Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
Kirby is one of those games that really makes use of the DS stylus, so well that it couldn't really work on a platform without a stylus. Kirby is a pink ball chasing an evil witch to be restored to his normal form (mystery, magic and intrigue!), and you guide him chiefly by drawing lines with your stylus.
One thing worth noting is that with stylus based controls it suddenly matters a bit if you're left- or right-handed. The main direction of travel is from left to right, which means your stylus/rainbows are needed on the right side of the screen more often than on the left. Which, in turn, means you will block more of the screen with your hand if you use the left. I found it significant enough that I prefer to play with the stylus in my right hand even though I feel I lose some precision in the process. It doesn't feel like any large problem, but I've used my right for mousing forever, so that might minimise my difficulties. If you never use your right for any precision tasks at all you might have a bigger problem.
They could have given the option to mirror the whole game for left handed players.
It would have been darn cool
but I don't feel I can complain about the lack of that option. The game is forgiving enough that I have never felt seriously disadvantaged. I happily switch to my left hand in the boss battles where there's no left-right travel.
Yep, there are boss battles of sorts. Actually, they're more of sub-games. There are three different bosses/games and after every third level you have to face one of them. You get to choose which one, but each gets more difficult every time you fight them.
The first has you connecting dots to form patterns as quickly as possible.
In the second you race the boss, moving Kirby's racing cart up and down to avoid things that slow you down and pick up fruit which speeds you up.
Lastly, there's a breakout-style game where you draw paddles for Kirby to bounce off and eleminate enemies by bouncing into them.
No, not really. As I wrote above, Kirby is a pretty easy game. I've played it very casually since getting it
I got Animal Crossing (which absorbs most of my gaming time)
and Advance Wars (which has the potential to absorb even more)
at the same time.
but I have never felt seriously challenged despite resuming play after quite lengthy breaks. You can take a few hits before losing a life, and when you do lose one you start over at the nearest checkpoint. Lose all your lives and you start over with a fresh set at the beginning of the level. Both levels and the distance between checkpoints are nicely short. In short, I've never had to do any lengthy replaying to get back to where I died last time. All good in my book.
When you want more difficulty and playtime there are medals to hunt for, various new play styles to beat and some other things to unlock. In short, I think there's plenty of playing time here despite the friendly difficulty level.
So, today I finished the game for the first time. That it only considers itself 12,3% cleared speaks of the amount of things to find and unlock ...
My total playtime stopped at four hours and one minute, so it is indeed a short game to run through. Still, I think I've already spent the larger part of my time with the game. While it was fun and easy going most of the time I found that the fun diminished in those places where the challenge increased. Several of the last few areas were full of spikes and chasing walls threatening to crush you, often in combination. I felt they were a poor way to up the challenge and found them frustrating to play through. Fortunately the final boss fight was a fun (and admittedly pretty easy) one.