Kirby's Return to Dreamland

Date Aquired: Rented through a Gamefly trial I had, 4.24.2012

Date Completed: 4.29.2012

Thoughts: Only one year after releasing Kirby's Epic Yarn, Nintendo is at it again, releasing another Kirby game to try to breathe a little life into the dying console. While Epic Yarn strayed off the beaten path, applying an unusual yarn asthetic, and a dumbed-down difficulty where a player literally cannot die, Return to Dreamland is also a return to status quo Kirby. The graphics are back to the cartoony, colorful, non-yarn look we are accustomed to, and the game, while still not difficult, except for certain boss-battles, at least does allow for the possibility that the player could die.

A Nintendo sequal coming out a year after another game in the series is basically unheard of. I can't think of a single example where we didn't have to wait at LEAST 2 years, usually much more for a second game in a franchise for the same platform. So this leads to the obvious question: Is this game a rush-job? Does it really stand out as a game worth playing?  My answers are yes to the first question and no to the second. Nothing about this game stands out. Once again the game follows the same painfully boring cookie-cutter level choices. Spoiler alert, there is a fire level, and an ice level, and a water level, and.... Ugh. I'm so sick of the same choices over and over again. Why not try different concepts? Why must I play the same ideas I've been playing since the first Super Mario Brothers in 1985?  Even when the game does try to go slightly off the rails, such as including a candy level (though I'm pretty sure they had one of those in Epic Yarn, also) it does so with such an underwhelming effort that you wonder why they didn't just make a second fire level. 

The boss battles aren't much better. A few are a little interesting, but most again fall prey to the normal video game conventions, if you've played a video game you know what you need to do. Some, towards the end do become pretty difficult, but the difficulty mainly comes in how little damage you deal the enemy, and the conflicts become tedious battles of attrition.

Probably the biggest stand-out quailty of this game is it's 4 player co-op. If you have small children and a few controllers, this is probably a good choice, but if they're a little older, like 10 or above, they'd be better served with far-superior 4 player games like New Super Mario Brothers and Rayman Origins. Donkey Kong Country Returns is also a much better game, though it's a lot harder, and only allows for 2 players. Basically I can only recommend this for young families, or as a quick rental, for someone who just wants to play through a Kirby game in a weekend like I did, but not a purchase.

Rayman Origins

Date Acquired: I can't remember any more. Whenever Toys R Us dropped the price to $19.99.

Date Completed: 3.21.2012

Thoughts: Rayman has always been a very solid, if somewhat unoriginal platformer. It came out initially in the PS1 days, amid the glut of mascot platformers and was fairly well recieved critically. It's sequal is considered a classic, with subsequent sequals fairing not as well. As the platform fad died down, Rayman did too, becoming known these days for little more than mini game compilations. Cut to 2011 and Rayman received another shot at life, thanks to the 2D platform resurgance, almost all of that owing to New Super Mario Brothers Wii. It does seem that game is the direct inspiration for Origins, as it mimics the all-2D style and adds 4 player local (but not online) co-op, complete with putting your character into a bubble when he dies, waiting for your partner to pop it. It might be a pretty shameless rip off if the game itself wasn't so damn good.

Three things stand out in particular about this game. First, the visuals of course, are just gorgeous. They work very well as stills and even more so in motion. Many times while playing, I was just in awe of the game's artwork and could just stop and stare at it. Second is that it's a collect-athon, which traditionally is nobody's favorite way of extending the length of the game. And there is a ton to collect here. 6 electroons in every level, a time attack trophy in every level, 300 little yellow things per stage (there are more, actually but you need to collect 300 per stage to get an electroon), and a tooth that can only be culled from a special level in each world that requires a certain number of electroons to open. These levels are among the hardest in the game, and almost all of them required a good amount of trial and error for me to complete them. Which brings me to the third thing that stands out: the difficulty. The game starts out easily enough, even if you're trying to collect all the electroons, but the last few stages the difficulty ramps up sharply. The level that I originally thought was the last level, was brutally difficult, and I followed that up by completing all the special stages for the teeth, which unlocked the last final battle (and the only end boss battle that you get achievements for, so I consider it the true ending). This difficulty is not for the faint of heart, while many levels required a lot of attempts; I didn't find it too frustrating. I usually would get a little bit further every time, or glean something important that I could add into my gameplan. I never quit in frustration, the game did a great job of making me feel like the challenge was surmountable, and would put in checkpoints along the way so I didn't have to completely backtrack.

The natural comparison here is this game's muse: New Super Mario Brothers. So how does this game stack up? The multiplayer in Mario is better. It seems like it thought out the idea of 4 people playing at once better than Origins did. In New Super Mario Brothers you can put yourself in a bubble whenever you want, and let a more experienced player go on without you, but you don't get that option in Rayman. NSMB felt like 4 players playing together, in the way they interact and can strategize through a level. Rayman just kind of felt like 4 players playing at the same time, but not necessarily together. That's not to say the multiplayer in Origins is bad, it's not, it's fun, just following New Super Mario Brothers, it isn't AS fun as that game was.  Origins does, however, have by far the superior single player, in my opinion. The single player stages in NSMB felt fairly genaric to me, they never really stood out. Rayman's stages stand out, there is a good amount of game play variety. I loved the levels where I climbed aboard the mosquito and the game turns into a side-scrolling shooter. 

Final Thoughts: Rayman Origins is a fantastic game. Easily one of the most pure-fun games I played all year. I just bought the Vita version, so I plan to play through it again portably (earning trophies this time, of course). This is already a game I want to play again and again.