Tag: kirby

More Info from Nintendo

• Genre: Platformer
• Platform: Switch

This isn’t quite the open world revelation that we all hoped it would be after the first trailer. It also isn’t at all a challenging game like Elden Ring. It doesn’t really do anything all that ambitious, even for the Kirby series. However, what it is is fun. It’s fun in that weird unexplainable way that so many Nintendo games just are and so many developers wish they could capture. It’s that fun that makes this worth playing.

Within the opening sequence of the game you become the car above and that really just sets the stage for the game. Kirby is taking his hoovering mechanic to a new level here and more often than not it serves as an outlandish way for the game to get you through a specific mechanic. Need to cover long distances fast? There’s a convenient car. Need to shoot at enemies or break through a wall from range? Why not becoming a soda shooting vending machine. Need to pierce through a weak point in the ground? Well, a traffic cone is the right shape.

The thing about all these instances isn’t necessarily that they are new mechanics. What they are wrapped in is a layer of magic. There’s something entirely unknown to me about why the simple mechanics are so memorable here, but a lot of it ultimately comes down to the attention to detail in the buildup of the world itself. It’s little things, like the way Kirby’s animations show squish and stretch when there’s changes in velocity. It’s things like the subtle freeze frames that occur when you smash through something as car Kirby. It’s things like seeing the same damn tree boss that every Kirby games has, but now with a tropical flair and a change to the camera angle to hit both nostalgia and mechanical interest. That attention to detail is so utterly hard to grasp as a developer, but is something that Nintendo has routinely done so well that allows its otherwise simple games to nearly universally be regarded as great.

Luckily, the game doesn’t just skate by on polish. Despite being easy, it’s got a surprising amount to do, which gives a lot of interesting content for players of all skill levels. Each level has your normal end point, but within that there’s also a bunch of hidden objectives. Each level has a collection of hidden waddle dees, but the rest of the objectives run the gamut from beating enemies with specific powers to finishing encounters without taking damage to beating bosses quickly to simply just finding cool hidden shit. It provides enough of a distraction for completionists to be chasing a bit of a carrot that’s beyond just simply finishing the levels. That’s not to say that it doesn’t start to wear a bit thin by the end, but it was nice to have something to strive for and even replay levels for

However, my favorite thing were the treasure road levels. These are effectively single-power time trials, and they’re a speed runner’s dream. Each one drops you into a level with a specific power and a handful of encounters to finish between you and the goal. Everything between that point is entirely up to your skill level. In doing these, you very quickly learn how to efficiently use your powers, allowing you quicker and quicker times through the specific level. That then leads to more efficient and more clever use of the powers in regular levels and boss fights, giving a positive reinforcement loop to the player’s skill in the game.

That kind of a loop is also a classic Nintendo thing. If you think about something like level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros – you run the right, see a Goomba, maybe you die, but if you jump and land on it you now know a core mechanic. As you keep running to the right, you see a few more as well as some pipes. You know how to jump, so now you’re learning how to jump well. Each little step along that way reinforces what you learned in previous things to become better at the game. Kirby treats the treasure road levels the same way. They’re run on their own, but the skill improvements you get in them just serve to improve how you play through the rest of the game.

All that said, if you want something ambitious or innovative, this isn’t it. This game should be played because it’s purely fun. It’s not fun in a new way, and it’s not often fun in an explainable way, but it just is. If you’re wanting something more forgiving after Elden Ring, give this a try. If you want something fun to just fill a gap, give this a try. End of the day it’s just a mindless title, but it didn’t stop being fun for me the entire time.

More Info from Nintendo

• Genre: Platformer
• Platform: Switch

TL;DR

• Really low difficulty continues to be the weak point of the series
• Solid amount of content, lots of hidden secrets, really good end boss sequence
• AI characters are surprisingly competent as co-op replacement; combinations of powers are a compelling addition to the Kirby formula

It’s been kind of the standard fare for the Kirby series over the last 10 years or so that the games end up being really solid, have one neat twist to their mechanics to stay fresh, but end up being really too easy.  Planet Robobot gained a mech suit to do occasional wrecking of things.  Triple Deluxe brought in a lot of use of multiple planes of depth.  Epic Yarn had the obvious visual style and strong environmental manipulation.  By and large they have all been really good games that leaned on just being purely fun, rather than difficult.  Star Allies doesn’t change that at all, this time playing into a multiple character theme where you can recruit enemies to help you out, as well as combine their powers to solve puzzles.  It’s definitely an easy game, but it didn’t end up hampering the experience in a negative way.

I know this is a weird place to start rambles, but holy hell this game is beautiful to a point that really caught me off guard.  While the Kirby series has always held its own pretty well, and in some cases had some unique visual treatments, I was not expecting this one to impress me so much.  That screenshot above is the spawning spot for the first level in the game, and it continues to impress throughout.  There’s a large variety in visual themes from deserts to forests to fields and later on right into space.  Each level is distinct from the other, so as a player I never grew bored of the areas I was going through.  For a game built around keeping relatively similar gameplay throughout, this was a huge help to not feeling burned out on the experience.

But enough about that, let’s talk about what this game brought to the series; combination powers and multi-character gameplay, and how they feed into each other.

This game is 100% a four-character experience, and it doesn’t matter if that’s AI or players controlling it.  Anyone can drop in and take over a party member, but the AI are competent on their own to help you out.  However, the great part of the whole system is that everyone but player 1 is controlling an enemy archetype.  Combined with Kirby’s continued ability to copy powers, this gives the party access to 4 core powers at once.  This is backed by the fact that AI attack when needed and use their powers to clear puzzles, allowing the player to focus on simply exploring and finding secrets in most cases, rather than finessing the AI into precise spots.

The good thing that comes out of this system is that you can also combine powers.  The screenshot above is one of them (rock power +ice power), and this combination mechanic is used in a ton of ways.  Weapon-based powers can all gain elements to do new things.  The ninja power can gain wind to throw air columns.  Swords can gain fire to burn everything it touches.  The rock gaining ice allows it to slide along killing enemies.  However, this is also backed by some clever environmental mechanics.  The ice power can freeze waterfalls.  The bug power allows you to throw characters through breakable walls.

The end result of all of this is that the game’s difficulty can be low without negatively impacting the game.  The challenge becomes the puzzle solving involved in using your party to find secrets in the environment, whether it be switches to open secret levels or puzzle pieces to collect for pictures.  It’s by far the most puzzle solving I’ve done in a Kirby game, and it makes for a really satisfying loop in trying to find all the little secrets in each level.

In no surprise though, this game also doesn’t steer away from some classic expectations of the series.  Standard bosses return, like the Whispy Woods tree or Kracko.  You still romp through Dream Land for a while.  The majority of the enemies that are there are still powers from past games.  However, it never feels dull.  It reuses what is expected of the series in new ways, either through new mechanics added to the bosses, or clever new uses for the absorbed powers.  It gives the right blend of nostalgia and new, which has been a hallmark of the series for a long time.

Admittedly though, I did mostly play this game as a sort of no-thought gap game.  I knew there were games coming out soon that I wanted to play (looking at you Ni no Kuni 2), so I didn’t want to play something long.  This was a quick hitter, easily finishable in 6-8 hours.  It’s also not difficult, so the level of frustration is low.  However, it’s just flat out fun.  It doesn’t take itself too seriously, once again brings some new mechanics into the series, but still plays enough of the old beats to be familiar.  While it’s hardly going to be a game of the year candidate, it’s pretty easy to recommend taking a look at this one at the very least.

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Also, as mentioned in the Kirby: Planet Robobot ramblings, Nintendo has once again put in an updated little adorable Kirby icon for their website.  Nice touch.