Review of Kirby's Return to Dream Land

Kirby's Return to Dream Land basically takes the concept of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and applies it to the Kirby series. It translates the 2D side-scrolling gameplay of the originals to 3D side scrolling, harkens back to earlier entries in the series primarily, and throws cooperative gameplay with up to four players into the mix. Overall it does a pretty good job at what it sets out to do. Since this is the first official review I've done for my blog, I'll mention now briefly that I will primarily examine games based on gameplay, looks and sound. Other factors such as story, controls and replay value may weigh in on a case-by-case basis.

There's not too much to say about the gameplay besides that it's classic Kirby. You move forward, eat certain enemies to gain their powers, then use those powers to blow through everything in your way until either losing them or finding a better ability to copy as you move through a stage. Kirby can float so there's no danger (usually) of falling into a pit, but there's a good number of varied obstacles for some platforming fun. There is a variety of abilities with a lot of mainstays and a few new ones to copy. Nearly all the familiar abilities have at least one nice little addition, like the spark ability being combined with plasma, and some of the new powers are fun and useful, like water.

One gripe I have with the gameplay are the super abilities, which are new to this entry. Back when I saw a trailer for this game I remember seeing a few of these in action, such as when Kirby pulls out a massive sword and does an attack that spans nearly the entire screen. It looked very impressive at the time. Now it looks uninteresting because I know how these abilities are used now. A fair number of stages feature one of several super abilities in the last area before the goal, and they're instantly recognizable because a large, fancy looking enemy will conveniently appear in front of you as if to inconspicuously say: "I'll bet I have a pretty awesome power." Assuming you do as the game intends and copy their ability, you'll spend the next few minutes spamming the one attack they have. Almost all of them require you to use the ability to hit time or location sensitive windows of opportunity, which if missed will require the use of the ability yet again. Super ability attacks will pause action for about three to five seconds each time they are used. It's boring to do and it is even more boring if you are another player tagging along with the Kirby using the super ability. Snow bowl, where you become a large snowball and roll forward, is about the only one that's actually interesting. However, if the super ability segments are plodding than at least there's a decent reward in the more frantic section that always come immediately afterward. For every super ability section there's a star gate that appears just before the goal, usually with some minor requirement to make it appear, such as by destroying a large object. The gates lead to obstacle courses that are a race against time to keep from being crushed and are immediately followed by decent boss battles. The ultimate reward is a few energy spheres, the collectibles this time around typically hidden (sometimes well, sometimes not) throughout all the stages. Anyway, the gist of this rant is I think super abilities were a poor addition to the game.

Having multiplayer is a plus for the game and without it I probably wouldn't have played it for awhile longer. I don't actually own the game, but I've been playing it alongside my friend Eric who does. We only get to it for an hour or two once a week so it has taken awhile to go through. The drop-in mechanic of allowing additional players to come and go whenever they want, making use of a shared pool of lives, is nice and flexible. It can be played with up to four players, although I'm not so sure how well four players would work in practice. The game worked fine for the most part with two players. Actually it feels like it was optimized for two players as Eric commented at one point. Fortunately we didn't have to worry about bumping into each other or anything like in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and generally we could do our own thing. However, once every now and then one of the cooperative mechanics would kick in. For example, we'd be jumping and floating between platforms and then suddenly Eric's Kirby would jump off my head, sending me directly down into a pit (or vice versa). These instances were rare and generally no more than minor annoyances, especially considering the ease of most of the game, but they did happen and I can scarcely imagine what situations would allow these mechanics to be useful. More often one of our characters would get lodged on the other's head, and while that could be debilitating depending on the situation it was usually more funny than anything (especially if the one doing the sitting was Dedede). Still not useful though.

On the note of mentioning one of the other characters, there are three playable characters besides Kirby: King Dedede, Meta Knight and a hero Waddle Dee. Apparently only usable by players besides the first, who is locked in as Kirby, I spent the majority of the game using these characters. I used Kirby some early on mostly to try out the various special abilities, but once I had it's hard to overlook the usefulness of the other characters and their permanent abilities. Meta Knight was my choice for quickly moving through levels and cutting down weak enemies, Dedede was my boss killer, and the Waddle Dee while fun was mostly set aside for the former two as the game became more difficult.

I briefly mentioned the game was easy and indeed it was for Eric and me. Both of us have played numerous Kirby games and we cleared standard mode with barely a problem and probably without either of us giving it our full, serious effort. Extra mode was quite a bit more challenging and we finally reached our first game over about halfway through on a boss, and the difficulty increased even more from there. How easy and how hard a game is are difficult qualities to rate for anyone but myself and it's even more difficult to say whether one or the other is good or bad. I guess I'm mentioning it as more of an observation. The easiness didn't bother me much early on, it was still fun, and the increased challenge was welcome by the time it arrived. Aside from the ease of the game, particularly early on, it also feels like it takes time for the stages to really start getting interesting.

Graphics are the easy part to critique because Kirby's Return to Dream Land certainly looks nice. I'm not too picky about the technical superiority of some graphics versus others, but to me this looks like they took the series' 2D sprites and translated it to 3D within the Wii's capabilities. That's about as best as I could expect. Stages are colorful and relatively varied in appearance, and player characters and enemies are well animated. Kudos.

Sound is somewhat of a tricky area for me to approach primarily because of all the things I notice, sound effects and music are almost never at the forefront. The game makes sounds like I would expect it to from my experience with Kirby in the past and the music seemed to fit whatever situations I was in. For me that's enough to give a game a positive pass when it comes to sound. Now there are certainly some music tracks I like more than others and I have a few older favorites that from what I could tell were competently rearranged, but in general there was no specific music in the game that really caught my attention. I asked Eric about the music since he has a much better ear for it than I ever will. He agreed he didn't think much stood out at first, but as things progressed he believes there were a number of catchy tracks.

I feel like I spent a good chunk of the review criticizing rather than praising, but don't take that to mean I didn't like the game. It was good, although not great. The multiplayer mechanics could be slightly less intrusive and some mostly minor gameplay gripes are what keep it from approaching overall better entries like Kirby Super Star. Kirby's Return to Dream Land is a solid addition to the series that keeps all the good, core elements older fans are familiar with. With an easier difficulty and possibility of multiple players, it's also probably a pretty good entry game into the series for newer gamers.

My rating: 8/10

Some content in this post is being used under the fair use exception of copyright law. Kirby's Return to Dream Land is copyright of HAL Laboratory and Nintendo.