Hawk (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sdhawk) wrote,@ 2009-01-27 03:54:00 |
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Super Paper Mario
Picked up Super Paper Mario up on a whim. I was expecting something terrible based on a few people's reactions and what I got was a delicious sandwich that kicks you in the balls every few hours under the guise of a joke that is only funny to the developers.
I just... I just can't grasp what the hell their intentions were with making you hold your d-pad for 5 minutes, a 20-step block hitting pattern preceded by painful console text input, and making you fetch quest items twice that can be avoided with foreknowledge the game doesn't give you. It's really bothering me because I can't tell what their thought process was behind any of this. Beyond "we hate our players", anyway.
What really gets me is that about 80% of the wastes of time can be completley bypassed by reading a guide since the solutions are static and the game makes no attempt to check to see if you did the dumb crap to get the solution. Were they trying to sell guides? I'm actually tempted to buy one to see how the guide handles these areas.
Actually most of the puzzles in the game aren't very well designed, the entire 2d/3d swapping mechanic can be summed up as: Don't know what to do in a room? Press magic puzzle solving button. There's almost never a visual (or otherwise) cue to deduce anything so it just ends up stupid. They also layer on the magic puzzle solving button with the magical puzzle solving pointer. Even at the end of the game I was getting stuck in areas because I consistently forgot the magical puzzle solving button even existed.
I could go on for hours about all the flaws in this game but at the end of the day I enjoyed the hell out of it and it kept me hooked for several days. I don't think I could seriously recommend it to anyone but in some ways that makes it more special in that "this game is awful half the time but I'm enjoying it anyway" sense.
Picked up Super Paper Mario up on a whim. I was expecting something terrible based on a few people's reactions and what I got was a delicious sandwich that kicks you in the balls every few hours under the guise of a joke that is only funny to the developers.
I just... I just can't grasp what the hell their intentions were with making you hold your d-pad for 5 minutes, a 20-step block hitting pattern preceded by painful console text input, and making you fetch quest items twice that can be avoided with foreknowledge the game doesn't give you. It's really bothering me because I can't tell what their thought process was behind any of this. Beyond "we hate our players", anyway.
What really gets me is that about 80% of the wastes of time can be completley bypassed by reading a guide since the solutions are static and the game makes no attempt to check to see if you did the dumb crap to get the solution. Were they trying to sell guides? I'm actually tempted to buy one to see how the guide handles these areas.
Actually most of the puzzles in the game aren't very well designed, the entire 2d/3d swapping mechanic can be summed up as: Don't know what to do in a room? Press magic puzzle solving button. There's almost never a visual (or otherwise) cue to deduce anything so it just ends up stupid. They also layer on the magic puzzle solving button with the magical puzzle solving pointer. Even at the end of the game I was getting stuck in areas because I consistently forgot the magical puzzle solving button even existed.
I could go on for hours about all the flaws in this game but at the end of the day I enjoyed the hell out of it and it kept me hooked for several days. I don't think I could seriously recommend it to anyone but in some ways that makes it more special in that "this game is awful half the time but I'm enjoying it anyway" sense.
