I never planned to get this game, it had always been on my radar as a game to watch, but with Layton and Pikachu on my top list Kirby had to take a back seat. One impulse buy later I had the little box of pink in my hand and to put this review in a nutshell: It was worth it. I have never played a Kirby game before this and I think it’s fair enough to say that it doesn’t matter, because whilst it may look like some of the others it certainly doesn’t play like one.
Speaking of its looks, I should mention the game looks beautiful and vivid with backgrounds filled to the brim with detail with rainbows, volcanoes, clouds and trees coming to life as you race across the most luscious and dry of lands, meeting a large variety of foes in your path that all look hugely different from each other. You can tell what the enemies weak spot is just by the way it looks and it’ll only take one test Kirby to find out its Achilles heel. Recolours of previous enemies rarely appear and certain enemies can only be found on a single level, creating a big feeling of adventure as you never know who you’ll be up against next (one stage for instance has a purple cloud that teleports you back to the start of the room – the only way to know this is to attack and immerse yourself more into the game). The same is with the bosses and fighting against them is very enjoyable, one level even has two bosses on their own separate path which is something I have never seen before in a platforming game. Also, such as that you’ll find yourself playing some levels again because the first path you took would meander you so far away from the original path you’ll want to find out what you miss, sometimes pitting you in a boss fight without you expecting because it’s so completely different.
The soundtrack is nice and fits in very well with the overall feeling of the game but at the same time it’s nothing to write home about. It’s like a piece of the jigsaw, on its own it’s a knobbly piece of cardboard but with all of the other piece’s it creates a lovely scene of a lake. Or the sky.
The touch screen controls work great, with simple and obvious gestures commanding the little fellers around it’s really easy to pick up which is helped incredibly when you start, as along with the typical ‘tutorial’ level you also start out with only one mini Kirby, who you can focus on controlling before you have to get to grips with ordering a small army of them. It takes a while to take out one enemy with one Kirby but with a group of them, everything seems to go down within seconds with the same tactic of Pikmin (basically, rush them when they’re unprepared). Whilst having two or more of the pink blobs usually makes them act as one unit anyway, there are a few times that a couple could split off, sometimes in a tense moment, meaning you can’t make any progress or even worse, killing a few of the poor Kirbys. Getting them back is easy enough, just drag them to some fruit and one will come along.
And this hits onto a key point about the game – it’s not the hardest game at any length but nobody was expecting it to be of course for a number of reasons: one, it’s a Nintendo game, two, the primarily colour scheme is pink which doesn’t exactly scream hardcore but you never know, Barbie’s Groovy Games may give people a hard time. The main game should take about 5 hours to complete the chances of getting a game over are very small, as a death of a Kirby doesn’t mean they’re gone for good, a flick of a Kirby to their floating ghost will bring them right back to life. This means that as long as you’re quick enough (and don’t get all of your Kirbys trapped in one place) keeping all ten Kirbys with you should be fairly easy.
Scattered through the levels there are a series of golden tokens to collect that have lil’ Kirby’s face on it. Collecting these unlocks a small game or something in extras. The two you start off with, the wack a mole and music player are only the beginning. To put it bluntly these are some of the best extras I have ever seen in a game, only rivalled with probably Super Mario 64 DS, the fact that the creators created several small games at such a high level (I’m hooked on Brawlball and Kirby quest is addicting too) just shows how much they care about the game. Whist saying that, after putting in the effort to get up to the hundreds the prizes you get are hardly exciting – useful if you want to get to 100% but it does sort of make you lose motivation as you know what the 4 unlocks will be, and that they’re all the same.
My final verdict would be to defiantly pick this game up, the DS is on its last legs now and it’d be a real shame if this game passed under the radar and didn’t sell as much as it should’ve. A really nice main game that constantly changes and keeps your interest and a host of great extras to play whenever you like makes this a great package that you won’t be disappointed with, unless you’re an old man who wants them young un’s off your lawn.
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