What could be Nintendo’s last game for the 3DS is a port of one of the best ever Kirby games, but how much extra does it really add?
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This could be the end. Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn may well turn out to be the last first party Nintendo title ever released for the 3DS. There certainly aren’t any more scheduled at the moment and while it’s completely possible that Nintendo might dredge up another remaster or low budget release there’s a good chance this is it. But while a port of a nine-year-old Wii game may seem a rather underwhelming way to send off Nintendo’s final portable-only console at least it’s a good game.
Although he’s considered a key Nintendo mascot in America and Japan, it seems fair to say that Kirby does not have anywhere near the same level of cultural cachet in Europe. There are several good reasons for this, including the usual caveat that the NES arrived too late here to make a significant impact. But Kirby games are also always trivially easy, and their particular brand of cuteness is more saccharine compared to other Nintendo games.
This game only tangentially addresses the difficultly issue, but the new art style is so impossibly charming it would take a hardened sociopath, having a particularly miserable day, not to find it completely adorable. As you may gather from the screenshots the idea is that Kirby and all his enemies and allies are made of simple lengths of woollen yarn, while the world in which they inhabit is composed of a wider variety of household fabrics and materials.
The idea was expanded on later with sister title Yoshi’s Woolly World, but there the characters were full 3D creations made from wool rather than just outlined by strands of it. The gimmick isn’t merely visual though but is made a vital part of the gameplay, as parts of the environment are often tied up with thread and yanking them can bring the background together like you were pulling the curtains. You can also swing on buttons, unfasten zips to find secret areas, and climb under the backdrop until you’re visible only as a moving lump beneath it.
Unusually, Kirby doesn’t have his signature ability to suck in enemies and steal their powers. Instead he transforms into various other shapes simply by rearranging his woolly threads to become everything from a dune buggy to a dolphin to a giant missile-firing robot tank. Unlike in a normal Kirby game these transformations become a separate little mini-game, often with slightly different controls that allow the game to become, for a brief time, a 2D racer or shooter.
We hesitate to describe any other specific moments because the primary entertainment offered by the game is all the gloriously twee set pieces and the inventive way they use the game’s graphical gimmicks. As you’d hope, boss battles are a particular highlight, with some superbly comic animation for the various threadbare enemies.
The spectacle does go a long way to making up for the lack of challenge, but the fact that you can never really die means even the most untalented of gamers is going to complete the game pretty quickly. But unlike the interchangeable levels of other Kirby titles the journey here is wonderfully memorable, even if it is all over far too soon.
As the title suggests, there are a number of new features in the 3DS version, most obviously the addition of new hat-themed power-ups that compensate for the inability to suck up enemies by replicating familiar power-ups such as changing Kirby into a Link style warrior with a sword. Which sounds good until you realise that the level design is still the same, so you don’t actually need any of them to beat the level.
There is a new hard mode as well, where you’re constantly followed by a little devil who will try to unravel you if you don’t send him packing. It makes the game more difficult but it also changes the dynamics significantly, which isn’t quite the same as just having a harder version of the same game.
There’s also two new mini-games where you can play as Meta Knight and King Dedede but what there isn’t is the original’s co-op mode. We’re not sure why, as the recent port of Luigi’s Mansion managed to add co-op rather than take it away, but it’s a real shame and removes one of the original version’s best features.
There are also no motion controls in the 3DS version, which may sound like a positive but makes at least one of the transformations a lot harder to control than it used to be. The new whirlwind power-up is also grossly overpowered, as it allows you to jump higher, suck up collectables, and attack enemies; which really is going overboard considering how easy the game is anyway.
Kirby games have always been stuffed full of great ideas wasted on samey level design and a patronisingly low difficultly level, but Kirby’s Epic Yarn was one of the few to try and address those problems. Unfortunately, this remaster manages to unstitch some of those improvements, although thankfully not quite enough to unravel it completely.
Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn
In Short: One of the best Kirby games becomes frayed around the edges on the 3DS, with no co-op mode and some poorly thought out extras that would be better off left out.
Pros: Great graphics and consistently inventive set pieces that use the whole ‘Patch World’ motif perfectly. Hard mode and new mini-games are welcome.
Cons: No co-op and new power-ups are at best irrelevant and at worst unbalance the gameplay. Normal mode is very easy and quite short.
Score: 7/10
Formats: 3DS
Price: £34.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Good-Feel
Release Date: 8th March 2019
Age Rating: 3
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