NINTENDO New Paper Mario coming to Nintendo Switch in July, Mario fights office supplies

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Paper Mario: The Origami King is an all-new adventure featuring a new villain

The Paper Mario series is coming to Nintendo Switch this summer with Paper Mario: The Origami King, a new adventure with an origami paper theme and folding-themed powers. Nintendo will release Paper Mario: The Origami King on July 17.
Paper Mario: The Origami King introduces a new threat to the Mushroom Kingdom: King Olly, a royal with world-conquering (or world-folding) ambitions. King Olly has kidnapped the entirety of Princess Peach’s castle and conscripted Bowser’s army, forcing Mario to ally with Bowser and King Olly’s benevolent sister, Olivia, to defeat the evil King.
The Switch game will give Mario a new power called 1000-Fold Arms that allows players to interact with the game’s landscape by “stretching out and pulling, peeling and revealing new locations, helping you to solve puzzles and uncover unexpected surprises,” Nintendo said in a news release.
Paper Mario: The Origami King will feature a new ring-based battle system that combines puzzle-solving with battles against a variety of foes in dynamic, turn-based battles.

 

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[h=1]Paper Mario: The Origami King video explains how Mario will fight office supplies[/h]

Beware the sentient colored pencil case

Combat in the latest Paper Mario game is going to look a lot different than you may have expected. On Friday, Nintendo released a new video for Paper Mario: The Origami King that gives players a deep dive into its world and its new combat system that’s all about positioning.
The newest Paper Mario game is set around Princess Peach’s Castle, which Olly, the Origami King, has taken over. To save the world from the new folded menace, Mario has to set off on a quest retake the castle. According to the video, Mario’s journey will bring him through five different areas including a desert oasis, a “ninja-filled mansion,” an underground sewer system, an autumn mountain, and a forest spring.
The biggest difference in the Paper Mario world this time around comes with the game’s combat. While it still has the turn-based battle system that the Paper Mario series is known for, the preparation for each battle is a little different. Every fight in The Origami King takes place in a massive, layered ring with dozens of spaces around it.

Mario, lining up his foes Image: NintendoIndividual enemies are positioned inside the spaces and before each battle players can spin the layers to line up the enemies into the perfect position. Mario’s abilities will be more effective on enemies in a line as he can take out multiple opponents with just one move.
The boss battles give this new combat system another twist. Rather than placing Mario at the center of the ring, the bosses themselves stay at the center. Your job in these fights is to create a safe path for Mario to get close to the boss so he can damage them.

Tape, one of the bosses from Paper Mario: The Origami King Image: NintendoSpeaking of bosses, they might be the best part of this entire Paper Mario video. As it turns out, Mario’s biggest foes in this game will be stationary supplies. In the trailer he takes on a giant sentient case of colored pencils, a man made of rubber bands, and of course the dreaded Tape.
Paper Mario: The Origami King is set to be released on July 17 for Nintendo Switch.

 

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Paper Mario: The Origami King is a cute game with ridiculously punishing combat




Fun barely papers over the parts that make me want to scream




PlayingPlaying Mario games was a lot different when I was young.

I would play as much as I was able, and then hand the controller to someone else — a sibling, a cousin, a friend, or a parent — and say, “Can you get me through this part? I can’t do it!” That someone would help me through so I could happily run off to play the next section … until I got stuck again and had to ask for more help.

This was decades ago, though. I’ve become the older sibling, friend, or relative to many folks in the time since. Sure, hand me the controller. I can beat that part for you.

Paper Mario: The Origami King makes me feel like that kid again, and it’s absurd. I bump into those moments of frustration daily as I play. Feeling so stymied is especially jarring when contrasted with the whimsy of the rest of the experience. It’s a delightful children’s game for children except when it’s making you do multivariate calculus.

A WHIMSICAL PAPER WORLD
Paper Mario: The Origami King really is, for the most part, a delightful and silly game. Mario heads to Peach’s castle to attend the Origami Festival, which is obviously on brand for a paper-based game. The conflict arrives in the form of the self-appointed origami king himself, King Olly. He starts folding Princess Peach, Toads, and minions alike into origami versions of themselves, which is an unnatural state for the two-dimensional denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom.

It’s up to Mario and the friends he finds along the way to navigate environmental and platforming puzzles, turn-based combat, and paper puns while they set their world right.

Like past games in the Paper Mario series, The Origami King shines the brightest due to the conceit that everything is made of paper, an idea that Nintendo loves to take to its natural conclusion whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Everything on the screen is some playful combination of stickers, papercraft, and papier-mache. I can almost smell the construction paper with its familiar texture and torn edges. I can see the creases and imagine the safety scissors that cut out the shapes.

The paper version of Toad Town and Princess Peach’s castle. Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon
But then I bump into one of those origami Folded Soldiers, and I have one of my moments of wanting to hand the controller to someone more competent. Combat, at first blush, seems like an RPG: You encounter a representation of an enemy in the world, and then you transition into a battle arena where you face several of that enemy in turn-based combat.

Origami King adds a twist here, however. Combat takes place in a circular arena with Mario in the center. My enemies are arranged around me on a series of four rings divided into twelve sections. I can rotate these rings or slide the sections to arrange my enemies into a pattern before each turn — rows for jumping attacks or two-by-two squares for hammer attacks. Combat is basically a puzzle mini-game as much as a battle of tactics. If I get it right, I can win every fight in one turn without taking any damage.

Combat is more puzzle than tactics. Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon
It’s a mechanic that takes a little getting used to, because I only have a few moves and a time limit in which to make them. There are so many of those easy puzzle-combat scenes early in the game that they start to feel overly simple and unnecessarily time-consuming, and I get both bored and overconfident.

Then another encounter, this one slightly later in the game, leaves me staring at the screen absolutely certain the puzzle is impossible. My time runs out or I run out of moves on the rings, and I’m left with an imperfect solution and an overwhelming sense of defeat because this seemingly simple kids’ game just crushed any confidence I had previously built up.



The game does offer me some assistance for my moments of confusion. As I explore the world, I’m rescuing hapless Toads who have been origami’d or have gotten their heads stuck in something. During combat, these Toads appear in stands around the battle arena and I can pay them gold coins to help me solve the puzzle. It helps, but being rescued by Toads feels … unpleasantly humbling.

There are other concessions to my fallibility as well. I can recover even when I screw up these puzzles, however. Mario survives the turn-based attacks of the minions, and I get another chance at a simplified version of the puzzle if I’m able to take out a few of the enemies, but not all of them. I don’t think any of these minion battles have taken me more than three rounds to complete, but each of those rounds stretch out into minutes-long combat sequences that drag down the pacing of the game.

And then I encounter my first boss battle.

WHIMSY BECOMES MISERY
Boss battles change the rules of combat yet again. The rings remain, but the boss stands in the center and Mario is on the outside. Those ring segments now have a variety of arrows, items, and actions shown on their top. My task — still with a time limit and a set number of ring moves — is to find a path along those arrows, to a spot close to the boss, that ends on a segment with an attack action.

It’s an overwhelming challenge, but not impossible, and I even improve a little beyond “muddling through” by the end of my first boss fight.

Boss fights are confusing and frustrating in an entirely new way. Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon
The second boss fight introduces tiles that change in the time between when I set my path and Mario executes it. It’s a twist, but that’s to be expected. I adapt, and Mario arrives at the boss. I watch him deliver a perfect attack. For zero damage.

This boss, it turns out, is only vulnerable from one of those ring segments and not the other 11. I get hints over subsequent turns about why my attacks didn’t work and where I have to stand, but it still takes me three more rounds to figure it out.

By the time I’m in my third boss battle, I’m controlling the rings, charting paths, picking up items, hitting actions in a specific order, chipping away at the boss’ health bar, and planning for my next turn. Those simple, sliding, twisting puzzles and one-round combat encounters from the early hours of the game have turned into lengthy boss fights that feel like a test I didn’t study for.

BEING RESCUED BY TOADS FEELS UNPLEASANTLY HUMBLING
These fights easily take between 10 and 20 minutes (and one notable 30-minute fight) for a single attempt — no dying, no restarting, just 30 minutes of struggling to figure out what to do, and then trying a new approach once I have a slightly better idea about what I need to do to continue forward.

This isn’t as much of a difficulty spike as it is a difficulty brick wall. I could bribe the Toads to help me out more, but I have to balance that cost against buying necessary weapons and items. And I hate admitting defeat in the face of puzzles that the game has trained me to think have a simple solution, especially when it means asking Toads for help. The battles become so much harder, and the game itself barely seems to notice or care about the problems this will cause players.

You have to spend your coins to buy better weapons, but they break over time. Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon
The game is a delight most of the time, and is often too simple as I spend my time running around, talking to other characters, and giggling at the silly wordplay expected from a Paper Mario release. But the 10% or so of the game made up of combat encounters and boss fights makes me absolutely miserable. I’ve made it about halfway through the entire game at this point, and I dread the next boss fight, both because of the time commitment and the frustration I’m sure to feel, based on everything that’s come before.

I’m sure I’ll muddle through it, confused and frustrated, but still kicking, and get back to the jokes about paper products and pounding crumpled-up Toads flat with my hammer. It’ll be silly and funny again, and I’ll almost forget my frustration. But then another boss battle will make me want to fling my Switch through a window.

DELIGHTFUL, BUT AT WHAT COST?
Nothing is “just a Mario game” anymore. There are 35 years of history and multiple series spanning everything from the original Super Mario Bros. to the various incarnations of Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, and Super Smash Bros., to list very few.

Mario is a brand, not a genre. The strongest connective tissue between them is made up of the characters and basic story beats, while being designed in ways that make them fun for players of any age. These games can often be as hard, or as easy, as you’d like to make them.

For so much of Paper Mario: The Origami King, that’s true. I want to share it with my nieces and nephews, as well as my grown friends. But I hesitate due to the frustration of the combat and those imposing boss battles — those moments where I wish I had someone else to take over on the controller.

 

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This NSFW Paper Mario Easter egg is nice




That’s a penis

Paper Mario: The Origami King is available now on Nintendo Switch, and it’s a cute, but sometimes punishing adventure in the classic Paper Mario style. It has fourth-wall-breaking humor, challenging boss battle puzzles, and a truly staggering number of Toads.

It also has what appears to be the most blatant NSFW sex joke I’ve ever seen in a Paper Mario game, because one of the collectibles looks so much like a penis that it seems to either be a major gaffe or someone at Nintendo is feeling incredibly emboldened. Just, look at this thing. It’s called a Desert Tower and it appears in the Scorching Sandpaper Desert area of Paper Mario: The Origami King.

Sure, you’re saying, at that angle, and with that fleshy tone, and because Toad heads are so bulbous, it looks kind of like a dong. But in-game, where the tower stands proud and erect thrusting from the purple sands of the Scorching Sandpaper Desert, it looks totally innocent.

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo
But explain this:

Nice.
You see it, right? The Sex Number. This simply can’t be a coincidence, this phallic Toad trophy just hanging out there in entry No. 69 in the Paper Mario: The Origami King collectibles menu. With that data, even the item description — “Said to be modeled after a legendary king!” — somehow seems suggestive. I already know what one-word comment you’re going to write under this post, because we all know what’s going on here.

The Paper Mario games have always been stuffed with jokes. Some of them veer toward suggestive, like these weighty ellipses in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door:

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo
And there’s this scene from Paper Mario: Color Splash that is open to all kinds of interpretation (but none of them kid-friendly):

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo
But the Desert Tower collectible entry in The Origami King is such an in-your-face gag, interpreting this as anything but intentional by someone at Nintendo is, well, a little hard to swallow.



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holy crap