Looks like Sticker Star. Uh oh.
Nintendo released a new YouTube trailer for Paper Mario: Color Splash yesterday. The trailer begins with Mario receiving a mysterious letter, but once it’s unfolded, he finds to his horror that it’s actually a Toad retainer, drained of color, folded up, and stuffed into an envelope! Of course, this requires investigation, so he leaves immediately to discover the letter’s source.
Once the opening plot details are out of the way, the video goes in to describing some of the mechanics. These include smacking things with your hammer to restore their color so that they can be used, cutting away bits of the landscape using the Wii U GamePad, and shifting your perspective as in Super Paper Mario to make alternate paths visible.
The trailer then shifts to showing some of the battle mechanics used in the game. Troublingly, it looks a LOT like the unpopular battle system that was used in Paper Mario: Sticker Star. It appears that you’ll use one-shot cards for every attack, and can power them up by coloring the pictures on them before flicking them at enemies. Real-world items that act as powerful summons will return as well, and the video shows a hammer, a fire extinguisher, a battery, a fan, and a Maneki Neko lucky cat statue being used in this way. Support characters do appear to make a return, as Mario is shown working with a Koopa to defeat a line of enemies.
Say what you will about the battle system, but the artwork in this game looks great. I was particularly impressed by a triple-thick corrugated chain chomp rolling down a hill at our hero. I’m probably in the minority when I say that I didn’t hate Sticker Star, but can admit it was less enjoyable than most of the other Paper Mario games I’ve played. Hopefully, the card-based battling will feel different enough when the game releases on October 7.
