"Slime will never be ballin" clueless




"holy shit, Slime is fuckin' ballin!"

This game is just a total slog, to be frank. Feels like you just go through the same old couple of quests through boring overworlds and generic combat over and over. Fight the same enemies to get whatever you need, until your health is too worn out, and then just go back to town and heal. Over and over.

But what about the concept, the whole whining to change the game state thing? I mean, it sounds pretty interesting in theory, but it quickly starts to feed into mind numbing quests. Most of its uses end up being like "turn a desert place into a garden place so you can collect flowers". That kind of stuff. What could have been a cool idea just becomes another pool of points you use to just get on your way through the samey overworld.

The intro is cute. Princess Elise is indeed epic, for instance, she's so lazy that she gets her parrot to learn her spells for her. However, most of the actual story is just going from town to town with nothing else happening. All the quest dialogue tries to be "funny" by going "Wowee it sure is funny that you beat this QUEST in this VIDEO GAME! I wonder why all the innkeepers look so similar??".

However, I will draw attention to one of these meta jokes I did find funny. On one occasion, you've got a branching path between two towns. One being Farmer Place, and the other Skulls and Death Land (can't be bothered to check the exact names). And the mentor character muses to himself, "Oh Gee, I wonder whether she'll go to Farmer Place or Skulls and Death Land, what a truly hard decision not being sarcastic at all"

For those of you wondering, I went to Skulls and Death Land.

Edit: uh it's complicated apparently this game is cool actually? Im just playing through right now ill get back to this later

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.

Overall a really solid time with a compelling narrative and gameplay that stays interesting throughout the short but sweet campaign. It's vaguely Metroidvania adjacent but I wouldn't go in expecting one, since it is more focused on having linear levels in each local than building up a particularly cohesive world to comb through. The bosses were also bombastic and engaging, minus the one stealth boss with some annoying mechanics to trial and error through.

On top of that this game is an absolute aesthetic marvel, the pixel art is obscenely impressive. The soundtrack also goes for this very distinct vibe, very upbeat but still atmospheric. A bunch of songs use metal clangs as well, which may be pretty on the nose with the machinery theme, leads to some uniquely memorable songs like the boss theme. Great stuff all around on both looks and gameplay.

I still don't get why they made the running joke that Mina smells like a Smash fan though, it doesn't come off that weird but still