Game Review: Yoshi’s Island

Original Release: 11 October 2002
Original Platform: Game Boy Advance
Virtual Console Release: 24 April 2014
Price: £6.29

While Kirby is my homeboy and there isn’t a game on the planet starring him I wouldn’t play, Yoshi also holds a very special place in my heart (if for nothing else, because he’s allowed me to kill him so many times to pull off an effective super jump in New Super Mario Bros. U). The original SNES version of Yoshi’s Island isn’t available to play on any of Nintendo’s current systems (I understand this has something to do with copyright and the chips that were included in the original cartridge), but in its place we do have Super Mario Advance 3, the Game Boy Advance port of the game. For those who played the original I’m sure this isn’t ideal, but I since I haven’t I was perfectly happy to pick up the GBA version of what is, to be quite honest, a masterclass in platforming perfection.

Kirby’s really let himself go lately…

The Plot

It’s a Mario spin-off platformer, so you don’t really need a lot of story to get things going, but what plot there is is undeniably adorable.

Taking place long before Mario ever had to set out to rescue Princess Peach ad nauseam, our story begins when a stork is on his way to deliver a baby Mario and Luigi to their new parents. While in flight the stork is attacked by Kamek, who foresees that these brothers will be nothing but trouble for Baby Bowser when he grows up. Kamek manages to grab Luigi, but Mario slips away and tumbles towards the ocean.

Thankfully Mario’s resourceful and manages to safely land himself on Yoshi’s Island. Mario has a very deep bond with Luigi and can psychically sense where he is. The Yoshis, being the good-hearted creatures that they are, agree to carry Mario across the island to find his missing brother.

That’s what you get for chasing me!

The Gameplay

While the original version included Super Mario World 2 in its title and this version is part of the Super Mario Advance series, it plays very differently to anything starring the grownup version of the red plumber. It has standard 2D side-scrolling platforming with jumping and running, but controlling a Yoshi is a very different beast.

The first thing that sets a Yoshi game apart from a Mario game is the lack of a timer. So long as you have baby Mario on your back (and there aren’t any enemies running after you), you can take each stage at your leisure. Coming into contact with an enemy will knock baby Mario off your back, and you have a limited amount of time to get him back (how much time you have is dependent on how many stars you have found littered throughout a level) – run out of time and Kamek will come and grab him, and you’ll have to restart the level.

While you can still jump on enemies heads to defeat them, it’s actually far more fun (and completely essential to gameplay) that you use Yoshi’s tongue to grab them, eat them, and then crap them out as eggs. These eggs can then be used as projectiles to defeat larger enemies, bosses, or to reach items that are either hidden or too far away to get to by just flutter jumping.

The game is split over six worlds, each with eight stages, and these are some of the most gorgeous things you are ever going to see. The entire game has been visually designed like drawings done with crayons, which gives it a very child-like and whimsical feel. The visuals are accompanied by equally magical music that create some of the happiest environments I think I’ve ever encountered in a game. Don’t let the cuteness fool you though – Yoshi’s Island has some devilishly tricky sections and many hidden items littered throughout each stage (finding all the hidden items in a particular world will unlock bonus stages unique to this version of the game). I died a good few many times, and checkpoints are just a little further apart than you’d like, but the game succeeds at being so damn gorgeous that you just don’t mind repeating certain levels over and over again.

The fact that this is a GBA port does mean that the screen is zoomed in to compensate for the GBA’s smaller screen size. This means that parts of the stage which would have been perfectly viewable in the SNES version are out of shot here, and this requires that you explore each stage a little more thoroughly than would have been the case in the original. As part of the Wii U Virtual Console I opted to play the game mostly on the GamePad alone, which doubles up quite nicely as an oversized GBA. With screen smoothing enabled it looks absolutely fine on a TV as well, but then the sound takes a bit of a hit. It won’t ruin the game by any means, but my personal feeling is that since this was designed for a small screen, play it on a small screen.

Yoshi never wants to come out of there again.

The Feelings

Enchanted.

It’s very rare that a game manages to balance being fanciful, challenging and engaging, but Yoshi’s Island did just that. There really isn’t a bad thing you can say about it because it does absolutely nothing wrong. Now a mature 20-year-old, Yoshi’s Island is as competent and compelling a game (if not more so) than most of what’s on the market today, and deserves to be played by anyone who enjoys platformers (or just wants to let their inner child loose on a mad run for a while).

My Final Rating: 10 / 10

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Game Review: Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land

Original Release: 26 September 2003
Original Platform: Game Boy Advance
Virtual Console Release: 17 July 2014
Price: £6.29

When you love a game enough, you’ll own multiple copies of it on as many platforms as possible. For example, I own Kirby’s Adventure on the Wii U (a terrible version owing to the limitations of the PAL NES), 3DS (as a 3D Classic, which is a fantastic version) and again on Wii U in the form of Nightmare in Dream Land, an enhanced remake for the Game Boy Advance.

Some might say that owning that many versions of the same Kirby game is excessive, but you couldn’t be more wrong. People who think that clearly just weren’t hugged enough as a child and have grown up to become stunted adults unable to see the wonder of having all these versions of the pink one’s first home console adventure. I don’t judge these people, and I certainly wouldn’t ban them from my home. But if they hang around they’re not getting the good coffee and they certainly can’t play with my Kirby amiibo.

Oh Whispy, it’s time to give you another ass whipping!

The Plot

Being as pink and adorable as Kirby is can be exhausting, which is why the little guy takes frequent naps. Unlike his other naps, however, this one wasn’t filled with glorious dreams. Worried by this Kirby goes off to the Fountain of Dreams to check that everything’s OK, where he discovers that the Star Rod, the source of the Fountain’s powers, has been stolen and broken by King Dedede.

The broken Star Rod pieces are now being held by Whispy Woods, Paint Roller, Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright, Kracko, Heavy Mole, Meta Knight, and King Dedede himself. Without the Fountain all of Dream Land’s inhabitants are starting to get a little ratty because, without dreams, they can’t get a decent night’s sleep.

To restore order to Dream Land’s nap times Kirby will have to journey long and far to beat the crap out of those holding on to the Star Rod fragments.

Let Kirby’s gentle melodies lull you off to dream land…

The Gameplay

Nightmare in Dream Land is a traditional platformer, so the main goal is to get from the left-hand side of the screen to the right while trying not to take damage from enemies in the process. What makes most Kirby games more suited to young gamers is the fact that, unlike the likes of Mario, he isn’t bound to the ground and can inflate and fly whenever the player chooses. In most courses this means that the majority of ground-based obstacles can be avoided should the player so choose.

What Kirby’s Adventure introduced to the series (absent from Kirby’s first game, Kirby’s Dream Land) is Kirby’s signature copy ability. Most enemies have certain powers (a laser, a sword, etc.) that Kirby can steal by inhaling the enemy and swallowing them. These powers make getting around the levels significantly easier, but certain ones are also essential to solving certain puzzles and finding the game’s many hidden items.

As with most Kirby games Nightmare in Dream Land isn’t particularly difficult and won’t take you tremendous amounts of time to finish the main story. The main challenge comes in trying to find all of the hidden rooms and collectables, and it was with great pride that this became the first Kirby game I’ve 100%-ed 🙂

Graphically the game has all the charm you would expect from the Game Boy Advance, and it translates very well on the Wii U’s Virtual Console, either by playing it on the Gamepad or playing it full screen on the TV (in which case I would recommend turning screen smoothing on, otherwise the game can be a bit pixellated). As with all GBA Virtual Console games, however, multiplayer link up has been disabled.

A great personal victory.

The Feelings

As always, Kirby elicits feelings of pure joy and elation in me. I wish I could explain it (and all of the gods above know I’ve tried), but there’s just something about seeing this little guy dance when he beats a boss that gives me one of those smiles where happiness goes straight through you.

Kirby’s Adventure was a delightful little game that pushed the original NES’ hardware to the limits with its presentation. Nightmare in Dream Land retains all of the joy and fun of the original and breathes new life into it with its updated graphics and sound. You also get three mini games that weren’t included in the original thrown into the mix, so there’s really nothing here to complain about. But even if you were to complain, please don’t think that I would think any less of you or your inability to feel happiness.

My Final Rating: 7 / 10

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Game Review: Yoshi’s Woolly World

Release Date: 26 June 2015
Platform: Wii U

Kirby will always be my first love but there’s a big place in my heart for Yoshi, that cute little pseudo-dinosaur who’s been thrown to his death just so that Mario can make a really high jump more times than you can count.

Yoshi’s Woolly World has been a long time coming, first announced in 2013 (under the tentative title Yarn Yoshi), and I’ve been waiting patiently since that day. A spiritual successor to Kirby’s Epic Yarn (the greatest game to ever grace any console), Yoshi’s Woolly World takes everything its predecessor did right, ramps up the visuals and increases the challenge, imbues it with Yoshi’s own distinct kind of fun, and gives you a piece of pure platforming perfection.

When your grandmother’s sewing kits go rogue.

The Plot

Like many platform games before it, Yoshi’s Woolly World‘s story is only there to get the action going, but it’s as cute as everything else going on in the game.

Far away in the middle of the ocean lies Craft Island, a magical place populated entirely by Yoshis made of yarn. It’s an ideal place until Kamek, a Magikoopa and one of Baby Bowser’s minions, rocks up and decides to turn all of the Yoshis into yarn balls. Sadly for Kamek he misses two Yoshis, who then set out to defeat him and recover their unwoven brethren and restore peace and tranquility to their idyllic little isle.

An infinitely cuter re-enactment of the Blitz.

The Gameplay

If you’ve ever played Yoshi’s Island, then you’ll be right at home here. Unlike its predecessor, which gave Kirby an entirely different moveset in keeping with his textile environment, Yoshi’s Woolly World comes with Yoshi’s traditional complement of moves. You have to make it from one corner of the screen to the other while gobbling up enemies and turning them into yarn balls which can be used as projectiles, flutter jumping across large pits of doom, and looking out for any collectibles that you can get your hands on.

The game itself isn’t overly challenging, and given that you have an infinite number of lives and no clock to race against the only punishment for falling off into the abyss is being sent back either to the beginning of the stage or to the last check point, depending on how far you’ve progressed. Granted you will lose any collectibles you’ve picked up along the way, but those are easy enough to pick up again when you know where to find them. For those who like to be nice and relaxed when they play there’s also Mellow Mode which gives Yoshi a set of wings, meaning that the risk of falling to your death is somewhat diminished. It doesn’t make you invincible, but it does make getting around a fair bit easier.

Most of the challenge in the game comes from trying to find the collectibles littered around each stage, of which there are plenty. Each stage has five yarn balls (which will knit you a different patterned Yoshi when you find all five), five Flowers (you need to find all of each world’s Flowers to unlock its special stage) and twenty Stamp Patches (finding enough will give you stamps that you can use in Miiverse posts). If you find all of these and finish a stage with full health (twenty hearts) then you’ll have aced the stage and a star will appear next to it in the overworld. It’s a completionist’s dream, and some of these things are hidden in really obscure places.

To help out with both difficulty and finding items, depending on what you need for a given stage, you can also buy Power Badges. These give you different power ups (invincibility to fire, ability to see hidden objects, etc.) and can be bought with gems, which you collect all over each of the stages. These are nice inclusions since you don’t have to use them if you enjoy the challenge, but are available if you’re doing the same level for the 20th f*&$ing time and still can’t find that one missing mother f*&$ing yarn ball.

Visually and audibly the game is an absolute delight, with huge attention to detail when it comes to how Yoshi interacts with his woollen little world. The only bouts of slowdown tend to happen during the transformation sections of certain stages (where Yoshi turns into a plane, an umbrella, a motorbike, a mole, a mermaid, or the cutest Godzilla you’ve ever seen) where you tend to be moving a lot faster and there’s more happening on-screen, but it isn’t a great detraction, especially considering you’re usually too busy trying not to get killed.

Throw all this together and the fact that you can scan in virtually any amiibo to get a corresponding patterned Yoshi (Olimar Yoshi is my favourite) what you have is a game that looks, sounds and plays fantastically, and can proudly sit in any platforming fan’s collection.

Poochy to the rescue!

The Feelings

Absolute joy.

Perhaps not best suited for fans of the likes of Hatred, but for those of us that enjoy our games on the cute and fluffy side Yoshi’s Woolly World is everything you could ask for and then a little more. It’s as challenging as you want it to be in a world that is lovingly crafted and will keep you occupied for hours as you run around Craft Island and its surrounds knitting all of your friends back together.

My Final Rating: 9 / 10
Buy Yoshi’s Woolly World on Amazon.com

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Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Original Release: 12 November 2004
Original Platform: Game Boy Advance
Virtual Console Release: 29 May 2014
Price: £6.29

While the original Game Boy was the first console I owned that really got me into the world of gaming (and, owing to its size, made me mildly proficient in the use of heavy objects as weapons), nothing quite holds a candle to my clear, bright pink Game Boy Advance. She’s a little beaten, yellowed, and missing her battery cover, but I still haul her out every now and then when the mood takes me.

My love of the Game Boy Advance and my re-sparked interest in the Legend of Zelda series (courtesy of The Wind Waker HD) made getting this little gem a reasonable decision. The Wii U’s Gamepad doubles up as a decent GBA stand-in, with the added bonus being hearing the GBA startup music in glorious surround sound when blown up on the TV.

There’s something on my head!!

The Plot

Taking place early in the Zelda timeline (the earliest at the time of its release, and currently only second in the timeline after Skyward Sword), The Minish Cap follows an incarnation of Link as he tries to rescue Princess Zelda and the kingdom of Hyrule with the help of the tiny, pixy-like Minish people. Zelda has been turned to stone by the villain Vaati, a Picori (the Hyrulean name for the Minish)-turned evil wizard-turned destroyer of the Picori Blade, the precursor to the hero’s Master Sword seen in later games.

According to legend the Picori Blade was used in a bygone era by a hero decked in a green tunic to drive monsters and darkness from the land of Hyrule. With the blade destroyed the monsters and the darkness have returned. Link, accompanied by Ezlo, a Picori-turned sassy bird-shaped hat, must re-forge the Picori Blade, defeat Vaati and his minions, save Zelda, and do the sort of everyday things that heroes of an ancient age were expected to do.

I beat you in The Wind Waker and I’ll beat you here too!

The Gameplay

As with most Zelda games, Minish Cap is an adventure/puzzle game that requires the player to go from area to area and dungeon to dungeon solving a series of puzzles, beating the requisite dungeon bosses and collecting the necessary items to continue on with the quest. In this instance, the main items that require collecting are the Four Elements which are needed to re-forge the Picori Blade. There are also the usual side quests that do things like power up your weapons and increase the amount of life you have, which is useful for later on in the story but not at all necessary to plot development.

The game itself is played from a top-down perspective similar to the earlier Zelda games on the NES, SNES and Game Boy Color, with items being assigned to particular buttons (which require frequent swapping out depending on what needs to be done next).

The key gameplay mechanic in Minish Cap is the ability to shrink down to the size of the Picori and explore otherwise inaccessible areas of the game world. This can’t just be done willy nilly, however, and you’ll need to find portals left by the Minish in order to shrink down to their size; these usually take the form of tree stumps and cracked Chinese vases.

Ezlo, your constant companion since he’s taken up residence on Link’s head, serves as a far less irritating version of Navi from Ocarina of Time since he’ll help you out with hints if you’re either lost or, far more common with me, have forgotten what it is your meant to be doing, but he’ll only do it if you specifically ask him. He’s also a source of great one-liners and general sassiness (far more than you’d expect from your average hat), so you don’t mind taking him along for the ride.

Of course a Zelda game isn’t a Zelda game without Link rolling around and grunting. I have yet to discover how this helps you apart from moving around marginally quicker than just walking normally, but without it all you’d be left with is the game’s colourful visuals and full soundtrack, and that just wouldn’t do.

Also, Tingle and his brethren are everywhere. What’s not to love?

The Feelings

The Minish Cap is a somewhat short game. Unlike other Zelda games where you can expect to pour a good many hours into completing just the main story, I managed to get through the game’s main story, a good few side quests, and get hopelessly lost on numerous occasions in around 12 hours. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it does manage to pack a good story into its relatively short playtime, but it is best to bear this in mind before going in.

With that being said the game still has all of the polish and fun that you would expect from the series. The puzzles are clever and challenging without ever feeling unfair, the game world is beautifully vibrant in a distinctively GBA way and the characters you come into contact with are very endearing.

And anyway, you play the entire game with a sassy bird hat telling you what to do. What more could you possibly want?

My Final Rating: 7 / 10

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Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

Release Date: 4 October 2013
Platform: Wii U

I was never the biggest fan of the Legend of Zelda franchise. Maybe it was because I was more traditionally into platformers. Maybe it was because the games weren’t overflowing with the colourful cutesiness I was traditionally accustomed to. Perhaps it was even the result of owning a copy of Link’s Awakening DX on my good old Game Boy Color as a child and not having the foggiest clue what kind of game I was playing, had no idea what I was meant to do, and spent most of my time walking around the same three pieces of forest while getting more and more bored. Whatever it might have been, I wasn’t a fan.

But as I’ve said before, being a Wii U owner makes you adventurous in your gaming. You have to be (especially in those dark, early days) or else you wouldn’t have an awful lot to play. So I got my hands on a copy of The Wind Waker HD. I didn’t know much about it beyond the fact that it was much derided in certain corners back in the GameCube days for its cel-shaded graphics and its Triforce Quest, but that people grew to love it once they’d actually played it. Since I held no allegiance to the tropes of the franchise (and personally liked the idea of playing a giant cartoon) I felt that it was time to give a home console Zelda game a go. It was a good decision, becoming a tremendous addition to my collection, and my absolute favourite game to blare Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’ to.

But first, let me take a selfie…

The Plot

Taking place in the third of the Zelda timelines, Wind Waker HD picks up hundreds of years after the events of Ocarina of Time. When Ganondorf threatened to return after being defeated by the Hero of Time (Link in Ocarina of Time), the goddesses that watch over Hyrule find that there is no hero to vanquish him. Lacking a hero they take the only other apparently viable course of action available to them: they flood all of Hyrule, locking all but a few of its inhabitants beneath the sea in a world where time has literally stopped.

Those lucky few not trapped in Hyrule were told to flee to the top of the mountains which now survive as scattered islands in the Great Sea, inhabited by their descendants. The new incarnation of Link lives on Outset Island. Having just turned 12 he is due to receive his special green tunic, but on his way to his grandmother’s house he sees a gigantic bird drop a young girl, Tetra, into the Forest of Fairies. He rescues her, but only to discover that his sister Aryll has now been abducted by the same gigantic bird.

Tetra’s a no-nonsense kind of girl in the sense that, even at such a young age, she is the leader of the Great Sea’s most formidable band of pirates, and is willing to help Link get his sister back. With her help and the help of the King of Red Lions (a talking boat), magical trees, magical tree stumps, fairies, giant fairies, ghosts, the Wind Waker, bird people, inanimate-animate statues, and Tingle (who is simultaneously incredibly endearing and very disturbing) Link must rescue his sister and undo the machinations of Ganondorf to restore peace and tranquility to the Great Sea.

Just me and my walking statue.

The Gameplay

The Wind Waker HD, like many of its Zelda home console brethren, is a 3D adventure/puzzle game. While players are still required to traverse dungeons in a linear sequence to reach the end of the game, the main difference here is that you’ll be doing a lot of sailing. This requires the use of the Wind Waker, a baton that allows you to control the direction of the wind and the direction your ship sails in. As you sail you can piece together a map of the Great Sea by feeding a gigantic talking fish. It’s an odd way of doing things (and isn’t a requirement), but having the whole map will be extremely useful as the game progresses. There are also a number of side quests that you can undertake which allow you to do things like increase the amount of life you have, power up certain weapons, and capture fairies in glass jars. All of these things become useful as you go on, especially when it comes to fighting the later bosses.

The Wii U GamePad is used primarily as an inventory, allowing you to swap out weapons and assign new ones to the control buttons without having to pause the game. It doesn’t sound like much, but since items frequently need to be swapped out in rapid succession (especially for my gaming style, which relies on trying everything until something eventually hurts the boss) it is an incredibly useful feature. It can also be used as a camera (Link taking selfies is amazing!) and allows you to write messages and place them in Tingle bottles, which are uploaded to Miiverse. Tingle bottles are littered all over the ocean, and allow players to randomly discover messages left by other players. It’s nothing incredible, but it’s a fun little additional feature. Apart from these uses, the GamePad can also be used for off-TV play.

Graphically, the game is astounding and handles incredibly smoothly, with only one bout of slowdown that I experienced while going up against a particular boss. In true and proper Nintendo style there are also parts where you’ll need sunglasses to play it’s that bright and cheerful. This fits well with my general gaming philosophy of ‘if your corneas aren’t on fire, the game isn’t worth playing’.

Not creepy in the slightest…

The Feelings

I think what this game has that other Zelda games didn’t have for me is a sense of whimsy. The graphical style combined with the enormous ocean makes it feel like an actual adventure, rather than just traipsing around a map from one dungeon to the next. Admittedly, I don’t have many great points of comparison for the franchise (I currently own Ocarina of Time 3D and Twilight Princess but have yet to get around to playing either of them), but this game absolutely blows away those Zelda games that I have played.

Sometimes I spent hours just randomly sailing around the Great Sea (playing the aforementioned ‘Orinoco Flow’) and talking to fish and that one random nearly naked guy who sells you things from his boat. For a game to be able to balance requiring tremendous concentration to get past certain points and being incredibly relaxing in others without feeling disjointed to me is quite an accomplishment. For those like myself who were unfamiliar with the franchise, Wind Waker is a nice jumping in point that allows you to pick up the gameplay basics present in all of the Zelda games without needing to take a relative’s eye out with a Wiimote (as I’ve heard is necessary in Skyward Sword and which I look forward to testing out).

My Final Rating: 9 / 10
Buy The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD at Amazon.com

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Game Review: Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush

Release Date: 8 May 2015
Platform: Wii U

Let’s start this one off by reminding everyone that I am a Kirby fanatic. There is no other game series on any platform (Nintendo or otherwise, console, PC or handheld, past, present or future) that is quite as tremendous as Kirby’s adventures are. This might seem a slightly strange point of view for a nearly-28-year-old man to take, but having consulted with the Oracle of Delphi on the matter I have been informed that my view is the correct one. Anyone who disagrees with me will not be invited over for pizza parties.

So buying Rainbow Paintbrush, as you may imagine, was really a no-brainer for me, and the cat still hasn’t really recovered from my rather loud and perhaps overly flamboyant reaction to its announcement during last year’s E3. To be honest it isn’t a game for everyone, but for those who like games that are a little quirky and different while also being more adorable than the combined cuteness of a baker’s dozen of kittens, then you really don’t have to look any further than Kirby’s latest adventure.

Whispy’s a bit like Christian Grey. Likes getting his ass whipped!

The Plot

Dream Land has been robbed of all its colour by the evil Claycia. Not only does this mean that all of Dream Land’s inhabitants are currently lifeless blobs, it also means that Kirby can’t eat his once gloriously-red apple. For a simple creature who enjoys the simple things in life, this injustice just won’t stand.

With the help of Elline, a paintbrush fairy from the glorious land of Seventopia, Kirby as his band of Waddle Dee companions must defeat Claycia and get Dream Land’s colours back.

It’s about as much story as you’re ever going to get out of a Kirby game, but it’s enough to get the ball rolling and kickstart the gameplay. Also, if you see Kirby’s face when he can’t eat his apple and don’t immediately demand retribution for the pain inflicted on him, you are both disinvited from the pizza party and I won’t let you play with my amiibos.

Kirby the Annihilator at your service!

The Gameplay

Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush is a platformer in the loosest sense. As the spiritual successor to Kirby: Power Paintbrush on the Nintendo DS (which I haven’t played but for which I am eagerly awaiting a Virtual Console release) you actually have no direct control over Kirby or his movements. You can tap on him to make him jolt forward or hold down on him to power up a speed dash, but you will spend most of the time drawing rainbow ropes on the GamePad which Kirby will follow.

This might sound a bit daft but it actually adds a different kind of tactical thinking to the game. You need to be able to plot a course using the ropes that will get you from point A to point B without getting Kirby killed by enemies or dropping off something unexpected. You also need to use the ropes to block hazards from hitting him. There’s only so much rope you can use, and the only way to replenish this quickly is either to let him drop down to the ground or to find pots of clay suspended at certain points in the stage. The ropes also don’t last forever, so you need to keep the little guy rolling along. Things get mixed up slightly when Kirby is transformed into either a tank, submarine or a rocket (or when you use a Kirby, Meta Knight or King Dedede amiibo to power Kirby up), but ultimately it all comes down to how good you are with your brush.

Like most Kirby games Rainbow Paintbrush isn’t particularly difficult, and is best suited for those times when you want a relaxing game session. The challenge doesn’t come from beating the game, but rather from finding all of the collectibles littered throughout the stages.

If I have one criticism, and I don’t (and you shouldn’t either – I’m not joking about that pizza party), it’s that the game is quite short. I managed to beat it and collect the majority of the collectibles in around 9 hours, and that was going at a rather leisurely pace. It won’t tide you over for very long, but it’s a helluva fun time while it’s going.

I want these memories…

The Feelings:

A sense of child-like glee. By this point I’m used to the rather odd looks that I get from my family, my significant other, Tropical Mary, Tropical Mary’s husband (hereafter correctly referred to as Stygian Mole), my cats, Tropical Mary’s Cats, and that one bemused looking guy at the game shop who wasn’t quite buying that I was buying a different Kirby game and a copy of Super Princess Peach for my (non-existent) sister, but such is the price of unadulterated enjoyment. Also, there’s a lot to be said for playing this game and holding the GamePad in Tropical Mary’s line of sight while she’s playing Bloodbourne  and shouting ‘differences!’ at the top of your lungs.

And I imagine, deep down, everyone wants to spend a day at the beach with Kirby. And if you don’t, in addition to being disinvited from the pizza party and not being allowed to touch my amiibos (especially not the Kirby one), I suggest you go crawling back to your mother on hands and knees and beg her forgiveness for turning out the way you did.

My Final Rating: 8 / 10
Buy Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush at Amazon.com

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Game Review: Pikmin 3

Release Date: July 26, 2013
Platform: Wii U

As anyone who owns a Wii U will testify, 2013 was a dark time. The console wasn’t in a good way, the games were few and far between, and we were being taunted mercilessly by PlayStation and Xbox owners (not that much of this has changed in 2014, mind you, but as a collective I feel that we’re getting better at ignoring it). I’d never played any of the Pikmin games before, but the reviews were decent and the console was gathering dust so I decided I’d give it a bash, and I’m really glad that I did.

There really isn’t anything else out there that I can quite compare Pikmin 3 to. Part real-time strategy, part adventure, part puzzle solving (and all blinding colour and cuteness), it’s an easy game to play but one that requires quick thinking and problem solving skills if you want to master the tasks it places before you. In addition, it also takes the sheer horror of Mother Nature at her most base levels and presents it in a beautiful way, to the point that you almost forget that your little legion of Pikmin are turning their vanquished foes into compost to breed even more Pikmin which will go out and repeat the cycle.

Meet our intrepid explorers: Alph, Charlie and Brittany.

The Plot

The planet Koppai is in the midst of a food crisis, and unless something is done quickly the entire planet’s inhabitants will starve. After a series of drones return with no useful information, one indicates that it has found edible matter on the planet PNF-404. Three adventurers, Alph, Charlie and Brittany, are sent to PNF-404 to retrieve as much edible matter as they can find so that it can be cultivated back on Koppai and relieve the food crisis.

But PNF-404 (which bares a striking resemblance to Earth according to the Pangea Ultima hypothesis) is inhabited by hostile (and rather enormous) indigenous lifeforms, which doesn’t help any of the explorers when their spaceship, the SS Drake, crashes into the planet, ejecting all three of them in different directions. On the surface they each encounter the Pikmin – small plant/animal hybrids that are willing to follow any command you give them. The Pikmin live in a kind of organic spaceship known as an Onion, which will take off with the explorers whenever the Drake leaves the planet’s surface.

With the help of the Pikmin the explorers need to gather as much fruit as they can, find their missing cosmic drive key (which will allow them to get back home), and save one another when Charlie gets eaten, Brittany falls out of the spaceship and gets trapped (twice), the food supplies are stolen, and Charlie’s rubber duck gets held hostage. And whilst these are utterly ridiculous plot points, somehow they all make perfect sense in the game’s lush environments while you run around throwing tiny little Pikmin at far larger enemies in the hopes of bringing them down.

Yellow and Rock Pikmin in their individual cliques…

The Gameplay

As with any game the first thing that matters are the controls, and Pikmin 3 has quite a few options to play with – Wiimote + nunchuck, Wii U GamePad with button controls, or touch-screen controls on the Wii U GamePad. I haven’t played with the touch-screen controls but the other two work equally well, whilst the Wiimote + nuncuck combination was my personal preference as it allows for greater accuracy on the TV and leaves the GamePad free as a map. The GamePad screen, when playing on TV, will provide an overview of the area and where your Pikmin squads are. This is useful for picking up any strays at nightfall (any Pikmin not by the Onion or with one of the explorers when the sun sets will be eaten) and for telling different leaders to go in different directions without manually having to take them there yourself.

Throughout the course of the game there are a number of things that players will have to learn to do, but the learning curve is gradual enough that there should be no problem mastering any of them:

1. The Pikmin themselves, who come in five different varieties: Red, Blue, Yellow, Rock, and Winged. Each one has its own abilities (Red Pikmin are immune to fire, Rock Pikmin can’t be crushed or impaled, for example) which you will need to learn in order to apply the right group of Pikmin to individual tasks. You are introduced to one Pikmin type at a time, allowing plenty of time to get used to each one’s particular uses.
2. When the game starts you will only have Alph to control, which allows you to learn basic commands (signalling to Pikmin, throwing Pikmin, taking on enemies, etc.) but, as the game progresses, you will also gain control of Charlie and Brittany, and learning to divide your squad of Pikmin (of which there can be 100 on the field at any time) between the three leaders and assigning specific tasks will make each mission that much easier.
3. Time management is very important. Night time on PNF-404 is hazardous so you can only complete tasks during the daytime, with each day lasting approximately 10 minutes. During this time you need to collect fruit which will be turned into fruit juice. At the end of each day one container of fruit juice is consumed by the explorers as part of their rations. Failure to collect enough fruit will result in the explorers dying of hunger, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the mission.

These are all factors that need to be considered at the start of each day. Additionally, each area is littered with enemies that you will need to clear before setting Pikmin to any tasks – Pikmin will automatically take the shortest route back to the Drake and the Onion, irrespective of enemies in the way. Failure to clear their path of enemies will result in the Pikmin being eaten, trampled, impaled, speared, crunched, squashed, and a variety of similar awful deaths that you just don’t want to wish on them.

Overall the game plays fantastically, with only a few minor niggles here and there that you need to learn to work around. Firstly, never turn a corner too tightly or your Pikmin will become stuck and unable to follow you, at which point you’ll have to backtrack to pick them up. This also applies near ledges and other minor obstacles. Secondly, allocating Pikmin to tasks is very important. For example, if you have defeated an enemy and want it taken back to the Onion, it is always best to assign a single group of Pikmin to do the work. I once assigned mostly blue Pikmin (who can go through water) to carrying back a vanquished foe, along with one or two others; the blue Pikmin, recognising the water route to be the shortest, went that way. This resulted in their non-blue companions drowning and them standing in the water heaving (which, admittedly, is a very cute sound) because now there aren’t enough of them to carry the thing back. Things like this don’t, however, detract from a game that has otherwise been masterfully crafted.

Outside of the main campaign there are also a variety of missions for you to take part in (both single- and two-player) which involve either collecting fruit or defeating bosses or enemies. Some of these are pre-loaded with the game and the others are very reasonably priced on the Wii U eShop. These carry over the same style of gameplay from the campaign but have a time limit and also include White (poisonous and very fast) and Purple (slow but good for lifting) Pikmin from Pikmin 2. Whilst not a selling point on their own, the missions do add replayability outside of the campaign as you seek to increase your high score in some very challenging situations.

Everything, and I mean everything, wants to eat your Pikmin.

The Feelings

After a rough day or when I just want to relax, this is the game I put in to clear my head. The great thing about it is that, so long as you don’t let Alph, Charlie, and Brittany starve, the game is only as stressful or challenging as you want it to be. Do you want to complete the game in 10 in-game days? Go ahead! Want to take time exploring the impressive flora and fauna in the Garden of Hope? That’s also cool. In this way Pikmin 3 is suitable for gamers of any skill level, because there’s very little you can do that will result in a complete failure, and even if one day was to bring about the demise of hundreds of Pikmin (which happened to me when I took the completely wrong batch into a boss fight), just replay the day and it’ll be like it never happened.

The way I knew that the game was successful was that, despite having hundreds of Pikmin of all colours in the Onion, you actually become filled with indignant rage when something comes along and kills one of them. You wouldn’t imagine that a game filled with tiny humanoid characters and even tinier little plant creatures would result in battle cries being sent out across the lounge as you tear into battle against a crab to avenge your fallen Pikmin comrades, but these things happen, and quite often (if you’re anything like me).

All in all the game is fantastic, and the only sad thing is the fact that the Wii U’s low sales, combined with the niche genre of this game, means that it’ll be quite a while before we’re likely to see another installment in the franchise.

My Final Rating: 9/10
Buy Pikmin 3 at Amazon.com

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