No I am not dead, thank you very much. After a mishandled parkour stunt I have been in the hospital in critical condition, so thanks for the flowers… Oh wait. No but seriously last week I was out eating thanksgiving. WHO CARES!? Am I right? … I care.

Papyer Mayreeeooooo Teh Thoozend yar dour

Now in English

Papyer Mayree- Wait

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.

So here’s a little story time for you. Too bad, you’re going to hear it anyway. I absolutely love the Paper Mario series, and the second Paper Mario 3DS comes out, you bet your sweet booty that I’mma be playing that game alla days. But in my honest opinion, God as my witness… let’s just be inclusive here, God, Allah, Buddha and nothing as my witnesses, out of all the Paper Mario games Paper Mario: TTYD is my favorite, and it easily makes my top 5 of most favorite games ever made. But who has two broken thumbs and is an idiot? This guy, right here. I sold Thousand Year Door… to Calen, and he can’t even play games anymore. So, I don’t know maybe once this review is posted I’ll beg him to sell it back to me, but I digest- guh- digress.

The part you NEED to pay attention to, AIGHT!?… It’s the story, in case you don’t get how this works, I write a crappy intro, spoil ninety percent of the story, adore the video game (Not Other M, you get that crap out of my house.) then I just kind of end things awkwardly … there, that’s your awkward ending.

Ok, Story.

TTYD starts off with our portly plumber waking up on some kind of ship, he wasn’t kidnapped or anything, he’s on there willingly, Peach told him she found some kind of treasure map, box, crap thing he needed to see, so she sent him from the Mushroom Kingdom alla way to some place called Rogueport, for some reason. When the captain of the ship wakes Mario up he makes a joke about Mario not shutting up about this place the entire time they were travelling, which I really like. It’s a nice touch. So Mario arrives in Rogueport and is all beat up by some X-nauts, who are the bad guys, he’s rescued by a goomba… wait what? (I can’t remember her name, I think it was Goomberella or some stupid poop like that.)  So the two team up and meet some kind of goomba professor (I don’t get this game) who tells them that he found a door in the sewer so they head down there or whatever and boom. Game happens. Ok, fine, they learn that the door is where Peach’s treasure was and they decide they need to open it or something and to do that they need seven crystal stars, which are scattered all over the land, then Mario goes-a on his adventure-a, along the way he meets up with people from the land of Narnia, or Mario characters and enemies, some of who try to kill you and some who join you.

Ok, allies.

So you start off with the useless goomba, then you get a less useless koopa, eventually you get a Yoshi that you can name, I named mine “Sir Woofums”.  Then you get some others. The last ally you get is a sailor Bob-omb who is AWESOME! Each of them has a unique set of moves during attack that really help out, ‘cept Goombella, that crap’s useless. Each of them also has an ability that they can use in combat or outside. Some are necessary to advance in the game, others (ahem, had some “tattle” caught in my throat there) are totally useless. There’s also a gender confused ghost… well, in Japan, in the North American version they make it clear she is in fact a she, so whatever.

Ok, Settings.

What? What? WHAT!? Yeah, I’m talking about the settings in this game, it’s inspired me so. Mostly I’m using this as an excuse to talk about my favorite chapter but that’s a later topic. The central hub town is Rogueport which is kind of like a slum version of the Mushroom Kingdom, there’s garbage all over the street and a freaking guillotine in the middle of the main square, so it’s a little risqué. Once you learn about all the stars you get to go out and about to all the different locations , one of my favorite being a haunted ghost town where Mario is turned into a shadow and loses his party members except for one aforementioned transvestite. Or a floating coliseum where boxing takes place, it’s an utterly amazing chapter, for the most part you’re just thrust into battle after battle against other people who are competing against you to earn the title of champeen, but then you get this whole conspiracy thing that you need to unravel to get the Crystal Star and it’s awesome, that’s also the chapter where you get the Yoshi. My favorite chapter and debatably my favorite level in any video game is Chapter 6 where you’re put on a train to the rich part of the town, and the train is just great, it’s split up into three days where you have to complete some kind of challenge to advance the time from morning to mid-day to evening and on the third day to night, once you get off the train and get to the rich kids neighborhood is where it becomes lame, but that only lasts for like twenty seconds and you’re done. But the rest of the chapter is spectacular, for some unexplained reason, it’s just great, I’m like butta, I love it.

Ok, Gameplay.

This game has three different gameplay modes. First is the exploring mode, where you’ll find yourself in the most, you get full control of Mario, you run, jump, hammer things and turn into a paper airplane, yeah, that’s right. At the beginning of the game Mario is cursed by a black chest that twists his body into shapes that he needs to progress in his adventure, so, thanks for the curse chump. That happens two more times in the game and each time it happens the chests get more and more pleased with themselves cursing you meanwhile you’re getting increasingly happier that they’re doing it. SIDE NOTE OVER! When you’re roaming the streets you can swap your party members and use their abilities to get ahead in life. Combat is activated by touching an enemy, no random encounters here.

Combat is turn-based, which I usually hate because it’s so un-involved but Nintendo managed to spice it up, instead of mindlessly mashing the A button to get the thing you’re trying to kill killed, you can perform attacks that do extra damage by timing the execution right. I.E. When you jump on an enemy you can press the A button right before Mario smacks their face with his foot and do double damage. You can also time blocks so you take less damage, which is ingenuity, and I hope more RPGs can learn that fun is an important aspect to gameplay.

The final mode of gameplay is… playing as Bowser. At the beginning of the game it is established that Bowser is chasing after Mario for some reason, after every other (or so) chapter you jump into the shoes (he doesn’t wear shoes) of Bowser, these sections play like classic Mario side-scrollers, you go from left to right and jump on top of a flag pole at the end, but the twist is you can breathe fire instead of jumping on top of people. These sections are my favorite because they’re usually hilarious.

But this entire freaking game is hilarious. Admittedly it doesn’t tell as amazing a story as Super Paper Mario and the emotion behind it isn’t nearly as strong, and I didn’t cry like a little babie at the end and I don’t have emotional breakdowns every time I listen to this games OST, but I still favour Thousand Year Door simply because it’s heck-a-fun and the story is pretty good, plus your companions are way more interesting than those Pixl things. And Paper Mario’s are the type of game where you don’t mash the A button watching as the text and important things you need to do scroll past so you can invest the next forty hours of your life grinding just to take on the first boss, Paper Mario makes the words interesting and kept someone like me interested for around the thirty hours it took me to beat this game.

Ok, Verdict.

I’ve sort of stopped doing random rating scales, so I guess umm… Don’t not play this game? If you don’t do one thing in your life it better not be play this game. This sounds kind of backwards. Ok, let’s say you have a week until you die, and you’ve never played this game. Either buy it off Amazon or pry it from the cold dead hands of your neighbor who used to own it, disregard your loved ones, ignore any bodily needs, and you fricking play this game, you beat this game, you love this game. I’m trying to use mind control. You will give me fifty bucks, you will give me fifty bucks, you will give me…