Pros: Great platforming, and a little RPG'ing, addictive.
Cons: Enough with the story already!
The bottom line: Until Super Mario Galaxy comes out, this is the platformer to own. Buy it. You shan't regret it. What the hey? I'll bump it to a five.
So, I'm watching the gaming news a couple months back, and I see that Super Mario Galaxy is supposed to come out in March. Great. Fantastic. Though I was disappointed in Super Mario Sunshine, I held out high hopes for Galaxy. Alas, the date has been pushed back to God knows when, so I thought I would have to wait to get my Mario fix. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, along comes Super Paper Mario, one of most bizarre, but also one of the best Mario games to come out in a long time, and good way to whet your appetite until Galaxy arrives.

So I pop the game in and I'm wondering what the developers were on when they made this. It's a platformer, but it's not 3-D, like Super Mario 64. Oh wait, it is. Somewhat. Ok, so maybe it's an RPG. Or not. Maybe it's an exercise in the crazy use of the Wii Remote. Not really. Let's just call it an adventure game and be done with it. Moving on...

SPM starts off with the whole Mario crew, except Mario of course, being carted off to another dimension, to the realm of the evil Count Bleck, who wants to bring about the destruction of all worlds, starting with a marriage between Bowser and Princess Peach. Soon, Mario is strapping his adventure hat on once again, and he's off to save the world...again. Soon Mario learns that to counter Count Bleck he must collect Seven Pure Hearts in seven distinct worlds to stop the world from being swallowed up by darkness, and you're off...almost.

You go to world called Flipside, where things are...well...flipped. Think of this as the headquarters. From here you'll enter doors to the different worlds that you'll be traveling, and come back to procure items necessary for your survival. You learn a bit about Flipside, and you're off...not quite.

See, the incredibly annoying thing about SPM is the story. That's not to say the story is bad, it's actually quite good, but you could write a book as long as War and Peace to describe all of it. The story is told through text, lots and lots and lots of text. A lot of it is funny, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, making sly references to Mario games and fanatics who play them. Throw in some banter that could be called witty at times, and it's all fun, except for the fact that you can't skip through it, nor would you want to, as important aspects of the story, or your next task, are told through the text, so if you decided that reading was for suckers in school, karma will come back to bite you in this game.

After a couple of bazillion lines of text, you'll get to the first level, which appears to be a classic Mario level, and feels like it too. The nunchuk isn't used in this game, and you hold the remote sideways, just like an old Nintendo game. The only quirky uses of the remote involve Tippi, a "Pixl" butterfly that aids you on your quest, and certain items and situations. To use Tippi, just point the remote at the screen and point to an object of interest, and she tells you about it, or reveals a hidden door or staircase. Some items require to shake the remote to activate them, and if you're frozen by an enemy, you shake the remote to get unfrozen. Oh yeah, and when you jump on an enemy, flicks of the remote make Mario do crazy moves, resulting in style points.

After a few seconds in SPM, you'll be in unfamiliar territory, unless you've played any of the previous Paper Mario games. The turn based fighting of the previous games is gone, but the spirit of the RPG is still there. When you jump on an enemy, you get points, and each enemy has HP and all those wonderful RPG elements, but it's so much simpler now. You also level up by gaining points, but there's no real skill involved. You don't pick which areas you want to brush up on, you simply level up on damage and HP alternatively.

Now, get a little further into the game, and even those familiar with Paper Mario will be in unfamiliar territory. You'll be given the ability to "flip," which puts you in 3-D. This is not just to look cool, but also serves a practical purpose. Pipes that block your path in 2-D can be simply walked around in 3-D, passageways are opened up, and invincible enemies bypassed. When looking at a level, be sure to look at it from all perspectives, because you may just miss something the first time through.

Soon, you'll have Bowser and Peach added to your party, and each is necessary for certain parts of the game, if not a bit underused. Peach's ability to float temporarily is used early on, as is Bowser's ability to spew fire, but the further you get in the game, the less use you find for them, and Mario will be your guide for a majority of the quest. That's not a bad thing, nor was it laziness on the developers' part, because there are other characters in your party that you have to balance as well, namely Pixls.

Pixls, like your butterfly friend, are useful little creatures that allow characters to perform different tasks, such as stomping, becoming paper thin to slip through cracks, shrinking, dropping bombs, etc. There's tons of them, so I'll leave you to discover them. Unlike your butterfly, they can only be used one at a time, so that's what I was talking about when I mentioned balancing.

So now you're off collecting pure hearts. Each chapter has four parts, topped off with a boss battle at the end. Ok, some deviate later in the game, but for all intents and purposes, let's just say that each chapter has four parts. The boss battles are fun, but a little on the simplistic side. It usually doesn't take but a few seconds to learn the boss' weakness and exploit it. After completing a chapter, you have to put your pure heart on a heart pillar. Finding these pillars are quests in themselves, and you'll find yourself using each new ability progressively to find them.

Flipside itself is also its own little world. Take time to explore it, and you'll find some pretty cool stuff to occupy your time, such as the arcade with games that are actually cool.

Now, let's get into the formal critique of the game. The graphics are purposely simple. Paper Mario is exactly what it says it is, with characters basically being animated pieces of paper in animated papery worlds. So nothing eye popping here, which is becoming a bit of an annoyance. The Wii can do better than this graphically, but Nintendo seems to wear the fact that they don't use the system's power like a badge of honor. That's not to say the world's aren't cool. They are. You'll go through a classic Mario level, a video game nerd's domain, space, underwater, and even in an underworld for gamers. There's imagination here, it's just simple.

The sound isn't bad. The music works, and fits, and at the very least isn't annoying. The sound efffects are classic Mario, and the voices are nonexistent. As Forrest Gump would say, that's all I have to say about that.

Onto controls. The controls for playing the game itself are hard to screw up, as it's a simple layout. However, I did have some problems operating Tippi. Just pointing at the screen isn't as simple as it sounds, and I found myself swinging the remote around like a flyswatter when all I wanted to do was point at something on the screen. Other than that, no complaints.

As far as gameplay, this is the Wii's biggest adventure since Zelda. You'll explore worlds indepthly, uncover secrets, play minigames if you so choose, and as a bonus, you can see almost everything from more than one perspective. This game will keep you playing well into the night, though you might feel childish for doing so. But what can you do? It's addictive, and addictions must be fed.

Here's the deal: If you're looking for a big adventure, with characters you've come to know and love, with a great deal of fun and a brain to match, this is the game for you. It takes RPG's and platformers, mixes them up, and the result is awesome.

Super Paper Mario is rated E, not suprisingly so. There's nothing offensive here, though the story may prove to be a bit daunting to younger children.