Paper Mario: Color Splash is coming to the Wii U and looks absolutely stunning. It has near-photorealistic visuals that truly give the impression that a world made out of construction paper is coming to life right in front of your eyes.
Here's the trailer presented at Nintendo's Treehouse Live from E3:
Seeing the quality of these graphics makes me question Nintendo’s art direction for many of their previous Wii U titles, among them, Star Fox Zero. As ironic as it may seem given the inherent cartoonish 2D nature of Paper Mario, Color Splash is probably a great example of what many players probably wanted and hoped to see on the Wii U console all along.
The core mechanic of Color Splash, as its name implies, is adding color to the world of Prism Island wherever it’s missing as it has been sucked away through some evil scheme by an entity known as the Master.
To do this you will use a mysterious Paint Hammer that’ll allow you to knock some color back into the world. You will also interact with objects, solve puzzles, and revive characters who’s color has been drained by making use of the finesse that only whacking them with a hammer can provide.
Like previous games in the Paper Mario series Mario can hit enemies for extra damage before entering battle and this time will use a Battle Card system to duke it out with enemies once the player has entered the turn-based battle mode. Thing cards will allow you to summon objects like healing items and weapons, whereas Enemy cards, which can be obtained by defeating enemies, will allow you to summon enemies as allies.
Of course, no Nintendo first party title is complete without integrating some sort of use for the GamePad, so Color Splash includes a game mechanic that uses the touch screen in order to trace over some dotted lines to excise that piece of the environment and gain access to new areas or hidden secrets.
Check out the full gameplay demo below:
Paper Mario: Color Splash is coming to the Wii U on October 7, 2016.
