Difficulty:

Very Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Grows on you"

Kirby is a character you don't see much on Nintendo consoles. Lately he hasn't had a lot of stand out adventures. His last game had him fighting bandit mice who stole his lunch on the DS as well as a port of an SNES game.

But finally Kirby has returned to his first console adventure since Kirby:Crystal Shards on the N64. And while not overly difficult, it's still a lot of fun.

The story this time goes that one day Kirby was walking along minding his own business when he saw a tomato and attempted to eat it only to find out it belonged to an evil wizard named Yin-Yarn. Kirby's stomach once again gets him into trouble and Yin-Yarn sucks Kirby into a parallel dimension hidden within a magical sock around his neck. Turns out this is part of a greater plot Yin Yarn had to take over Dreamland as later on Meta Knight and King Dedede also get sucked in. The story is told in this sleepy fatherly narrator voice clearly geared at a younger crowd but is surprisingly charming with a few little jokes tossed in there like the fact that Yin Yarn wants to take over Dreamland but not sure what exactly he plans to do once he does that.

Upon arriving in Patch Land, Kirby finds out that he's now made out of yarn himself, this robs him of his ability to suck up foes. Now you'd think this might be bad for our hero, but he soon finds he can do a lot more fun things to compensate for lack of his trademark move. He meets up with Patch Land's ruler, Prince Fluff who is trying to find the magic yarn to sew his land back together again in order to put an end to Yin Yarn's tyranny.

Let's just get this out of the way now. Kirby can't die in this game. Seriously, you can fall down holes, get smashed and take hits but you'll never die. Instead the goal of the levels is to collect beads to get a high score, take a hit and you lose beads. On one hand this does remove a lot of challenge from the game knowing that you won't have to start a level over or see a game over screen but if you change your mindset to wanting to get gold medals in all stages and get all the goodies then you'll have a good time.

Despite not being able to suck up foes, Kirby instead whips a string of yarn around like Spiderman to carry and toss them as well as throughout many levels there are places where Kirby will transform into various things like a surfing penguin, a dune buggy, a tank and a dolphin. Most of these are lots of fun, my favorite being the dolphin however the train transformation which has you using the Wiimote to draw tracks is atrocious.

Also Kirby can't fly either given being made transparent though he can gently float down by turning into a parachute, or slam down fast by transforming into a weight and double clicking the d-pad turns him into a car so he can move faster.

Hidden in each level are 2 furniture items and a music CD. The furniture can be used back at the main patch land square to furnish and awesome man cave for Kirby and the beads you collect lets you buy more goodies in the shop. The apartment complex owner, Don Wooley will also give you the side task of furnishing other apartments with the items you find. This will bring in new residents who will give you find sidequests to complete in levels you already finished so the game gives you a lot to do.

Visually this game is truly unique. Much like when Mario turned into Paper for his RPGs, Kirby's entire world here is made out of patches, yarn and fabric as Game Overthinker said "we took someone who's already borderline too cute and made him look like your grandma crocheted him." But the visuals are worth noting and all the little details like in the ice stage when Kirby slides along like he's skating. As well as a great piano soundtrack that fits the game so well.

It would be easy to blow this off as "lame" or "gay" for those who only love blood and guns but for the rest of us, Kirby is cute and fluffy and we wouldn't have him any other way.

Besides everyone knows real men play Kirby game.