A Mario made out of paper is a damn cool character. He slips into bed, slides right past a jail cell, and gets away slamming a Goomba with a hammer cause he's too cute. In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Intelligent Systems has developed a clever and creative RPG that takes paper and Mario culture and crumples it into one big ball. The RPG action can be flat but it doesn't stop Mario from being fun.

Old Princess Peach needs some rescuing after she checks a seedy town called Rogueport. Peach had a map to some phat treasure at Rogueport and was taken for the information. Before she was nabbed she sent the map to Mario to let her know where she was and what she was looking for. Mario lands at Rogueport to meet Gombella, a little hot girl Goomba, and researcher Goomba Professor Frankly. They find out that the Thousand Year Door is located right down the tube from Rogueport, but Mario needs to grab all seven Crystal Stars to open up that door and find Princess Peach on the way.

Rogueport is one of many towns in Paper Mario. Here Mario can stock up on items like Mushrooms for heart points, Fire Flower to special attack with fireballs, Honey Syrup to refill flower points, and Mr. Softener to knock down enemy defense. Flower points are like magic points and let Mario do special attacks if he has certain badges equipped. Badges add special techniques like a power hammer attack or multi-jump attacks. To become a bigger, badder Mario after each fight, he gets star points. Reach 100 star points and Mario can add more heart points, flower points, or badge points to equip more badges.

Mario and his crew can also use the action elements to defend. Hit the A button when an enemy attacks and they'll knock off less heart points. Hit the B button and sometimes Mario will counter the attack and receive no damage.

In battle Mario can jump, hammer, use items, bust out a special, or use tactics like defend or fun. Each fight is set on a stage with audience, so a party member can appeal to the audience to nab more stars to replenish the special meter. When the crowd likes you sometimes they'll toss stuff at enemies to knock down one heart point. But when Mario's party isn't so hot, they'll toss stuff at them instead.

The downfall in battle system is that it can feel the same fight after fight. You'll wind up using the same techniques for the chapter that you're in and things only ramp up when you have to go head-to-head with a boss. There's only so many times you can pull back on the analog to whack an enemy and not feel like you've been doing it for 1000 years.

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