Wow, this is one of the best jazz Mario cover albums ever! From Super Mario Galaxy's Boo Waltz, a 6/4 version of Airship, to Slider of all things? The original songs are all good too!
I really love how the Starman theme is totally reimagined here - it's like how Sonic final boss themes tend to have a Phase 2 representing Sonic's strength, usually in Super Sonic form. I could go on and on about all the songs I really love from this album. I wonder who the remixers were?
...wait, what? this is a soundtrack to a game? what game?
I really love how the Starman theme is totally reimagined here - it's like how Sonic final boss themes tend to have a Phase 2 representing Sonic's strength, usually in Super Sonic form. I could go on and on about all the songs I really love from this album. I wonder who the remixers were?
...wait, what? this is a soundtrack to a game? what game?
-''I should have left you to rot in that dirty shelf for all of eternity.''
-''...but you didn't!''
I do not enjoy talking about bad games... well, that's a bit of a lie, I do find some temporal enjoyment in ripping apart a work of art that's just plain bad, but that feeling of partial satisfaction only lasts as long as I'm writing about said game, and after that, the only thing left is a bad taste in my mouth.
Turns out, videogames are really fucking hard to make, a lot of factors come into it, from coordination, design, communication and the possible interference of upper management. The fact that we have as many masterpieces as we have today is a true miracle, but sometimes, the problems just pile up, and as such the result is a mediocre or bad game. In this case, the result was Paper Mario: Sticker Star
This has to be the only game to which I had such a toxic relationship; I've tried so many times picking it and playing it till the end, after all it was a gift and the first Paper Mario game I played, so at the very least I wanted to reach the end, but I just couldn't.
The game does have pretty visuals, creative gameplay that can amount to something interesting and some funny jokes, but the pacing, the lack of creativity compared to other Mario RPG's, and especially the fact this is BARELY an RPG as the combat doesn't amount to ANYTHING: so, you are telling me, I don't get any experience from battles, only money, and every time I battle, I have to use stickers... which are one use only, and as such I have to buy them back, so it's just better to not battle and save the stickers for the boss-battle- WHO THE HELL MADE THIS GAMEPLAY LOOP?
The game's puzzles are just too simple, villains are as simple as a light powered by a potato, Bowser doesn't talk in this one which should be considered illegal... it's just... sad. It's just wasted potential, 'cause yes, the game, even as it is, HAD potential, it could have been a fun little adventure with some very charming moments, but... it just didn't end up being that.
It hurts, specially knowing what happened behind the scenes: Nintendo wanted Intelligent Systems to simplify everything, and the result was a boring, barebones experience.
Despite everything, I hate the fact that I have to hate this game, this experience equivalent to biting a wet sock. It's boring, and it's frustrating, and that just lets feeling a profound sense of sadness, but it be like that sometimes...
I heard Origami King was fun, so I might try that in the future, but for now, I'm once again reminded of a game that they just didn't let reach its full potential. The only other good thing I can say about it's that, even if it is a fading star, at least makes the others look much brighter.
-''...but you didn't!''
I do not enjoy talking about bad games... well, that's a bit of a lie, I do find some temporal enjoyment in ripping apart a work of art that's just plain bad, but that feeling of partial satisfaction only lasts as long as I'm writing about said game, and after that, the only thing left is a bad taste in my mouth.
Turns out, videogames are really fucking hard to make, a lot of factors come into it, from coordination, design, communication and the possible interference of upper management. The fact that we have as many masterpieces as we have today is a true miracle, but sometimes, the problems just pile up, and as such the result is a mediocre or bad game. In this case, the result was Paper Mario: Sticker Star
This has to be the only game to which I had such a toxic relationship; I've tried so many times picking it and playing it till the end, after all it was a gift and the first Paper Mario game I played, so at the very least I wanted to reach the end, but I just couldn't.
The game does have pretty visuals, creative gameplay that can amount to something interesting and some funny jokes, but the pacing, the lack of creativity compared to other Mario RPG's, and especially the fact this is BARELY an RPG as the combat doesn't amount to ANYTHING: so, you are telling me, I don't get any experience from battles, only money, and every time I battle, I have to use stickers... which are one use only, and as such I have to buy them back, so it's just better to not battle and save the stickers for the boss-battle- WHO THE HELL MADE THIS GAMEPLAY LOOP?
The game's puzzles are just too simple, villains are as simple as a light powered by a potato, Bowser doesn't talk in this one which should be considered illegal... it's just... sad. It's just wasted potential, 'cause yes, the game, even as it is, HAD potential, it could have been a fun little adventure with some very charming moments, but... it just didn't end up being that.
It hurts, specially knowing what happened behind the scenes: Nintendo wanted Intelligent Systems to simplify everything, and the result was a boring, barebones experience.
Despite everything, I hate the fact that I have to hate this game, this experience equivalent to biting a wet sock. It's boring, and it's frustrating, and that just lets feeling a profound sense of sadness, but it be like that sometimes...
I heard Origami King was fun, so I might try that in the future, but for now, I'm once again reminded of a game that they just didn't let reach its full potential. The only other good thing I can say about it's that, even if it is a fading star, at least makes the others look much brighter.
Paper Mario Sticker Star was a landmark experience in my relationship with video games.
At one point in time, Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door was my favorite game. I didn’t know what a JRPG was, and from how I heard people talk at school, thought it had something to do with the war in Iraq. I hadn’t played Chrono Trigger yet. But anything with Mario on it passed my parents' arbitrary content filtration, so Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door remained a unique game that pressed multiple buttons I liked. The art style spoke to me as an aspiring vector graphic artist. There was strategy, there was story, with enough player engagement and metatextual dressing to sell me on turn-based combat. It was funny, it was cute, with just enough depth to help me graduate from the simplicity of the Mario platformers I was used to.
Super Paper Mario was fine. I knew it was a different genre before it came out, which offset my disappointment somewhat, enough that I never said out loud, “this art style is lame.” My Smash Bros. friend thought it was hilarious, so I liked it, too. I got my sister to play it, in an attempt to convince myself to love it. It didn’t work, but Super Paper Mario became the first game she ever finished. I was happy for her. So I never said out loud, “this game should have been better.” But I felt it.
Sticker Star came out during a long period when I didn’t play video games. I didn’t get to it for years. By the time it was $10 on clearance, there were other games I liked. Maybe Xenoblade Chronicles or Fire Emblem Awakening were my new favorite games. But now Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door had ~nostalgia~ status, before I knew what that word meant, much less what it meant for me.
I played all of Sticker Star. I finished it. I remembered and remember nothing about it. I felt nothing. Or thought I felt nothing. Until I saw empty achievement podiums in the post-game inviting me to do a bunch of pointless grindy bullshit to check off some checklists.
My first reaction was “oh, more content! More Paper Mario!” until my brain processed what the game was asking of me. Find all the trinkets? Win a lottery 50 times? Collect 10,000 coins?
I said out loud, “Why would anyone do that?”
Then a profound realization washed over me. I did not like this game. I did not enjoy any of my time with this game. I had finished this entire game precisely because of my remembered love for a different game with the same name. A love that had at once been unexamined, treasured, and rendered featureless and sourceless with time.
I stared at the achievement markers, not yet knowing what an achievement was, and felt an inscrutable feeling of dread and betrayal. This game was bad. But beyond the game being bad, Sticker Star was also behaving as if it were unaware it was bad. Smash Bros. had checklists, but they unlocked new stages, new characters. Those checklists were crude interfaces for unlocking fun surprises. This was just… homework.
But why would Nintendo give me homework? Why would Mario give me homework? And why would a real life human do that homework if they weren’t getting graded or paid? I quietly saved the game, returned it to its case, and closed my 3DS, more pensive and alone feeling than I was expecting to feel that day. I told no one about this experience. I told no one I had even played the game. My Smash Bros. friend was gone and married at that point, anyway.
I’d watched people at school play bad flash games, so I knew bad games existed. But they seemed to poke fun at themselves, aware of their own disposability. This was the first time my childish, uncritical brain was forced to confront the reality that bad games could come from Brands™ made by Adults. Because the more I stewed on why the idea of those achievements felt like homework, the more I realized the entire experience of playing the game felt like homework. Stripped of context, stripped of story, the basic actions of the game were straight unfun to play. But that meant the presentation hadn’t made the game fun, it had only been a distraction from the neutral hell of paying money to do homework for zero learning or recognition.
I don’t want to oversell Sticker Star’s importance in my developing critical facilities, but it is the clearest turning point of my self-awareness with a game before several of my behaviors changed. I stopped getting excited for games before their release. I stopped visiting IGN - they’d given this game an 8.3! I stopped saying a game was among my favorites if I couldn’t remember why. I actually finished Xenoblade Chronicles. That ending suuuuucked, and the game stopped being in my top 10.
There’s a good chance many of these changes would have come about as side-effects of growing up. But maturity and wisdom are not guaranteed with age. New ‘bad’ Paper Mario games keep coming out, and I see its “fan” base go through phases of evangelical rage and disappointment with every release. Fans who never learned the lessons that Sticker Star offered, that fans should sprout up around products, and not that products will be made for fans.
I have no rage for Sticker Star. I successfully recognized that Sticker Star did not deserve to tap into the well of emotions that had been drilled by the Thousand Year Door. With that realization, the bubble of nostalgia around the Thousand Year Door popped, its warm glow confined to its own identity instead of allowed to exist as an emotionally ethereal entity that could bless and inhabit other games. With that skill obtained, other nostalgia bubbles began to deflate over the years until none remained. It was a melancholic mental transformation, but with it came a confidence that the games I liked were Actually Good instead of emotional echoes of a previous self.
The Paper Mario series effectively taught me how the commodification of game series changes its identity. I’m tempted to say “and robs it of its soul,” but the new bad Paper Mario games have a different soul. A beige-colored soul. A market-tested soul that sets sales records, with legs enough that whatever Paper Mario came out on the Switch can probably tap into nostalgia people have for Sticker Star. (A concept that belongs in my personal version of hell.)
It’s only fitting that Mario, who introduced me to platforming, racing, and JRPGs, would also be the one to teach me about the dystopian rot of corporate game production.
I am not grateful.
At one point in time, Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door was my favorite game. I didn’t know what a JRPG was, and from how I heard people talk at school, thought it had something to do with the war in Iraq. I hadn’t played Chrono Trigger yet. But anything with Mario on it passed my parents' arbitrary content filtration, so Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door remained a unique game that pressed multiple buttons I liked. The art style spoke to me as an aspiring vector graphic artist. There was strategy, there was story, with enough player engagement and metatextual dressing to sell me on turn-based combat. It was funny, it was cute, with just enough depth to help me graduate from the simplicity of the Mario platformers I was used to.
Super Paper Mario was fine. I knew it was a different genre before it came out, which offset my disappointment somewhat, enough that I never said out loud, “this art style is lame.” My Smash Bros. friend thought it was hilarious, so I liked it, too. I got my sister to play it, in an attempt to convince myself to love it. It didn’t work, but Super Paper Mario became the first game she ever finished. I was happy for her. So I never said out loud, “this game should have been better.” But I felt it.
Sticker Star came out during a long period when I didn’t play video games. I didn’t get to it for years. By the time it was $10 on clearance, there were other games I liked. Maybe Xenoblade Chronicles or Fire Emblem Awakening were my new favorite games. But now Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door had ~nostalgia~ status, before I knew what that word meant, much less what it meant for me.
I played all of Sticker Star. I finished it. I remembered and remember nothing about it. I felt nothing. Or thought I felt nothing. Until I saw empty achievement podiums in the post-game inviting me to do a bunch of pointless grindy bullshit to check off some checklists.
My first reaction was “oh, more content! More Paper Mario!” until my brain processed what the game was asking of me. Find all the trinkets? Win a lottery 50 times? Collect 10,000 coins?
I said out loud, “Why would anyone do that?”
Then a profound realization washed over me. I did not like this game. I did not enjoy any of my time with this game. I had finished this entire game precisely because of my remembered love for a different game with the same name. A love that had at once been unexamined, treasured, and rendered featureless and sourceless with time.
I stared at the achievement markers, not yet knowing what an achievement was, and felt an inscrutable feeling of dread and betrayal. This game was bad. But beyond the game being bad, Sticker Star was also behaving as if it were unaware it was bad. Smash Bros. had checklists, but they unlocked new stages, new characters. Those checklists were crude interfaces for unlocking fun surprises. This was just… homework.
But why would Nintendo give me homework? Why would Mario give me homework? And why would a real life human do that homework if they weren’t getting graded or paid? I quietly saved the game, returned it to its case, and closed my 3DS, more pensive and alone feeling than I was expecting to feel that day. I told no one about this experience. I told no one I had even played the game. My Smash Bros. friend was gone and married at that point, anyway.
I’d watched people at school play bad flash games, so I knew bad games existed. But they seemed to poke fun at themselves, aware of their own disposability. This was the first time my childish, uncritical brain was forced to confront the reality that bad games could come from Brands™ made by Adults. Because the more I stewed on why the idea of those achievements felt like homework, the more I realized the entire experience of playing the game felt like homework. Stripped of context, stripped of story, the basic actions of the game were straight unfun to play. But that meant the presentation hadn’t made the game fun, it had only been a distraction from the neutral hell of paying money to do homework for zero learning or recognition.
I don’t want to oversell Sticker Star’s importance in my developing critical facilities, but it is the clearest turning point of my self-awareness with a game before several of my behaviors changed. I stopped getting excited for games before their release. I stopped visiting IGN - they’d given this game an 8.3! I stopped saying a game was among my favorites if I couldn’t remember why. I actually finished Xenoblade Chronicles. That ending suuuuucked, and the game stopped being in my top 10.
There’s a good chance many of these changes would have come about as side-effects of growing up. But maturity and wisdom are not guaranteed with age. New ‘bad’ Paper Mario games keep coming out, and I see its “fan” base go through phases of evangelical rage and disappointment with every release. Fans who never learned the lessons that Sticker Star offered, that fans should sprout up around products, and not that products will be made for fans.
I have no rage for Sticker Star. I successfully recognized that Sticker Star did not deserve to tap into the well of emotions that had been drilled by the Thousand Year Door. With that realization, the bubble of nostalgia around the Thousand Year Door popped, its warm glow confined to its own identity instead of allowed to exist as an emotionally ethereal entity that could bless and inhabit other games. With that skill obtained, other nostalgia bubbles began to deflate over the years until none remained. It was a melancholic mental transformation, but with it came a confidence that the games I liked were Actually Good instead of emotional echoes of a previous self.
The Paper Mario series effectively taught me how the commodification of game series changes its identity. I’m tempted to say “and robs it of its soul,” but the new bad Paper Mario games have a different soul. A beige-colored soul. A market-tested soul that sets sales records, with legs enough that whatever Paper Mario came out on the Switch can probably tap into nostalgia people have for Sticker Star. (A concept that belongs in my personal version of hell.)
It’s only fitting that Mario, who introduced me to platforming, racing, and JRPGs, would also be the one to teach me about the dystopian rot of corporate game production.
I am not grateful.
Played this at my grandmas funeral i wonder if she would have liked the endearing story of paper mario and the sticker star
This motherfucker right here is the worst thing to happen to video games and the Mario series in general. Fuck it in its soul hole.
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To be fair this was my first Paper Mario game.
Day 25: Morale growing low. Still hunting for Wiggler segments. I enter yet another dark-poison-pond-and-tree-trunk-with-Snifits-and-Ninjis themed level. What was once scoffed at for being the same dull Mario grassland and desert levels have now become bittersweet memories. I no longer remember the sun as I take 2 more damage by accidentally running into yet another poison puddle. God help me. God help us all.
If you're ever told to burn a copy of this then it's actually people telling you it's fire.
This game is so weird because most bad games are bad due to jank or lack of polish or whatever, y'know just normal stuff like that. But everything here feels very intentional. The shitty unintuitive sticker system and combat designed around it. The "puzzles" which either involve hitting something random with a hammer, finding some random "thing" sticker that the game likely doesn't tell you about, or some other random obscure solution (intentionally sink in quicksand lmao). The obscene amount of backtracking and level redoing. The bosses being tedious health sponges or dying immediately because you brought the right thing sticker. The boring and uninspired settings reminiscent of 2d mario games alongside the lack of any unique NPCs. The AWFUL "partner" character. The annoyingly heavy reliance on the paper gimmick despite every other Paper Mario game using it as a nice aesthetic. These are all TERRIBLE design choices but not one of them doesn't feel intentional. I'm almost convinced that Nintendo hates Paper Mario fans so much that they hand crafted this game to be the worst shit ever.
People always (fairly) rag on this game for random encounters quite literally being a detriment and there being no point to them, but I'd argue that's the best part about the game. Combat here is so unenjoyable and if you were forced to actually fight random encounters it'd be SO much worse. Because it's pointless, I can just run away from everything and save myself the headache. Yeah the run button barely works and is just RNG dependent but like anything is better than having to sit through all of the random encounters.
Also bowser doesn't even have a line of dialogue here like wtf man he's the best Mario character have some respect.
Also also people who think this is disliked because it's different from the other Paper Mario games are weird. This game is genuinely terrible even if you haven't touched a single Paper Mario game. If you say this is overhated I'm stealing something out of your house.
People always (fairly) rag on this game for random encounters quite literally being a detriment and there being no point to them, but I'd argue that's the best part about the game. Combat here is so unenjoyable and if you were forced to actually fight random encounters it'd be SO much worse. Because it's pointless, I can just run away from everything and save myself the headache. Yeah the run button barely works and is just RNG dependent but like anything is better than having to sit through all of the random encounters.
Also bowser doesn't even have a line of dialogue here like wtf man he's the best Mario character have some respect.
Also also people who think this is disliked because it's different from the other Paper Mario games are weird. This game is genuinely terrible even if you haven't touched a single Paper Mario game. If you say this is overhated I'm stealing something out of your house.
I was on World 2 but gave up due to boredom and realized it wasn't worth it.
Its extremely boring and soulless and it destroyed the Paper Mario series and fandom. The soundtrack is good but other then that I'm done.
Its extremely boring and soulless and it destroyed the Paper Mario series and fandom. The soundtrack is good but other then that I'm done.
"lol Sticker Star sux" is not a joke. It's not the lowest hanging fruit. Well, it IS, but the lowest hanging fruit is what sustained our ancestors in fair Lascaux. We are compelled to reach for this fruit to ensure survival and propagation of our wretched species who will, in turn, use the same hand which sought fruit to craft this absolute fucking abomination.
Experiencing Paper Mario: Sticker Star made me a worse person. Let me explain:
This is not a game. It is a flashing screen in which you may or may not have any influence on what happens. Decisions you make have no outcome on battle. Everything is preordained. I am thoroughly convinced you can select stickers at random in each battle and still come out on top. I'm convinced of this because I utilized this exact strategy in a second attempt during my 2020 playthrough. Because yes, I wanted to graft physical and mental pain in place of the looming existential caused by a pandemic.
I was only walled when it came to boss fights. You can skate by Large Goomba without using its kismet Thing sticker. However, in any other boss battle, you MUST use the invisibly assigned Thing card. There is no way to get around this. You will lose. And if you happen to not have the fated Thing card, which the game may or may not hint at, you must exit the battle, go buy the thing from the shop (or god fucking forbid, you never encountered the Thing, so now you must go track it down in the wild), and attempt the battle again. And you must use this EXACTLY ONE (1) Thing during the battle at the exact poorly-telegraphed moment to win with ease.
There is no strategy. There is no fun. Simply put, this was a $40 soundtrack released in 2012 with a completely unhinged (and un-playtested) visual experience included as a bonus. This visual experience slots into a Nintendo system, but again, it is by no means a game.
I will never forgive this alleged game for ruining an amazing series for no other reason than "Miyamoto likes Toad." If this is your favorite Paper Mario game, it is either the only one you have ever played, and thus playing it put you off the series entirely, or you are LYING. Or seeing the sexy Birdo/goat scene emulsified your brain using the 3D slider as a vector.
If it is your favorite game, or even if you think it's "good," then please by all means articulate a response. But your response cannot simply be "idk because I just liked it." Why did you like it?? What is there to like?? I don't understand!! I'm chained to this flesh prison until a zoomer can explain to me why this is an objectively good game!!
Help!!!!
Experiencing Paper Mario: Sticker Star made me a worse person. Let me explain:
This is not a game. It is a flashing screen in which you may or may not have any influence on what happens. Decisions you make have no outcome on battle. Everything is preordained. I am thoroughly convinced you can select stickers at random in each battle and still come out on top. I'm convinced of this because I utilized this exact strategy in a second attempt during my 2020 playthrough. Because yes, I wanted to graft physical and mental pain in place of the looming existential caused by a pandemic.
I was only walled when it came to boss fights. You can skate by Large Goomba without using its kismet Thing sticker. However, in any other boss battle, you MUST use the invisibly assigned Thing card. There is no way to get around this. You will lose. And if you happen to not have the fated Thing card, which the game may or may not hint at, you must exit the battle, go buy the thing from the shop (or god fucking forbid, you never encountered the Thing, so now you must go track it down in the wild), and attempt the battle again. And you must use this EXACTLY ONE (1) Thing during the battle at the exact poorly-telegraphed moment to win with ease.
There is no strategy. There is no fun. Simply put, this was a $40 soundtrack released in 2012 with a completely unhinged (and un-playtested) visual experience included as a bonus. This visual experience slots into a Nintendo system, but again, it is by no means a game.
I will never forgive this alleged game for ruining an amazing series for no other reason than "Miyamoto likes Toad." If this is your favorite Paper Mario game, it is either the only one you have ever played, and thus playing it put you off the series entirely, or you are LYING. Or seeing the sexy Birdo/goat scene emulsified your brain using the 3D slider as a vector.
If it is your favorite game, or even if you think it's "good," then please by all means articulate a response. But your response cannot simply be "idk because I just liked it." Why did you like it?? What is there to like?? I don't understand!! I'm chained to this flesh prison until a zoomer can explain to me why this is an objectively good game!!
Help!!!!
This game is flat out trash. Color Splash has some real heart and charm to it, but this? Gameplay is a farce, and all personality vanishes from the game after the first few minutes. It's extremely hard for me to find anything redeeming here.
"I don't care if I get hate because of this opinion, but this is my favorite paper mario final boss song."
- Lunar1314
- Lunar1314
The only good thing about this game is the music. It's playable and has some fun moments, but it's easily one of the worst Mario games. Limiting simple RPG abilities was a dumb move and the story is essentially another generic 2D Mario plot with the same rehashed worlds/characters. Very disappointing.
awesome
Without exaggeration, Paper Mario: Sticker Star's gameplay system is actually useless; there is literally NO incentive to fight battles since you get no experience and it wastes stickers. Nothing about this game is memorable except for how much it made me hate stickers for a couple years.
Staying up tonight to get Paper Mario Sticker Star from the eShop at midnight! So should you!
Paper Mario Sticker Star is a fundamentally flawed video game for two reasons:
1. Its central RPG sticker battling mechanic is completely useless, providing no necessary benefits besides wasting resources
2. It attempts to transfer over very similar mechanics/designs of the previous RPG focused games like TTYD and turn them into a heavy adventure-puzzling platforming; but this clash of genre and mechanics simply do not work
These two reasons are the backbone of everything wrong with this abomination of a game and what makes it so unlikable. Here are just a few reasons why:
- The level design in general is some of the worst I've ever experienced in a video game. As explained before, the "PM RPG format" simply doesn't work in areas designed around platforming and movement. Everything feels so clunky and difficult to control and perform, which leads to so many useless encounters and hindrances that at time feel unavoidable and provide you with no benefits. These simply elevate the already mundane tasks and paths the game has you go along. Some of the levels in World 2, for instance, such as the ones that require you to chose paths while continually traversing underground (and require trial and error to reach the end) and traveling around and inside a Sphinx, are some of the worst levels I've ever played in a video game, and gave me some of the worst stress of my life.
- Progression at multiple times is blocked by required "Thing" items you must collect, and are scattered in levels at random. While adventure elements such as this mechanic work in tons of other games, Sticker Star makes it as tedious as it could be. That specific item you need could be in literally any level up until that point, and just by missing one despite collecting the abundant other optional Things, you could be monumentally screwed over. That is NES levels of frustration - and when exploration is already an insane drag to begin with, it's just the icing on the cake of a horrible session.
- "Fortunately" these bizarre barriers are at their worst in boss fights. Each boss fight can be beaten with just regular items, but unless you want to use everything in your already limited inventory, you're gonna need a specific Thing to properly beat it. Beating these without a guide feels almost impossible, as most of the time the Thing you need is quite ambiguous and requires countless trial and error because of the way Things are designed to be used (you must go to a specific place to rebuy an already used Thing and then use a specific shop to then turn that Thing into a sticker; if you use it by accident or that Thing turns out to be the incorrect one needed, then you must repeat the process all over again.)
Sticker Star breaks so many basic necessities that a game must follow, and first and foremost is wasting the player's time; And that's all this game really is. Whether it means requiring you to repeat mundane tasks or creating strange and ambiguous barriers for progression or just being a slog to get through, Sticker Star does everything in its power to make you hate the game as much as possible. My 15 hour play through felt like an eternity of hell, but I don't think I've ever been happier to beat a game. It's an embarrassment to the fantastic titles Nintendo continually puts out, and it's an embarrassment to the joy and quality video games are suppose to bring you. This is by far the worst game I've ever played, and I hope I never have to experience something of this level of disgust ever again.
1. Its central RPG sticker battling mechanic is completely useless, providing no necessary benefits besides wasting resources
2. It attempts to transfer over very similar mechanics/designs of the previous RPG focused games like TTYD and turn them into a heavy adventure-puzzling platforming; but this clash of genre and mechanics simply do not work
These two reasons are the backbone of everything wrong with this abomination of a game and what makes it so unlikable. Here are just a few reasons why:
- The level design in general is some of the worst I've ever experienced in a video game. As explained before, the "PM RPG format" simply doesn't work in areas designed around platforming and movement. Everything feels so clunky and difficult to control and perform, which leads to so many useless encounters and hindrances that at time feel unavoidable and provide you with no benefits. These simply elevate the already mundane tasks and paths the game has you go along. Some of the levels in World 2, for instance, such as the ones that require you to chose paths while continually traversing underground (and require trial and error to reach the end) and traveling around and inside a Sphinx, are some of the worst levels I've ever played in a video game, and gave me some of the worst stress of my life.
- Progression at multiple times is blocked by required "Thing" items you must collect, and are scattered in levels at random. While adventure elements such as this mechanic work in tons of other games, Sticker Star makes it as tedious as it could be. That specific item you need could be in literally any level up until that point, and just by missing one despite collecting the abundant other optional Things, you could be monumentally screwed over. That is NES levels of frustration - and when exploration is already an insane drag to begin with, it's just the icing on the cake of a horrible session.
- "Fortunately" these bizarre barriers are at their worst in boss fights. Each boss fight can be beaten with just regular items, but unless you want to use everything in your already limited inventory, you're gonna need a specific Thing to properly beat it. Beating these without a guide feels almost impossible, as most of the time the Thing you need is quite ambiguous and requires countless trial and error because of the way Things are designed to be used (you must go to a specific place to rebuy an already used Thing and then use a specific shop to then turn that Thing into a sticker; if you use it by accident or that Thing turns out to be the incorrect one needed, then you must repeat the process all over again.)
Sticker Star breaks so many basic necessities that a game must follow, and first and foremost is wasting the player's time; And that's all this game really is. Whether it means requiring you to repeat mundane tasks or creating strange and ambiguous barriers for progression or just being a slog to get through, Sticker Star does everything in its power to make you hate the game as much as possible. My 15 hour play through felt like an eternity of hell, but I don't think I've ever been happier to beat a game. It's an embarrassment to the fantastic titles Nintendo continually puts out, and it's an embarrassment to the joy and quality video games are suppose to bring you. This is by far the worst game I've ever played, and I hope I never have to experience something of this level of disgust ever again.
The main problem with this game is the special stickers are by far the coolest part, but they take up so much space and are rarely acquired that it makes the backtracking for puzzles annoying
As one of the titles "inducted" into the long lineup of the Internet's most hated games, a lot of what I dislike about Sticker Star has already been said countless times. As much as I do dislike it, I have played through most of it (the final boss was just too bad with all the Thing requirements, to be honest) and tolerated said playthrough well enough. While 90% of the levels are these instantly forgettable platforming levels mixed in the deservedly infamous combat, somehow in World 4 they just drop the Enigmansion on you.
This level uses the paperize mechanic for environmental observation puzzles, picking out parts of the walls that don't belong and sticking them back in the right place. For instance, a door leads to the wrong spot in the house and so you've gotta put the clues together and bring the door to where it actually belongs. Sure, the puzzles are pretty simple, but it feels like a natural progression of game mechanics in a game that forgot to progress them at any other point.
And then there's also the fact that you can traverse the worlds in any order you want if you really want to? Like, this makes sense as a cool new thing that's now possible without experience, since this sort of progression would have destroyed the level curve in the older titles. Of course, nonlinearity isn't an innately positive trait, but that structure could possibly improve the replayability or serve as a challenge to try the later worlds first. And yet, the game barely even brings attention to any of it and makes it really tedious to get the Things needed for it. It just ends up being a complete afterthought.
Back in the day, I was really mad about the overall gaping flaws with this game, although a lot of that was definitely rooted in the fanboy bias that feels just as codified as the Sticker Star hate itself. A decade later, I'm just left feeling empty by how the pieces were there to potentially make a game that could at least stand on its own as something novel, but so much of the potential it could have had was just neglected.
Alright the review's over but there's one thing that bothered me about this game and I'll never have a better chance to say it than now. So worlds 4 and 5 make up the second half of the overworld, like you move on from your main hub and go there. So when you go to world 4 and see that the stickers just lying around have been changed from their regular versions to the stronger shiny ones, you think "okay, im ready to scale up the power curve because i'm in the second part of the game". But then in world 5 the stickers lying around are back to the basic versions. Why. Just in general, World 4 rules and World 5 drools. Thanks for reading this, I know it's dumb but it needed to be said.
This level uses the paperize mechanic for environmental observation puzzles, picking out parts of the walls that don't belong and sticking them back in the right place. For instance, a door leads to the wrong spot in the house and so you've gotta put the clues together and bring the door to where it actually belongs. Sure, the puzzles are pretty simple, but it feels like a natural progression of game mechanics in a game that forgot to progress them at any other point.
And then there's also the fact that you can traverse the worlds in any order you want if you really want to? Like, this makes sense as a cool new thing that's now possible without experience, since this sort of progression would have destroyed the level curve in the older titles. Of course, nonlinearity isn't an innately positive trait, but that structure could possibly improve the replayability or serve as a challenge to try the later worlds first. And yet, the game barely even brings attention to any of it and makes it really tedious to get the Things needed for it. It just ends up being a complete afterthought.
Back in the day, I was really mad about the overall gaping flaws with this game, although a lot of that was definitely rooted in the fanboy bias that feels just as codified as the Sticker Star hate itself. A decade later, I'm just left feeling empty by how the pieces were there to potentially make a game that could at least stand on its own as something novel, but so much of the potential it could have had was just neglected.
Alright the review's over but there's one thing that bothered me about this game and I'll never have a better chance to say it than now. So worlds 4 and 5 make up the second half of the overworld, like you move on from your main hub and go there. So when you go to world 4 and see that the stickers just lying around have been changed from their regular versions to the stronger shiny ones, you think "okay, im ready to scale up the power curve because i'm in the second part of the game". But then in world 5 the stickers lying around are back to the basic versions. Why. Just in general, World 4 rules and World 5 drools. Thanks for reading this, I know it's dumb but it needed to be said.
I almost feel like this near universally hated game isn't hated enough.
The half star point was for some of the soundtrack.
The half star point was for some of the soundtrack.
It's like the only Paper Mario I've played and it's pretty mid. Using your attack stickers actively deters you from fighting, which is pretty bad in an RPG. Story is also bland, just being another 'save the princess from Bowser' story. Overall, not good
i got all the way to the final boss as a kid and then my 3ds fell and the game cart ejected itself, i guess that means i never truly beat it.... oh well
i liked when birdo sang at least
i liked when birdo sang at least
I was really, really, really angry at this game when it came out, as were a lot of Paper Mario fans, but, like, look. It's been over a decade now. We need to stop pretending this game is the worst thing to ever grace this earth. It's underwhelming for sure but we have to move on. Please. I'm not the spry and energetic 15-year-old I was when this game came out. I don't have the energy to be mad about this game anymore. Just let this game go.
I'll be dead in the ground before I admit this is a bad game
If you asked me to pick between eternity in hell or playing this game again I’d ask you why did you give me the same two options
after years and refreshing my thoughts on this game, yea, I still kinda like it, probably due to nostalgia, but I had fun, still easily the weakest paper mario game that I've played, i hate the fact that you get nothing but useless coins after battles thats the one big problem with this game as everyone has said, and a little bit more npc variety would've been nice.. i now also see why this game is so hated, despite not generally agreeing with it lol. getting to hear the soundtrack again was worth the whole revist tho I'm not gonna lie it's better than the actual game.
On a cold Saturday night ten years ago, I bought the midnight e-shop release of Paper Mario: Sticker Star. This event would later come to be known as The First Betrayal.
I say without hesitation or exaggeration that everyone with a credit on this — including those who did no wrong of their own, such as the art and sound teams — should have been barred from ever working in the field of video games again. While this may sound harsh, this act would be one of kindness, not cruelty; these people do not deserve to feel the shame of knowing that their names are attached to an industry that allows something this unforgivably bad to ever be put on the market. The name "Alan Smithee" appears zero times in the credits, which marks one of several missed opportunities present in Sticker Star.
This game has the worst battle mechanics of any RPG to have ever been released. I will not provide modifiers to this statement to lessen the blow. Any RPG. There is no experience or leveling up, your party members are gone, your attacks are now limited-use consumables, and getting more of them requires finding them in the overworld or buying them from shops. Enemies do not drop enough coins to pay back the cost of the stickers it takes to defeat them, making the only viable strategy to avoid every single random encounter and run from every battle that you're able to. Some bosses, such as Big Cheep Cheep, are immune to all attacks. The only thing that can defeat them is if you find a Thing (proper noun) hidden somewhere in the world, pick it up, backtrack to a shop to convert it into a sticker, and then use the Thing Sticker (proper noun) to insta-kill the previously-invincible boss. To say that this is bad design is an understatement. This should not have been allowed to be released.
Sticker Star may have some of the thinnest writing ever released by a major publisher, and this includes early NES RPGs that only had a maximum of 512kb of data to work with. How in the hell did this game have twelve writers? Without irony, there is more of a plot present in the instruction manual of the original Super Mario Bros. than there is in the entirety of Sticker Star. Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario — sixteen and twelve years Sticker Star's senior, respectively — do not suffer this problem. It cannot be claimed that this was a technical limitation. Shigeru Miyamoto is on the record stating that "It's fine without a story, so do we really need one?", and barring Intelligent Systems from making new characters or developing in any way on old ones; his insistence that the Paper Mario franchise be brought to heel — stripped of its gameplay mechanics, writing, and character design — should stand as a monument to the man's inability to lead. Sticker Star is the statue of Ozymandias, swallowed and weathered by the sands. Look upon this work and despair.
I find it hard to type out everything that is wrong with Sticker Star, because everything is wrong with Sticker Star. There is nothing that it does right. It is a complete, abject failure of a game. In a just world, it would have been dragged out from the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center by its heels and shot. Miyamoto should have been quietly shuffled away to a small, distant corner of the company where he could placidly collect his salary and not damage any further reputations by involving himself. This is a game for nobody. I have tried with everything I have to come up with reasons why someone might like this, and I have nothing. It is not often that this happens. I'm usually able to come up with some sort of redeeming factor, but there is nothing here. Sticker Star is a black hole from which no fun can escape. It's sad. It's just sad. May no meddling manager ever do to another game what Shigeru Miyamoto did to this.
I say without hesitation or exaggeration that everyone with a credit on this — including those who did no wrong of their own, such as the art and sound teams — should have been barred from ever working in the field of video games again. While this may sound harsh, this act would be one of kindness, not cruelty; these people do not deserve to feel the shame of knowing that their names are attached to an industry that allows something this unforgivably bad to ever be put on the market. The name "Alan Smithee" appears zero times in the credits, which marks one of several missed opportunities present in Sticker Star.
This game has the worst battle mechanics of any RPG to have ever been released. I will not provide modifiers to this statement to lessen the blow. Any RPG. There is no experience or leveling up, your party members are gone, your attacks are now limited-use consumables, and getting more of them requires finding them in the overworld or buying them from shops. Enemies do not drop enough coins to pay back the cost of the stickers it takes to defeat them, making the only viable strategy to avoid every single random encounter and run from every battle that you're able to. Some bosses, such as Big Cheep Cheep, are immune to all attacks. The only thing that can defeat them is if you find a Thing (proper noun) hidden somewhere in the world, pick it up, backtrack to a shop to convert it into a sticker, and then use the Thing Sticker (proper noun) to insta-kill the previously-invincible boss. To say that this is bad design is an understatement. This should not have been allowed to be released.
Sticker Star may have some of the thinnest writing ever released by a major publisher, and this includes early NES RPGs that only had a maximum of 512kb of data to work with. How in the hell did this game have twelve writers? Without irony, there is more of a plot present in the instruction manual of the original Super Mario Bros. than there is in the entirety of Sticker Star. Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario — sixteen and twelve years Sticker Star's senior, respectively — do not suffer this problem. It cannot be claimed that this was a technical limitation. Shigeru Miyamoto is on the record stating that "It's fine without a story, so do we really need one?", and barring Intelligent Systems from making new characters or developing in any way on old ones; his insistence that the Paper Mario franchise be brought to heel — stripped of its gameplay mechanics, writing, and character design — should stand as a monument to the man's inability to lead. Sticker Star is the statue of Ozymandias, swallowed and weathered by the sands. Look upon this work and despair.
I find it hard to type out everything that is wrong with Sticker Star, because everything is wrong with Sticker Star. There is nothing that it does right. It is a complete, abject failure of a game. In a just world, it would have been dragged out from the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center by its heels and shot. Miyamoto should have been quietly shuffled away to a small, distant corner of the company where he could placidly collect his salary and not damage any further reputations by involving himself. This is a game for nobody. I have tried with everything I have to come up with reasons why someone might like this, and I have nothing. It is not often that this happens. I'm usually able to come up with some sort of redeeming factor, but there is nothing here. Sticker Star is a black hole from which no fun can escape. It's sad. It's just sad. May no meddling manager ever do to another game what Shigeru Miyamoto did to this.
I’ll never figure out why everyone acts like this game killed their grandma but I recall getting its strategy guide from Walmart cuz the devs think cryptic boss fights are funny
I mean it is the weakest paper mario game, but I don't get why so many people act like this game killed their entire family