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.