normal foes, beautifully presented and imaginative as they are, fall over to standard stickers. In the absence of those more traditional RPG elements, it means there's no long-term reason for battling either, so the procession of simple victories can become a drag. The bosses are a whole different story. Unusually for an Intelligent Systems game, the balancing feels off, with normal enemies a cakewalk and bosses a nightmare. Simply spamming the one-armed bandit, a battle feature that lets you use multiple stickers, is sometimes enough, but other monsters require specific stickers at specific points. Thanks their one-use nature, this can be frustrating. There's a battle against a giant Cheep-Cheep that requires a fishing hook sticker; after finally finding it, I returned and in my excitement used it immediately, but Cheep Cheep wasn't in the water yet. I had to run away, go and get another hook, turn that into a sticker, and then return to the battle. The special stickers are, unfortunately, the main part of Sticker Star's poorly executed puzzle system. While exploring you'll often find 'real' items like vacuum cleaners or lightbulbs, which can then be turned into stickers. At any point, Mario's easily forgettable sidekick can 'paperise' the screen, which turns the level you're looking at into a 'flat' 2D layer with Mario floating above, ready to press stickers down. Put the right item in the right place - for example a bowling ball next to a field of skittles - and interesting things happen. Despite the