the thousand year door

The amount of new games released in the past two months is absolutely staggering. I was hoping to have played most of the big name releases by now, but I am so far behind I might as well wait until the Christmas rush is over. This is partially due to my current adventures in Bloodlines' carefully crafted World of Darkness, and the possibility of injecting the final version World of Warcraft into my playlist. Publishers are going to wonder once again why nobody buys their obscure yet critically lauded games, and we will see another round of sequels. A vicious cycle.

So I sat down with Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door a few weeks ago, in a halfhearted attempt to balance the amount of violence in the games I was playing. If I had to summarize the experience in a word, it would be "cute". Never nauseatingly cute, but then again it might not be the best choice of words for anyone that's looking at this game seriously. Paper Mario certainly provides a pleasant, innoffensive adventure, but in terms of lasting enjoyment I can think of better ways to spend my gaming time than reading an endless torrent of dialogue bubbles.

I never played Paper Mario, so my only real basis for comparison to the gameplay is Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, something I played almost non-stop on the plane ride home from Hong Kong. The storyline feels like an amalgamation of past Mario adventures: we have the mysterious island from Sunshine, the seven stars from the Super Mario RPG and the otherwordly door from Mario Land 2: The Six Golden Coins.

I imagine The Thousand Year Door was primarily aimed at kids; or at least that's what it feels like. The bright, colorful graphics, the excellent character design, the simplistic, coordination-driven combat system and accessible storyline would make this a title any fledgling gamer could pick up and enjoy. But I think where the game falters is its delivery - there are just way too many dialogue trees to sift through to gather the important information for your quests, and I found the game's difficulty increased a lot faster than I anticipated.

In combat, timing is everything. And for attacks, this is not a problem. However defending is, as for most monsters it won't be entirely obvious how to defend against them. In Mario and Luigi, every monster has a little action they do to let you know how they are attacking, and you are able to prepare a defense, or possible counter-attack. I found that no matter how well I thought I timed everything, the best I could do was dodge. There is also an "audience" during the combat sequences combat, and depending on how well you're doing you draw in new viewers who contribute to your "Star Points", which in turn enable you to perform power moves or combos with party members. This is kind of a play off of Mario's fame within the game world; it seems everyone you talk to is extremely honored to meet you and enthralled with your many exploits.

You gain party members as the game progresses, and their special abilities will enable you to visit previously inaccessible areas. Paper Mario can also learn his own share of abilities: he can fold up into a paper airplane and fly over chasms, or a boat to cross a raging river. The Zelda-MetroVania approach has been done countless times, but in order to keep me interested there has to be some really cool abilities in sight, an exciting meta-goal that will keep me picking up the game. But there wasn't any of that, and after a while the game stops being fun. Though I was impressed by a boss battle that I felt would be a typical attack, dodge, repeat type of affair; instead, the boss I was supposed to fight turned into a game show host that offered me a set of questions I had to answer correctly to claim the item he was holding. I answered them all right, and he begrudgingly gave me my reward amidst a stream of (clean) curses. Like I said, cute.

Something that bothered me about party management is that you can only have two party members in battle or visible in the game world at any time. Party members are selected much like items in an inventory, and it just didn't feel right. In Mario and Luigi this was expected; you were only ever supposed to control the two brothers through their adventure. But The Thousand Year Door is hard, and not having the extra bit of help can make the difference between winning and game over. See, as soon as one of your party member dies, that's it - game over. Unlike Mario and Luigi, where a 1-up mushroom can be used to revive a fallen brother in combat.

It's unfortunate that The Thousand Year Door was released in the holiday rush, because to be quite honest there really is nothing wrong with the game; I just can't see myself playing it when there are much better distractions vying for my attention. And from what I've read, there isn't a whole lot that distinguishes this game from its N64 predecessor, besides the storyline. If you're looking for light hearted adventure on the Gamecube, you may be better off looking at the recently discounted Zelda: The Wind Waker.

he whistles then he runs