The Wii U may be dead but my trip through the backlog of games i have for it rumbles on with Paper Mario Color Splash!
When it was first shown there was really two camps amongst Wii U owners, the first (and bigger) was "Its a Sticker Star Sequel so no thank you" and the other being "This looks beautiful, i'll give it a chance". I was squarely in the latter camp from the off, it's bright colours and seemingly hilarious writing caught my eye and i eagerly anticipated its release!
Its taken almost 18 months for me to take it off my shelf and i wish i had done it sooner!
Color Splash takes the overall structure of Sticker Star but fixes almost everything! lets get straight to the main point, the main issue everyone seems to have with it, the combat/RPG elements. Color Splash isn't Thousand Year door.... but it also isn't Sticker Star. In Color Splash you control Mario's moves by picking from a selection of cards (such as jump boot or hammer), you paint the cards to essentially dictate how much power goes into each move and then you interact with the moves as you always have in the series. The main complaint with sticker star was the lack of reward for the combat and the limited amount of stickers you can have, thankfully that is not the case here. Every time you battle an enemy they drop "Paint Hammers" these paint hammers are EXP. The more paint hammers you get go towards levelling up the amount of paint you have thus making combat more varied and powerful as you go. Overall the combat has so much variety in terms of enemies and moves, with the hilarious Thing Summon cards being a particular highlight for me.
Now the level design is back in a big way. Each world feels unique and weirdly lived in, with characters spouting funny comments about there life, situation and the game in general throughout. From a mining dig site to a spooky ghost house and everything in between every level is memorable. There is abit of back tracking once you have the big paint stars but the game does the genius thing of showing reasons to go back to the levels on the over world itself so you always know where you need to go and what you need to collect. The music is fantastic as usual. Each tune fits the world you are in and adds to the comedic timing that the game excels at.
The highlight of the Color Splash.... BY FAR.... is the writing. My god what a funny game. Every Toad feels like there own person with there own personality and its usually hilarious. The toad rescue squad in particular are some of the funniest characters in a Mario game for me and every line of dialogue kept me laughing throughout the 30+ hours of content.
I don't want to ruin any more of the game for those that haven't played it yet because i was really shocked by how much i enjoyed Color Splash. Whilst it isn't quite as good a game as Thousand Year Door from a combat perspective, the worlds design and hilarious characters are some of the very best Nintendo have made in many years.
Overall, This game is pure fun. Its combat may not be everything people want but it doesn't stop it being a super enjoyable experience from start to finish. If you have a Wii U i implore you to go out and pick up Paper Mario: Color Splash before it inevitably becomes one of the hardest games to find on the Console.
8.5/10
Im going to need a new top Wii U game list by the end of this backlog for sure...
No comments:
Post a Comment