After over 50 hours of gameplay, I've decided to try and stay away from Paper Mario.

I don't usually say that a game is evil, but Paper Mario is like the worst video game addiction that I can't get away. The game is set up so that people can easily jump into playing the game.

However, once I start, I cannot stop. The Mushroom Kingdom is a psychedelic dream world that I cannot escape from. Players can literally travel anywhere and do anything in this colorful land of green hills, sandy deserts and tropical island resorts.

It's like the MMORPG of the Nintendo 64. Whenever I venture into enemy territory, I'm free to grab whatever items I can find. I'm free to kill any animal/machine/thing that gets in my way.

Although the batttle system is more like a rhythm-based game, it still gives me the hands-on opportunity to make my opponent miserable. I can torture goombas by jumping on them. I can smash fireballs with my hammer. I can even summon a star spirit to mercilessly rain holy stars onto my prey.

As violent as this game can get, it still looks too fluffy and innocent for an MMORPG-styled game. I mean, these are cute little Mario characters. The goombas shouldn't look this happy when I stomp them to death. Even the big bosses just explode into bloodless experience balls for me to collect.

Paper Mario literally feels like a whitewashed version of a warzone. After I kill all the evil koopa victims, I can collect spoils in the form of experience balls, so that I can level up my characters with health, flower points or badges. With the badge system I can even customize Mario just the way I want him, so that he can become the most indestructible plumber around.

It's terrible how Mario ruthlessly harvests the environment for valuable star points, just so he can buy more badges for himself. Technically, this sanitized game reproduces the guilty pleasures of the American pioneer, as he tears apart the land's natural resources. He kills all the natives who are aimlessly roaming the Mushroom Kingdom. He buys badges to become more powerful. And he's doing all this to save his girlfriend from Bowser.

Yet, I can't stop playing this game. For some reason, I can't resist the temptation to pillage and plunder every part of this land for experience balls, coins and star points. I just hope that I don't lose track of all my progress in the real world.

After all, the United States dollar is more valuable than the coins in the Mushroom Kingdom. And I can't really trade coins for dollar bills...