Wait, people hated sticker star? I loved that one!
Paper Mario: Sticker Star is best described as a polarizing game. One might like the game, while the other might dislike it. As a standalone game, it's a good game that's worth playing. As a follow-up to the Paper Mario franchise? Well, chances are, you might be disappointed if you were expecting a lot.
My least favorite game has to be Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, one of the games that are widely considered to be truly broken, if not bad. It's a game that launched during the first year the system came out in North America.
The controls are pretty much handled like a typical Atari 2600 game (the controller have one joystick that acts as a D-Pad and one button). You'd think that's simple, right? But that isn't the case here by design. You can do a whole lot with just a D-Pad and B button, while the rest of the buttons on the controller are unused. Passing the ball is done while holding any direction and hitting B, which could've been to another button. Throwing the ball upwards is done by lifting your thumb off from the D-Pad slightly before you press B, but the timing is quite inconsistent here, so expect accidentally passing the ball at the wrong direction. And the goal has a rather finicky hit detection, so good luck trying to score a goal. Since there's "Combat" in its title, you can also tackle on your opponent anytime you want without penalty if you aren't holding the ball.
The bird-view proves to be more confusing than being helpful, thanks to the fact the ball's height takes some time to figure out to tell. Rather than having the shadow staying in place and the ball indicating the height, it's the opposite this time around. The ball does somewhat tells about the height, but it's not precise enough to tell exactly when it will hit the ground, which is crucial to catch it. You're supposed to rely on how far the shadow is to the ball to accurately tell the actual ball's height. Once you got hang of it, this shouldn't be an issue anymore.
The AI in this game isn't even good. For example, if the controlled teammate gets too far away from the other playable teammates, they won't even bother approaching to you as some of them should. Therefore, the ball will often move quite far once you lost it and your opponent immediately threw it. Graphics in overall is ugly to look at, so are the few musics in the game. Both of which made the game duller.
It might be a good game for the two players mode, given it's hilarious seeing each other struggling to score points. Otherwise, just stay away from this game!
