Super Paper Mario for Nintendo Wii (rated E, ****) Why the hell is Mario made out of paper? This question has influenced the development of the whole Paper Mario series.
The first title in the franchise was a mushroom kingdom-flavored RPG with a paper aesthetic. But why arbitrarily make everything out of paper? The sequel made use of Mario’s newfound anorexia by giving him the ability to fold himself into paper airplanes and other forms of simple origami. And the latest game takes full advantage of Mario’s 2D world by giving you the power to look at it from a 3D perspective in order to solve some ingenious puzzles.
This latest development makes Super Paper Mario more of a platformer. It still retains some RPG elements (the most annoying of which is endless amounts of text-based dialogue), but the game plays like a 2D side-scroller that you can tilt on a 3D axis to find hidden secrets. It’s a cool concept that does more than look good on paper.