I often have random game thoughts, some more insightful than others.  A couple of times I’ve considered writing them down, but I’m finally getting around to doing it for once.  There are a couple older ideas I’ve wanted to elaborate on, but for now I think I will just stick to a couple of game thoughts I have had recently.

As the picture shows, the first of the two thoughts is about Super Paper Mario for the Wii.  It is actually more of a complaint.  The Paper Mario games are the slightly more RPG-like games in the Mario universe, though it hardly goes deeper than having more than one hit point.  One thing this game does have in common with many RPGs is a lot of writing.  Writing is fine, especially when there is quality humour to be found in the script, and I don’t mind reading in place of voice-overs.

What I can’t stand is the sound the text makes as it is written out.  It is basically a cross between a squeaky marker and nails on a chalkboard.  You can skip the text after the first couple squeaks, but there is so much text that the player ends up doing this enough to make even small amount very irritating.  It is honestly amazing that play testers were able to endure the torture.  I have a similar complaint about the “low health” sound in Twilight Princess, but that is much less annoying and not nearly as frequent.

The two fit so well, but I can't see it coming true...

The other thought I had concerns the Lego video games.  Playing the games always ignites conversations about what other franchises would work well with the Lego formula (Building + Breaking = Winning).  The one that came to mind the other day was the James Bond franchise and I’m not the only one who thinks so.  It has multiple movies, tons of characters to recreate, and plenty of opportunities for those Lego vehicle levels.  Of course the only problem is having to fudge some of those more questionable names and situations in the movies, but the Lego games have always been good at that.  I would definitely play those games (there would have to be more than one), but as well as the two franchises might fit together, something inside tells me that it probably won’t happen.

So that’s it for these random thoughts, but I’m sure there will be more.