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Kirby's Epic Yarn

by Aaron Kaluszka - September 15, 2010, 10:50 am EDT
Total comments: 12

This Kirby doesn't suck.  He's physically incapable of it. (Videos included)

At Nintendo's offices, I had a chance to play through Hot Land, the second world in Kirby's Epic Yarn (the stages shown at E3 were from the first world, Grass Land -- can you see a Super Mario Bros. 3 pattern emerging?).  Before getting into gameplay, I saw the introduction video, the Japanese version of which you can watch below.  There are rumors that a wizard has been tormenting Dream Land, and Kirby accidentally comes across the character when trying to eat the tomato off of his head.  The wizard sucks Kirby into his sock, but not before Kirby eats the tomato.  Kirby ends up in a textile-based world, and has turned to yarn.  Immediately, he sees Prince Fluff being chased by an enemy.  Kirby tries to suck the enemy in, but air passes right through his now-hollow body.  He then realizes that the tomato he ate wasn't a Maxim tomato, but a "metamato," which has given him the power to transform, so he turns into a car and drives away with Prince Fluff.  The story is pretty random, and it's narrated in a Kindergarten storytime manner.  The game is overtly cutesy, easily rivalling Yoshi's Story.

I'm not going to go into the basic mechanics, since James already did a good job in his E3 impressions.  Everything about the game has been carefully crafted as yarn and fabric, from characters and their attacks to levels and their deformations.

You can't die in this game, instead losing beads when hit or falling off the screen.  The beads scatter like in Sonic the Hedgehog, and so can be recovered, but they do not act as health.  Since I was playing in a fire-based world, I found myself charred gray several times, though you can't fully catch on fire.  This certainly makes the game much easier to complete -- Kirby's Dream Land was originally designed to be a game that anybody could easily complete.  However, the challenge comes from finding all of the collectables, making it through the levels with enough beads to get high rankings, and unlocking other levels.  Some levels are not required, being unlocked after the boss of that world is defeated.

The removal of Kirby's flying ability makes platforming more difficult than previous games, and there are several sequences where carefully timed platforming comes into play.  One annoying consequence, if you're used to his old mechanics, is that pressing jump after jumping makes Kirby turn into a parachute, the exact opposite action.  While the game feels easy to plow through, care must be taken to make it through unscathed.

Each level seems to have its own section where Kirby transforms into a special vehicle a la Yoshi's Island, and sometimes Kirby and Fluff combine in a super tranformation.  I saw a off-road racer, UFO, digger mole, and fire engine, to name a few.  The fire engine is used to put out fires, and uses Remote tilting to control the direction of water.  Upon leaving the area, Kirby is automatically forced back into his normal yarn form.  Kirby can also travel through narrow passages by unravelling completely, and I passed through one maze-like area that required this ability.

The world maps are similar to previous Kirby game, except, like everything else, they are made of cloth.  Upon completing a level, a badge activates a creative yarn-based animation sequence, such as a genie or a dragon, that unfurls the next level. 

The boss of Hot Land was a fiery version of Dynablade, and the battle was similar to that of previous games, with some clever yarn-based lava effects thrown in.  At the end of each boss fight, Kirby recovers a piece of magic yarn.  Exploiting tailoring ideas to their fullest, the yarn is necessary to literally tie the various worlds together so that Kirby can progress to the next stage.

There are a large number of collectables and unlockables in the game, many of which can be uncovered by pulling and peeling parts of the levels.  Each level has three fabric patches to be collected from treasure chests, much like Wario Land: Shake It or Kirby Super Star's The Great Cave Offense.  These patches can be taken back to the apartment complex where Kirby is staying to be used as decorations.  The apartment setup is like it's own sub-game, reminiscent of Animal Crossing.  Players can customize their apartment with furniture and patterns, and can purchase some of the said items at a nearby store.  The patterns can be customized and applied to furniture, or used as wallpaper or flooring.  The complex's landlord will build new apartments in exchange for beads.  Once the appropriate patches are installed in other apartment, new tenants, similar in design to the Pixls of Super Paper Mario, will decide to move in.  These neighbors open up new mini-levels.

Some patches are CDs, which unlock corresponding tracks in the game's sound test.  The music, by the way, is just as elegant as the game's visuals, featuring tracks both new and old, in a variety of light renditions such as piano.  The game also has several cutscenes, which can be viewed later from a menu.

The game is the same between single and two-player modes.  Playing with two people makes the collectable part of the game much easier, as players can throw each other over or through obstacles that are hard to reach individually.  However, the bead gauge is shared by both players, so both have to be careful of getting hit when going for medals.  You can't stray too far from one another as an angel will drag the player left behind back to his partner.

The developer, Good Feel, has a very apt name.  Between this game, and Wario Land: Shake It, the careful attention to all aspects of the game, from artistic presentation to gameplay leaves you with a good feeling.  Kirby's Epic Yarn is another fun Kirby adventure that's great to play in pairs.

Talkback

broodwarsSeptember 15, 2010

Looks pretty but kind of boring.  I think I'll just wait for DKC Returns to get my fill of 2D Platforming.

Ian SaneSeptember 15, 2010

This looks like a lot of fun but the no dying thing sounds like it will make it too easy.  I can still get some enjoyment from a title with no challenge if it's fun to romp through the levels but that's a used price purchase at best.  I'm not an OCD who digs getting 100% on everything.  So if the challenge is in doing that then I'll probably plow through this in a weekend and then never go back to it.

Killer_Man_JaroTom Malina, Associate Editor (Europe)September 15, 2010

Oh, so falling down pits doesn't kill you? I'll sit tight until the reviews then - invincibility could easily induce sloppy play, which is never ideal. The big question is: what motivates the player to keep going when it doesn't really matter how well or how badly they play? I'd still really like to at least experience this for myself, because the yarn graphics-cum-gameplay mechanisms are fascinating, and it's cutting off a lot of ties to Kirby games of old and reconnecting with other franchises. Having said this, there needs to be a driving force, and I'm not sure if collectibles will be enough.

ThomasOSeptember 15, 2010

The fact that the Japanese opening has a narrator but the screenshot on the main page has subtitles tells me they might ditch the narrator in the North American release.

broodwarsSeptember 15, 2010

Quote from: Killer_Man_Jaro

Oh, so falling down pits doesn't kill you? I'll sit tight until the reviews then - invincibility could easily induce sloppy play, which is never ideal. The big question is: what motivates the player to keep going when it doesn't really matter how well or how badly they play?


Well, in Prince of Persia 2008, you can't die as Elika will always pop in to save you.  The designers used this as an excuse to up the complexity of the platforming and combat sequences a bit (especially in the Epilogue DLC).  If this were anything other than a Kirby game, I could see Nintendo doing something similar: using the lack of player death as a means to allow them to make the game more challenging.  But since it is a Kirby game, somehow I get the feeling this will just make a generally-easy series even easier.

Quote from: ThomasO

The fact that the Japanese opening has a narrator but the screenshot on the main page has subtitles tells me they might ditch the narrator in the North American release.

Quote from: MegaByte

it's narrated in a Kindergarten storytime manner

I played the NA version, in case it wasn't clear.

Mop it upSeptember 15, 2010

Did anyone play Wario Land II and III on the Game Boy Color? I imagine this game won't be much different than that, which is fine with me because I loved those games. In WLII, you'd lose coins from getting hit, but in WLIII there was no penalty. You'd get knocked back though, so it could knock you off platforms or bar your way, causing you to have to climb back up.

That's how it is here too, and I think they've upped the difficulty of platforming in conjunction with the lack of floating ability.  It still wasn't terribly difficult, but I only played the early stages.  I played the game with my non-gaming girlfriend, and she didn't have much trouble except for one section with an upward shaft that had continually-dropping spikes that must be navigated carefully.  At that point, after failing several times, I picked her up and carried her since we had limited time in the demo.  I do hope that there will be an unlockable hit-kill challenge mode similar to some of the previous games.

vuduSeptember 16, 2010

I absolutely loved Wario Land Shake It so I'm really looking forward to this game.

Ian SaneSeptember 16, 2010

Anyone else think it's funny that Wario Land Shake It did not have the never-die design of Wario Land 2&3 but this unrelated game by the same dev does?  You figure the time to use the mechanic was with Shake It.

vuduSeptember 16, 2010

Death generally wasn't a big issue in Shake It.  I can only remember dying due to lack of health a couple times.  Generally, the only time I'd die would be when I ran out of time trying to escape a level.  Even the boss fights were easy to beat (although very hard to get a "perfect" on).

I'm fine with removing the annoyance of occasionally dying as long as there's sufficient reward for playing well.  As I mentioned before, in Shake It, some of the boss fights were extremely difficult to defeat in a very short time and/or without getting hit.  It's the same with the regular levels--the challenge came from earning the all the "achievements" in each level.  This is where the challenge came from.  Since Epic Yarn rewards you for not getting hit (and therefore not losing any beads) this same level of difficulty should remain for those who choose to strive for it.

I just hope they add some of the other achievement goals that were present in Shake It.  As much as I like going for a "perfect" run-though of a level, there were a lot of other fun things to do in Shake It that I haven't yet seen in this game.

PeachylalaSeptember 17, 2010

Oh god yes, please give me those achievements please. That was the icing on the cake with Shake It!, and it offered lot of challenge (and though I haven't played it in a while, Shake It was pretty challenge from what I remember).

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Keito no Kirby Box Art

Genre Action
Developer GOOD-FEEL, Ltd.
Players1 - 2

Worldwide Releases

na: Kirby's Epic Yarn
Release Oct 17, 2010
PublisherNintendo
RatingEveryone
jpn: Keito no Kirby
Release Oct 14, 2010
PublisherNintendo
RatingAll Ages
eu: Kirby's Epic Yarn
Release Feb 25, 2011
PublisherNintendo
Rating3+
aus: Kirby's Epic Yarn
Release Feb 24, 2011
PublisherNintendo
RatingGeneral
kor: Kirby's Epic Yarn
Release Sep 01, 2011
PublisherNintendo

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