Paper Mario: Sticker Star - Gettin’ Sticky With It

Stickers on the wall. Stickers on the doormat. Stickers in the tree, behind the building and in a Question Block. Stickers crumpled up on the ground, in a Toad’s dresser and in that hidden corner. Stickers from fallen enemies and in secret stores.  Mario’s a sticker, the princess is a sticker, your sidekick is a sticker. All the Toads, Goombas and Koopas are stickers too.

In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, stickers reign supreme, and it’s your glorious job to collect every last one of them. But don’t let yourself be fooled - this is a daunting task. And from what I’ve played, an incredibly satisfying one too.

As the title would suggest, the entire world revolves around those sticky pieces of paper, from the battle system to the plot to the franchise’s signature side-splitting humor. It’s a unique angle, to be sure, one that could have easily come across as gimmicky or superfluous. But it’s actually an incredibly creative twist to the Paper Mario we all know and love.

We’ve already briefly touched on the new, sticker-fueled battle mechanics. You basically gather as many stickers as you can fit in your album, then use them as you see fit to best the various enemies. Simple, right? Maybe if it weren’t for the fact that the game forces you to be incredibly clever with your choices.

You see, not all sticker attacks work on all enemies. That would be far too easy, and the game’s going to require a lot more of you than that. For instance, you can’t hit flying guys with most Hammers, and good luck trying to use a standard Jump attack on a spiked baddie. The effect is that you have to learn each bad guy’s weakness, do your best to account for what stickers you’ll need for a given area, and manage your sticker stock accordingly. This sticker resource management adds a whole new layer to the gameplay, and makes for some tough decisions, some crazy creative wins and a whole lot of fun.

Beware the shiny, giant Goomba.

But stickers aren’t just for battling, of course. They’re also for collecting, looking at, and being shiny. That’s where the Sticker Museum comes in. While you’re figuring out which stickers to hold onto and which to ditch from a battle standpoint, you’re also going to want to hold on to at least one of each kind of sticker you come across - and especially to make room in your album for the rare stickers you’ll occasionally encounter. Doing so will be a challenge at first, as your album starts out rather small, and the collectibles tend to stack up and leave little room for battle stock - but it all pays off when you finally unlock the museum.

That’s when you get to go absolutely crazy. Here you can store and view the stickers you manage to hold onto, and where you realize how very many different varieties of stickers there really are. The museum is huge, so filling it up is quite the daunting task. It’s also quite enticing, as looking at all the stickers you’ve come across is oddly satisfying, and besides that, the Toad curator promises a prize of some sort for the daring completionists just kooky enough to go for the gold.

The game also boasts a variety of “things” to find. Electric fans, baseball bats, lucky cats, soda - if you run across some weird, non-flat object, you can take it back to the main town to transform into a sticker. These stickers can then be used to beat bad guys in some extravagant way, but are especially useful for finding secrets. With the ability to “paperize” at any moment, you’re able to get a different perspective on the world and spot certain areas with big, red squares or glowing purple spots that just scream, “sticker me!”

Find the right sticker for the right spot and something cool will happen, whether it helps you push forward in the story, unlocks a secret area or yields you some kind of prize. You’ll find these areas everywhere, and in surprising places, so keeping an eye out - and keeping a stock of various “things” and stickers always on hand - is certainly in your best interest.

I still have quite a bit of game to work my way through, and a lot of stickers still to collect, so I’m excited to keep pressing forward and see everything Sticker Star has to offer. If you love the Paper Mario series, or just have an affinity for collecting or for shiny things, this is definitely a title to keep your eye on.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star hits both the 3DS eShop and North American shelves on November 11. For more on this and other 3DS games, keep it here on IGN.