Then again, there are some epic ones, like Muths. The Muth is, IMO, the best thing in the entire game. But that's just me. What do you guys think?
 
I pretty much disagree with everything you said. Although an RPG would have been nice, I think the way Super Paper Mario works is actually pretty cool. I think the Pixls were pretty cool, although I'll concur with your opinion about their personalities being pretty underdeveloped and... uh... lame.

I don't think the chapters were too short. You can always go back and replay them to get anything you missed, which opens up the possibility of replay (one of these being all of Chapter 6. You can't even battle all 100 dudes when you're playing through before you beat the game, but you can go back once you beat the game and play the level through completely). There's also the Flipside and Flopside Pits of 100 Trials... The Flipside Pit was a challenge in itself, and I still have to go through and play the Flopside Pit. There are also all of the Catch Cards that need to be collected; as well as the arcade located in Flipside.

Romance is one of the biggest themes of the game. Some games are different from others; that's what makes the video game industry unique. There's no one specific way to have video games... Some have more romance than others. Some have a lot of story, while others barely have any story! If it doesn't quite fit your taste, then you play another game. I personally think Tippi and Bleck's romance added quite a bit of depth and background to the story. Without it, I feel that the game would not have a sense of completeness.

The enemies, although some of them are generic, are not bad. Sure, the Squiglet may look a tad infantile, but I feel that's actually the point of their look! They're relatively weak enemies, so it would make sense that they look less intimidating. It's also supposed to contribute to the cartoonish-feel of the game. I couldn't really imagine huge, scary, ugly, nasty little ghoulish creatures running around on the first level of the game. It just wouldn't be fitting.



To finish, I feel that Super Paper Mario does not deserve all of the criticism that it receives. I find it to be a marvelous game, and a great installment to the Paper Mario series.
 
I did say that some were innovative. Not all were awful, but yeah, lame.

As for Chapter 6, sorry I omitted that. I meant things within the actual chapter by the whole side plot thing. And I think Tippi and Bleck's romance could have been done in a good way. But it wasn't.

They're too cartoonish. Their attacks are stupid. Things that look that innocent don't attack you.
 
Don't forget the unbelievably easy difficulty. You won't be losing a life commonly in this game.

Oh also, about the story; Mario + less plot = yay. 'Nuff said.
 
Sharks Territory said:
IT WAS A FUCKING SIDESCROLLER.
It's supposed to be an RPG. So far, Mario has had zero RPGs on the Wii. Yes, there have been handheld RPGs, but we've already got decent platformers in SMG, SMG2 (in a few days) and NSMBWii. I, for one, was expecting to be in real turn-based fights with enemies rather than pausing the game to switch Pixls again and again and again.
Click to expand...
The game sucks because it's a sidescroller? No offense, but that's not a very valid reason at all.

Gogol Bordello said:
Oh also, about the story; Mario + less plot = yay. 'Nuff said.
Click to expand...
I disagree. I don't know about anyone else, but I think the old "Bowser kidnaps the Princess" plot is a bit boring and repetitive.

I would say a lot more, but I think SMB has pretty much summed up everything that needed to be said in Super Paper Mario's defense.
 
1. The story and characters are silly. This would be all well and good if it was silly when it thought it was silly- which it was, but that is not the issue here. The issue is that it is always silly, even when it's trying not to be. If you want the players to feel sorry for the villain in the end(which they obviously do), they shouldn't make him such an unlikable, hating, jealous crybaby. Which they did make him. Not to mention the incredible lack of depth of all the other characters, substituting well, characters with simply cliches. Which again, wouldn't be a problem in the case that it was done for humour, the problem is that it actually takes them seriously.
1.2 Bowser is stupid. Instead of serving as a villain, Bowser serves in this game, as usual, as a comic wannabe rival and occasional ally to Mario and the gang. That's a bad thing.
2. The gameplay is boring. This too would be all well and good under a certain condition: If the story made up for it. But as I've already explained, it doesn't. Each character's gimmick is by the end thoroughly boring, and yet every other puzzle is simply the task of remembering to switch to another character and see if they can do shit.
3. The music sucks. I actually have absolutely no recollection of what the music was like at all. As such it is unmemorable and probably boring beyond belief.
4. The graphics are repetitive. To be quite honest, by the end I didn't even care anymore that the graphics were primitive(in both technology and skill required), but all through the game(especially in the cloud levels) I spent hours going in circles because everything in the game looks the same. Now, some people might say that I only got lost because I'm bad at the game. And yes, that's true; I am bad at games that require me to go to a certain location that is entirely indistinguishable from ten other locations.
 
Uniju said:
1.2 Bowser is stupid. Instead of serving as a villain, Bowser serves in this game, as usual, as a comic wannabe rival and occasional ally to Mario and the gang. That's a bad thing.
Click to expand...
I don't say this enough but I love you.
 
Uniju said:
1.2 Bowser is stupid. Instead of serving as a villain, Bowser serves in this game, as usual, as a comic wannabe rival and occasional ally to Mario and the gang. That's a bad thing.
from ten other locations.
Click to expand...
Like I've said many times before, I don't think Bowser's a very good villain, anyway, so I don't mind him playing the role of an anti-hero. I think he does a much better job at that, anyway. Regardless of how "stupid" he may be, he definitely had a lot more personality in this game and every other RPG, than he's had in any of the platformers.
 
Bowser wasn't that good in TTYD, but he was actually kinda funny. In SPM, he was downright boring.
 
I hardly saw any differences between his personality in the two games. If anything, he was actually more of an idiot in Thousand-Year Door, since he apparently couldn't tell the difference between an inanimate object and the real thing. I'm talking about the part where he and Kammy mistook a poster of Peach for the actual person, of course.

EDIT: There's something I forgot to mention:

And then Piccolo is the single lamest excuse for a sidekick ever assembled. And you have to do way too much work to even get him.
Click to expand...
Piccolo is a "she". Also, there's at least one situation where she's entirely useful, and that's during the Underchomp battle. Piccolo has the abilty to play a song, which will put them to sleep.
 
Dammit, I was planning to say the Underchomp thing, but I forgot. And I thought it was a he because the name ended in O. But that would be a very...strange Pixl.
 
Uniju said:
1.2 Bowser is stupid. Instead of serving as a villain, Bowser serves in this game, as usual, as a comic wannabe rival and occasional ally to Mario and the gang. That's a bad thing.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much.
 
I liked Super Paper Mario.

I don't ride bandwagons.
 
Uniju said:
1. The story and characters are silly. This would be all well and good if it was silly when it thought it was silly- which it was, but that is not the issue here. The issue is that it is always silly, even when it's trying not to be. If you want the players to feel sorry for the villain in the end(which they obviously do), they shouldn't make him such an unlikable, hating, jealous crybaby. Which they did make him. Not to mention the incredible lack of depth of all the other characters, substituting well, characters with simply cliches. Which again, wouldn't be a problem in the case that it was done for humour, the problem is that it actually takes them seriously.
1.2 Bowser is stupid. Instead of serving as a villain, Bowser serves in this game, as usual, as a comic wannabe rival and occasional ally to Mario and the gang. That's a bad thing.
2. The gameplay is boring. This too would be all well and good under a certain condition: If the story made up for it. But as I've already explained, it doesn't. Each character's gimmick is by the end thoroughly boring, and yet every other puzzle is simply the task of remembering to switch to another character and see if they can do shit.
3. The music sucks. I actually have absolutely no recollection of what the music was like at all. As such it is unmemorable and probably boring beyond belief.
4. The graphics are repetitive. To be quite honest, by the end I didn't even care anymore that the graphics were primitive(in both technology and skill required), but all through the game(especially in the cloud levels) I spent hours going in circles because everything in the game looks the same. Now, some people might say that I only got lost because I'm bad at the game. And yes, that's true; I am bad at games that require me to go to a certain location that is entirely indistinguishable from ten other locations.
Click to expand...
Pretty much this. I was kind of disappointed in the loss of the turn-based battles, too.
 
Marcelagus said:
I liked Super Paper Mario.

I don't ride bandwagons.
Click to expand...

The turn based battles got annoying.
 
I think the problem is that most people judge it as an RPG.

It's not an RPG guys, it's a platformer. You have to get the RPG thing out of your head.
 
Marcelagus said:
I think the problem is that most people judge it as an RPG.

It's not an RPG guys, it's a platformer. You have to get the RPG thing out of your head.
Click to expand...
This.
 
Maybe, but you should take this into consideration: At the time Super Paper Mario was in development, it was originally for the Gamecube, and there weren't very many recent platformers around at the time. They just kept on releasing one spin-off title after another. They pretty much did the fanbase a favor by creating Super Paper Mario, since it took the Mario series back to its side-scrolling roots, and everything. Again, at the time it was in development, it was for the Gamecube, and the only other platformer for that system at the time (and still, up to this day) was Super Mario Sunshine.

Also, I forgot to address this point:

Uniju said:
3. The music sucks. I actually have absolutely no recollection of what the music was like at all. As such it is unmemorable and probably boring beyond belief.
Click to expand...
Oh, yes. You are so right. Super Paper Mario definitely deserves an award for having the worst soundtrack ever.
 
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