Review Information
Game Reviewed Paper Bowser World 3, by toodles_team
Review Author onpon4
Created Aug 23 2012, 5:24 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview
After playing Paper Bowser World and Paper Bowser World 2, I felt that the series really had nothing left to offer, so I didn't play this game at first. Now that I've played it, here is what I thought of it.

Once again, the graphics are more or less flawless, and the sounds are also good. The engine is also, once again, very well programmed, although this time I ran into a harmless bug twice during the game.

Unfortunately, the music is MP3s again, though I heard it this time (since I played the game on a different computer than the one I played this game's predecessors on). However, the sound effects are good and plentiful, so this is tolerable.

The jokes are pretty good in this game. I really enjoyed them, whereas I thought the jokes were just "OK" in the previous games.

Unfortunately, like the first game, the gameplay is where it breaks down. It's hard to describe if it's better or worse than the first game, because some things are better while other things are worse.

One thing I really don't like is that pressing "down" on the keyboard causes Bowser to jump in the air and ground pound. I know this is (sort of) what happens in the Super Smash Bros games, but it's incredibly annoying here; I can't tell you how many times I accidentally ground-pounded a second time because of that, and on a couple occasions it even caused me to fly into an enemy above me when I instinctively pressed "down" to duck.

Another thing that annoyed me was how weak Bowser is. One of the appeals of the first game was that you could destroy anything and everything. Here, you can't destroy much of anything at all. This is especially annoying because this, combined with Bowser's inability to breathe fire in the air, makes it impossible to destroy most Piranha Plants.

The Mega Bowser powerup could have made up for his lack of power, but it's incredibly rare. Then, almost like some kind of sick joke, one level gives you three of them in a row, but gives you almost nothing in your path to destroy; just a few enemies, a couple pipe, and some blocks with coins in them.

One improvement over the first game is that you start with two hitpoints rather than one, and getting hit the first time makes you shrink (kind of like the rancid meat powerup in the second game). However, this is not as good as the health system in the second game.

The Clown Car stages were neither very interesting nor very fun. I hate that only one hit kills Bowser in these stages, and there is nothing special about them; it's pretty much a simple scrolling shooter with no powerups and only one life. With that said, they were, in a sense, a breath of fresh air from the rest of the boring gameplay.

With all the stuff above, the gameplay is better in this game than in the first game, if only slightly. However, there is one more thing that makes the gameplay a lot worse: spinies. The god damn spinies. These annoying things make World 3-1 the most annoying level in the game. I never noticed just how long you have to hold the space bar to actually shoot something until I came across them. Even the cheap-shot cannons in World 4 were less annoying than the spinies in World 3-1.

In summary, the gameplay is awful. Even worse, taken as a whole, than the first game.

However, despite that, I still enjoyed this game, and that is entirely because of the jokes. The jokes also kept me going despite how boring and, at times, annoying the game is.
 
Pros + Funny jokes, somehow much better than in the previous games
+ Better health system than the first game
+ Graphics are great
+ Sounds are OK
 
Cons - Bowser feels weak compared to the previous games
- Bowser moves annoyingly slow
- Bosses are lame
- Levels are lame
- Dying is annoying (since it means you have to start the level over again)
- Spinies are annoying, especially with their placement in World 3-1
- Piranha Plants usually can't be killed, which is annoying
 
Impressions
Gameplay
2 / 10
While not as bad as the first game, it's pretty much just a huge batch of annoying. The only reason I kept playing through the boring and annoying levels was so I could see the cutscenes.
 
Graphics
10 / 10
Superb. Not much to say here.
 
Sound
7 / 10
It's fine. However, some people won't hear the music.
 
Replay
1 / 10
Nope, I ain't playing this a second time.
 
Final Words
5 / 10
Unlike the first game, the jokes help to make this game worth playing despite awful gameplay. However, this game also shows that I was right: the Paper Bowser World series has nothing left to offer.

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