A friend recently loaned me his Super Paper Mario game for the Nintendo Wii. Most nights, after work, I haven’t felt like dedicating a lot of time to playing video games but last weekend I finally began playing the game. It was time considering I had it for a week before I even tried it.

It’s an enjoyable game that is reminiscent of the original 2-D side-scrolling games of the first NES, which I’ve felt has been lacking since the end of the Super Nintendo. The game-play is straightforward and most puzzles are easy to figure out on one’s own, though I hit a few that I didn’t feel like wrestling with and decided to find the answers on the Internet.

The ability to switch between characters, “pixls”, and dimensions defines the game and is usually critical to progressing through various parts of the game.

Be warned, it requires many hours of playing to finish. In fact, I’m at the beginning of the last chapter so I still have at least a few hours left before I’m done.

I highly recommend that other Wii owners at least consider renting the game.