Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam

This new role-playing game does a great job of combining two of Nintendo's most popular Mario series for its hand-held consoles. It retains the cooperative combat and exploration that make the Mario & Luigi games so much fun while dropping in several of the elements that have come to define the Paper Mario franchise, including paper characters' ability to "stack up" and squeeze through tight spaces. It all adds up to a bounty of interesting and diverse things to do. One moment you'll be battling Shy Guys and Cheep Cheeps using special "trio" powers that are themselves little games, the next you'll be trying to herd sheep-like Toads through a maze of bridges and islands. And tasks keep getting added all the way through. Battle cards -- which are fun to collect and confer important powers and attacks -- aren't even introduced until about 10 hours into the game, at which point they become a key part of combat. At times it feels like half a dozen games rolled into one.

Granted, the quality of activities is a little uneven. Chasing down lost and hiding paper Toads eventually becomes tedious, and battles between giant papercraft characters tend to drag on too long. And choosing to use amiibo figurine powers -- which don't count as a turn -- can dilute the challenge of combat, especially early on. But Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is, by and large, another very fun (and often funny) entry into one of the deepest and most entertaining series available on Nintendo's hand-held systems. It'll keep kids -- and some gamer parents who are still kids at heart -- playing for dozens of hours.