Paper Mario:
Color Splash

Realease Date:	Units sold:	System:
Oct 7, 2016	0.9 million	Nintento Wii U

Paper Mario: Color Splash is the worst-performing game in the series. This is due to it being a direct sequel to Sticker Star, as well as launching on the failed console, the Wii U. Despite its sales numbers, this game is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor in more ways than one but still carries some of its problems along with it.

Plot

The story begins with Princess Peach visiting Mario's house on a stormy night with a distressed look on her face. She gives Mario a letter, which, upon unravelling it, turns out to be a Toad's body drained of all its colour! Though initially shocked by this, Mario then realized that the toad was stamped with an address to Port Prisma. And so, Mario, Peach, and her Toad set sail for Port Prisma to find out what happened to this toad.

Gameplay

Battle System
Paper Mario: Color Splash's battle system is very similar to that of Sticker Star. Mario still uses disposable items as attacks, although this time they are cards instead of stickers. Mario also still defaults to attacking the enemy in the front. Some subtle differences are that the battle spinner is gone, and Mario can just select three cards for battle no matter what. Another change is that enemies no longer have numerical health, and Mario doesn't do numerical damage. The enemies' health is expressed in terms of how much color they have left. This takes away from some of the fun for me because I always enjoy making calculated moves where I deal exactly as much damage as I expect. Whereas with the lack of numbers, I find myself shooting in the dark with my moves sometimes. Also, Mario gets to use his paint to paint his colourless cards however much he wants. The more paint he spends on the card, the more damaging the card will be. In concept, this sounds like a very engaging and strategic game of give-and-take with Mario's paint, but in practice, it doesn't end up adding much strategy. Paint is so plentiful that I never really felt the tradeoff when I painted my cards fully. In fact, I like Color Splash's battling less than Sticker Star's. I find the painting of the cards really slows down the battles, making each battle feel like a slog. I never found myself skipping battles in Sticker Star, but about halfway through Color Splash, I tried to avoid as many as I could, simply because of how long they took. Color Splash tried to give an incentive to battle, by giving the player Hammer Scrapsupon defeating enemies. After collecting enough Hammer Scraps, Mario's Paint capacity levels up. This is nice, but I never found it to be an extremely necessary upgrade in most scenarios.
Overworld
This is an area of Sticker Star that I think Color Splash made great improvements to. Firstly, the use of the HD graphics of the Wii U really gets to shine here. The vibrancy and life put into the locales in this game vs. Sticker Star is like night and day. In terms of gameplay, Color Splash has its new painting mechanic. All over every level, you will encounter colourless patches on the floors, walls, and plants. Mario can hit them with his paint hammer to give them back their colour and earn some coins for doing it. This is extremely engaging to do and never gets old! I love going to a new level and having a bunch of spots to paint. I also love that it gives the player something to do outside of the main story, as each level gets a little badge next to it if the player finds and paints every colourless spot. After I beat the game, I went back and painted every level! Another aspect of the overworld gameplay that isn't quite as prominent is Color Splash's Paperization equivalent, called the Cutout technique. With this, Mario is able to temporarily cut out part of the level, and either jump on the uncut parts like a 2D platformer or insert a card of his choice into it to solve a puzzle. The Cutout ability is not nearly as central as Sticker Star's Paperizing, but it's still a neat mechanic that adds a nice bit of variety to the gameplay. Things also make a return from Sticker Star, but their implementation is much better in this game. There are way fewer Things than in Sticker Star, making the amount of Things to choose from less overwhelming. It is also much easier to tell which one is needed because of this. The game also has a hint toad that you can talk to, free of charge, that tells you which Thing you will need next, making it much less cumbersome to keep trying over and over until you get the right Thing.
World Map
Just like Sticker Star, Color Splash uses a world map to connect the areas Mario visits. However, for some reason, Color Splash's world doesn't feel as disconnected as Sticker Star's did. Each level that Mario goes to feels like a continuation of the last, and they fit together well to make a full-fledged chapter, instead of multiple mini-chapters. Color Splash's world map is also less linear in its design. Throughout the game, Mario may visit certain places multiple times, at completely different points in the story. Some areas may have also changed since that last time he's been there, adding a sense of realism to the world. I also love the touch of the map becoming more coloured in, and its music getting more instruments, as the game goes on. It gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment in your progress.

Partners

Huey

Huey is a paint bucket who was summoned in Port Prisma after the 6 Big Paint Stars were taken by Bowser. He starts as a 3D paint bucket until he empties his paint supply to Mario when Mario first learns about paint. Huey's role in the game is very similar to Kersti's role in Sticker Star. However, Huey is a lot more likeable. He makes funny quips, isn't rude to Mario, and is overall just a lot nicer to be around. Huey provides Mario with the Cutout ability, as well as gives hints and insights about areas whenever Mario asks him to.

Chapters

Prologue: Trouble in Port Prisma
Upon arriving in Port Prisma, Mario, Peach, and Toad see that the place is completely deserted, colourless, and lifeless. Upon entering the main town, Mario finds Huey asleep in the centre. After waking him up with a few hammer bashes, Huey joins up with Mario. Not long after, they find Toad in the middle of having all his colour drained by a Slurp Guy. Fighting this Slurp Guy is Mario's intro to battling with cards and paint, with Huey giving his paint to Mario. Now that Mario has paint, he spends the intro going around and re-painting Port Prisma in order to gain access to their first Mini Paint Star at the top of Port Prisma. Huey then explains to Mario how all the Big Paint Stars are missing and need to be recovered, although he doesn't know what exactly happened to them.
Chapter 1: Follow the Red-Brick Road
Chapter 1 is a great introductory chapter that introduces you to the painting overworld mechanic very well. You instantly get addicted to wanting to paint every colourless inch of the levels. Mario first travels across Ruddy Road, which is a red-pathed area which is very vibrant and pretty, once you paint it of course. Mario then travels to Cherry Lake, where he solves puzzles related to water wheels, as well as learns about the Cutout technique and Things. They then head to the Crimson Tower, where they believe the Red Big Paint Star is. However, the drawbridge is down, and they need three special key-shaped toads to help them. They travel and find these toads in Cherry Lake, Bloo Bay Beach, and Daffodil Peak. Bloo Bay Beach is a nice and relaxing beach, and Daffodil Peak is a tall mountain that Mario had to climb. To get to these locations, Mario explored through the cave system of the Indigo Underground. After recruiting the three key toads, they unlock the bridge for Mario and Huay to be able to get inside the Crimson Tower. This level isn't super long, but is enjoyable to make your way through. At the top, Mario finds one of Bowser's children, the Koopaling, Morton. Morton wields a fire hammer, which Mario uses the Fire Extinguisher Thing to put out. Upon defeating Morton, Mario recovers the Red Big Paint Star. The Red Big Paint star then goes off to paint a large red gate at Sunglow Ridge, which was previously inaccessible. This is what every Big Paint Star does upon rescuing them to unlock the path forward. When Mario gets back to Port Prisma, he discovers that Peach has been kidnapped by Bowser now as well! Man, does she need better security or what?
Chapter 2: Down and Dirty
With the gate to Sunglow Ridge coloured once again, Mario and Huey head on through. Sunglow Ridge is very similar in looks to Daffodil Peak. Mario then heads to a toad professor's house, called Château Chanterelle, but the professor is nowhere to be found. Mario then finds him in the nearby forest, called Mondo Woods. In Mondo Woods, Everything is giant, which is pretty unique and fun to play through. After saving the professor, he gives Mario an excavation site permit for the excavation project happening over in Marmalade Valley. While there, Mario gets attacked by a giant chain chomp, who turns out to be the professor's pet. As thanks for finding his pet, the professor gives Mario an item that enables him to get into the Kiwano Temple, which is a ruins-like area that has a lot of puzzles inside. After this, Mario heads to the Golden Coliseum, where he finds the Koopaling, Iggy. Upon defeating him by giving his chariot-carrying chain chomps a bone Thing, Mario recovers the Yellow Big Paint Star, which goes and paints a massive coin in the Mondo Woods that was blocking a path.
Chapter 3: Infiltration With a Spot of Tea
Now that the giant yellow coin has been painted, Mario can collect it by touching it, which humorously gives him the value of only 1 coin. Through this passage, Mario makes his way south, into the Dark Bloo Inn, which is one of my favourite levels in the game! It is effectively a haunted hotel, and Mario has to solve many mysteries throughout. Certain events happen at certain times, meaning Mario's investigations have to be on the clock. After a certain amount of time, the hotel gets reset, and Mario starts his investigation again from the beginning. This level is awesome because with every reset you get a bit further in putting the pieces together, and you really feel like a proper detective figuring it all out. And then you have the perfect run through the hotel where everything falls into place. The end result is assembling all 6 ghost toads together for a tea party. The final piece that Mario needs is the teapot Thing, which he finds by going into Plum Park, which is a poison-filled garden. Mario finds that the teapot is the source of the poison, however, upon removing it, he finds Petea Piranha inside and has to defeat him first. After taking the teapot back to the ghosts in Dark Bloo Inn and restoring Plum Park, Mario heads into the Sacred Forest, which, opposite to Mondo Woods, has been shrunken, with everything in it being super tiny. After the Sacred Forest, Mario makes his way to Fort Cobalt, where the next Big Paint Star is held. He first has to pass the entrance test at the Cobalt Base, which is none other than the grand return of Snifit or Whiffit! I loved seeing this game return, and this time it is all about cards and painting. After playing Snifit or Whiffit, Mario infiltrates Fort Cobalt, battling many shy guys along the way, until reaching Ludwig the Koopaling at the end. Mario uses a balloon Thing to raise Ludwig's submarine out of the water in order to defeat him and secure the next Big Paint Star. The Blue Big Paint Star goes off and repaints the entire ocean!
Chapter 4: The Seven Seas
With the ocean repainted by the Blue Big Paint Star, Mario and a group of sea-fairing toads embark across the ocean in search of the next Big Paint Star. In the first part of the chapter, Mario actually gets to control the ship and determine which directions he must go to get through the Lost Sea. After that, they get caught in a whirlpool, and they travel to Vortex Island to put a plug in it. They then travel to Lighthouse Island to shine light forward deeper into the sea. Mario then arrives at Fortune Island, where the next Big Pain Star awaits. On all three islands Mario visits, there are pipes that lead into a parallel version of all the islands, but with slight differences. This is the primary mechanic of this chapter and leads to some pretty cool types of puzzles to solve. At the end of Fortune Island, Mario encounters and battles Wendy the Koopaling. Mario then receives the next Big Paint Star upon defeating Wendy, using the camera Thing to create a decoy of himself to avoid Wendy's attacks. The Purple Big Paint Star heads off and repaints a massive Sinkhole at the Mustard Café.
Chapter 5: The Sunset Express
Since the sinkhole at Mustard Café was just painted in, Mario descends down it to see what he can find. He ends up finding the café's owner amid the sandy caverns, and also winds up in snifit jail! After escaping, Mario hears that the Sunset Express is stuck at Kiwano Temple, and heads there right away to see what's up. It turns out the tracks were broken, so the train couldn't continue. After fixing the tracks, the train moves about a meter before comically getting crushed by a giant thwomp out of nowhere. The passengers and crew of the train then decide it's best to just puch the train to the nearest repair place, the Toad Trainworks. Once there. Mario does the deed and repairs the broken train, which then embarks on to the Tangerino Grill, where Mario becomes a part-time chef and waiter. He serves pizza for all the customers and then has a mini-boss fight with a piece of steak. This fight is more so trying to follow a cooking recipe to get the steak just right. This is an infamous part of the game for leaving many players at a loss as to what to do because the instructions aren't the clearest. After tenderizing the steak with Mario's hammer, applying the lemon and salt & pepper Things, and heating the steak for just the right amount of time with the grill Thing, Mario serves the steak to the VIP customer. The VIP customer turns out to be none other than Larry the Koopaling, who proceeds to hijack the Sunset Express. Mario then hops aboard the Sunset Express and makes his way through to the front of the train where Larry awaits. After defeating him by using the cork Thing to plug up the train's funnel pipe, Mario recovers the next Big Paint Star. The Orange Big Paint Star heads off and paints the fossil that the toads at the Marmelade Valley excavation site were digging up.
Chapter 6: Redpepper Volcano
Since the Orange Big Paint Star painted the fossil in Marmalade Valley, that is where Mario goes next to see what has changed. Once he gets there, the fossil is completely gone. The workers there said that it came back to life once it was repainted! The creature called a Draggadon, headed over to the Redpepper Volcano. But when Mario tries to follow it, it attempts to breathe fire on him if he gets too close. In order to tame the beast, Mario heads back to Fort Cobalt to get a Magma Burger for the Draggadon. Once tamed, Mario can ride the Draggadon across the lava to get around the volcano. After some difficult battles, Mairo arrives at the Redpepper Crater, which has a hot spring within it. In the hot spring, Mario finds a toad who works at the Tangerino Grill who says he needs something to melt a big ice block at the grill. Once they find a suitable option, they both head back to the Tangerino Grill. Inside the giant ice block was the magnifying glass Thing, which is useful for enlarging small objects. One such object is a tiny pipe back in the Sacred Forest. Inside the pipe, Mario finds and battles Kamek, who is the reason for all this size-changing within both the Sacred Forest and the Mondo Woods. While battling, the battle music is the same as the one in Sticker Star, which is a very iconic song for Kamek that I was glad to see make a return in this game.
Afterwards, this opens a path deeper into the forest, eventually leading to the Green Energy Plant. Inside, Mario finds a running computer. He uses the cutout technique to jump inside it, which leads to an extremely cool Super Mario Bros. 3 callback, where you essentially get to play through the first level of the game. You play in 2D by default but can flip the perspective to become more 2.5D in gameplay. This is extremely similar to the prominent flipping mechanic in Super Paper Mario. After this nostalgia trip, Mario heads even deeper into the forest, arriving at the Mossrock Theatre. The Mossrock Theatre features a circus-like yet foggy atmosphere, with numerous juggling hammer bros. The theatre then leads straight to The Emerald Circus, where the final Big Paint Star is held. After performing in the circus, doing a couple small minigames and battles, Mario comes face-to-face with the smallest of the Koopalings, Lemmy. In order to attack him, Mario uses the needle Thing to pop the beach ball that he stands on. He also has to use the disco ball Thing to make him dance and keep him distracted. After defeating Lemmy, Mario has recovered the final Big Paint Star. The Green Big Paint Star flies off to paint Luigi's go-kart.
Chapter 7: Black Bowser's Castle
Now that all 6 Big Paint Stars have been rescued, it turns out that Bowser was the one behind stealing them in the first place, and used all their colours and mixed them together to create the forbidden black paint, which granted him evil power and turned him into Black Bowser. The 6 Paint Stars band together to create a Rainbow Road up to Black Bowser's Castle. Just as the rainbow gets created, Luigi rolls up in his newly painted kart, raring to go for a drive. He takes Mario and Huey on a Mario Kart ride across the Rainbow Road. Once there, Mairo and Huey go ahead and infiltrate Black Bowser's Castle. Upon entering, Mario finds a picture frame of colourless Peach! When he goes up to it, Mario falls down a pitfall and finds the final Koopaling, Roy, who crashes the party and battles Mario. He starts the fight by draining Mario of all his paint, and then attacks using his coloured paint cannon, which hits Mario with different emotions, such as red for anger or blue for sadness. When Mario gets hit, he also gains some of his paint back. Each emotion has a different effect on the battle, for example, sadness makes Mario only use blue cards for that turn. This battle's pretty fun to think on your toes in. As a last-ditch effort, he fires a huge amount of black paint and covers the screen. Maro has to use the washing machine Thing to clean the black paint off and finish the fight.
After this fight, Mario finds the factory-like establishment that Bowser is using to make black paint. Mario sneaks past the conveyor system by posing as a shy guy with Huey as his paint bucket. He then finds a large supply of mega bob-ombs that he promptly uses to explode the whole operation, causing black paint to flood everywhere. After Mario manages to escape, he finds the entrance to Bowser's throne room where Black Bowser awaits. Black Bowser is quite intimidating-looking and has an amazing song that goes along with the fight. This battle is really good because, unlike all the previous boss fights, this one doesn't rely on having one specific Thing card to get the job done, all you have are your best cards and your strategy to determine when to use them. After phase 1, Black Bowser grows in size and intensity and begins regenerating all the black paint that Mario just spent so long knocking off. Much like Sticker Star's finale, Huey chooses to turn into a card for Mario to use. Huey then becomes his 3D-self that he was at the beginning of the game. Mario then uses him as a shield/absorber of Black Bowser's attacks, so that Bowser can't regenerate the black paint used in his attacks. This part of the fight is very cool because the intensity that you feel every time a big attack is coming in, and you have to block it perfectly, is a very cool feeling. After a while, Huey starts to hit his capacity of how much black paint he can take, but he pushes through and eventually absorbs all of Bowser's black paint, restoring him to his usual, less-sinister self, who has no memory of what happened. Mario then restores Princess Peach's colours after the fight, and Mario, Peach, and Luigi head back down the Rainbow Road, with Huey choosing to stay back to release all the black paint out of harm's way. When he does, the castle explodes, and Huey is never seen by Mario again. Unlike Kersti's sacrifice, this one's actually pretty emotional because Huey was an incredibly enjoyable character and companion throughout the adventure.