Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is the latest game featuring everybody’s favourite pink puffball, and has gotten quite a bit of hype over the time (and for good reason too). First being announced as a GameCube title for 2005 or so, development was shifted constantly until it was finally released only a little while ago. In this review, I’ll look at the basics of the game, and give you all an overview of what to expect from this! Let’s begin ye olde review!
Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is pretty much Nintendo’s next line up in their platforming game phase, if you’d want to call it that. First we had New Super Mario Bros. Wii, then Donkey Kong Country Returns, and now this. It’s really a mix of the two former titles, really. A nice 2.5D environment that DKCR boasted, with the multi-player aspects of NSMBW.
MULTI-PLAYER KIRBY! WHOOOOOOOO!
It is a four player game that features a main story, and from that stems a wide range of unlockables of all sorts to mini challenges games. It is controlled with the Wii remote held on its side, and that is the only control mode you will have. I will admit, I wanted to use the nunchuk with this game (like with DKCR), but to be honest, you don’t really need it.
The story is incredibly simple, as it is with most Kirby games. You get given a goal, and you stick to it throughout the game. In this case, Kirby and friends (King Dedede, Waddle Dee and Meta Knight) are out having some fun, when suddenly this mysterious worm hole type thing opens up in the sky, with a ship flying out of it and falling to bits, before finally crash landing on the planet Pop Star (Kirby’s home planet). The team of four drop what they’re doing and rush towards it, to find a whee little blue alien that goes by the name of Magolor. Kirby offers to help out the poor little guy collect the pieces of his ship (called the Lor Starcutter) that flew off in all directions in order to rebuild and get the Starcutter flying again! With five main ship pieces to find, and 120 energy spheres to track down and find, it isn’t going to be a walk in the park!
The gameplay of Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is easy. If you’ve played previous Kirby games, you won’t need to bother with an instruction manual. I didn’t, and I knew what all the controls would be easily. For those that are newcomers, it’s not that hard to pick up either. Move around with the D-Pad, 2 jumps, and 1 is your action button. You can be as complex or simple with anything else you do on your own, it’s not required of you to be a pro at the game to complete it, but to nab the goodies, mastering most of the techniques available is advisable. Motion controls are of course in this game, but they aren’t all that annoying. The only time you use them is to perform certain moves that you barely even use that often, like the Super Inhale move (shake while inhaling to inhale big objects), or when you have a particular ability.
Speaking of abilities, as with most Kirby games, Kirby boasts a wide range of copy forms. By sucking people up and swallowing them, you steal their ability and can use it for your own benefit. All the usual suspects are here, such as Sword Kirby, Fire Kirby and Cutter Kirby to name a few, but there are various newcomers as well, including Whip Kirby, Water Kirby and Leaf Kirby (as well as some additional moves to the existing copy abilities). Mucking around with the different abilities is always great fun, even if you’ve just gotten the Water ability for the 30th time in a row. With each Kirby comes a new way to play, and it’s fun hunting down that copy ability you so desperately need in order to unlock some form of secret. The copy abilities also interact with the environment, so you can use fire to burn ice, or a sword to cut a rope, and so on.
A bunch of Kirby's slicing things up with copy abilities
New to the game are Super Abilities; these are beefed up copy abilities, such as giant swords, walls of flames, massive beams, huge snowballs and a few others! These are incredibly fun to use as you get to obliterate paths of enemies, and there is no feeling quite like that. Getting your first ever Super Ability and using it is a great experience that never really gets too old or repetitive.
Just one example of the new Super Abilities. They're pretty cool to be honest
As for what you do, well you are generally quite motivated to collect everything and clear the whole game. I mean, Kirby’s just so cute. It can’t be that hard to win, right? Well, if you know your way around, probably not, but if you’re not the best, you should be greatly entertained with the challenges it poses players. The collecting is the biggest attraction, and you get nice rewards throughout the game for doing just that, like opening up copy ability rooms to make your life easier.
My first impressions of the game were pretty good to be honest. Probably because I have been waiting for this one to come around for a while. I haven’t done much multi-player action, but I did have a go with a second player and enjoyed myself. I like the overall look of everything. It feels like any other Kirby game, but for the Wii. While some people might not enjoy that, others will like the nostalgia. I like how most of the music wasn’t actually blatant remixes of past music, and that they have made some new catchy tracks. Here’s one I quite enjoy (the title music and map music for the first level):
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4i1ZGGNZ30[/media]
Controls are nice and fluid, nothing feels too awkward. A few of the harder copy ability moves are a bit tricky to pull off, but after you do them two or three times, you can get the hang of them pretty easily, so nothing to worry about there.
Completely destroying everything in sight has never been easier with Kirby's latest instalment
Adding extra players is a no fuss task as well. The number of levels may seem small to some as you progress through the game, but hey, it’s Kirby, it’s some simple fun. It’s pretty entertaining, both when you’re alone and with friends! Replay value is probably the only thing this guy might lack. After the story, you’ve got mini-games to rely on, but only the best players will probably continue on to beat those and any other extra challenges that appear (Keep in mind I haven’t finished the thing completely and don’t really want to ruin the surprise for me).
Overall, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is a nice “last-minute†game for the Wii, worth the money if you either:
A – Like Kirby, or
B – Liked DKCR or NSMBW
I’m giving it 7 out of 10 Golden NintenDans!
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