A Look at the Gameplay of "Paper Mario Sticker Star"

 

Intelligent Systems' Paper Mario games are some of the best games you could ever play with Nintendo's portly plumber. Aside from inventive gameplay and beautiful graphics, the games boast sharp, hilarious writing and unforgettable characters.

Nintendo showed off a lot of the upcoming 3DS follow-up to the series, Paper Mario Sticker Star, at its E3 3DS Conference. While there are no story details yet, we do know that the bulk of gameplay revolves around collectible stickers, which show up on the touchscreen as your "Sticker Book."

Stickers can be found anywhere--pinning down pieces of scenery (removing them changes the environment), in or behind items, and even won from battles. Like a card-battle game, stickers are your "moves" in battle, and Paper Mario Sticker Star uses the same timing-based battle system as previous games in the series. You can also bet coins in a Battle Spin slot game--winning lets you use more than one sticker per turn.

In a change to the standard RPG format, you don't gain experience from fighting and winning battles--you'll just receive coins and stickers for defeating enemies. Mario gains experience by finishing quests--an example shown at the E3 conference is Mario coming across a Toad whose flowers have been blown away by strong winds. Using Attack Flower stickers from your Sticker Book replaces the flowers and completes the quest, granting you EXP.

We even got a look at strange 3D objects--in the demo we get to see a Fan, Scissors, and a Good Luck Cat among others--that can be transformed into massive stickers that take up a lot of space in the Sticker Book. These supersize stickers are used to advance through the story.

Two things already cement my excitement for this: 1- IT'S FREAKIN' PAPER MARIO and 2- it's finally going portable!