Review: Kirby's Epic Yarn

ep·ic: heroic; majestic; impressively great

Let's get one thing straight: there is nothing epic about yarn. Look at that cover art. This game is clearly for babies. I'll admit I really enjoyed myself while playing Kirby's Epic Yarn, but in that secret shame sort of way. Let's just say if my wife walked in on my playing this, I would quickly switch the TV to something infinitely less embarrassing. Horse on Man pornography would work, for instance.

To avoid being redundant for this review, please mentally add "for babies" at the end of every sentence. For instance: if I write "This game is pretty good." You should read that as "This game is pretty good for babies." Ready?

...story...

The story in Kirby's Epic Yarn is perfect. Essentially an evil, yarn-based wizard turns everything in Kirby's world into yarn, and now it's up to Kirby and his new friend PRINCE FLUFF to knit everything back to it's normal state and unravel the wizard's plans - it's just a riveting story. The tale plays out in cutscenes between levels where a father-reading-a-bedtime-story voice narrates. The characters are bright, colorful and really stimulate the senses. Overall, it's not terribly deep, but it fits the art style nicely and makes the game really enjoyable.

Prince Fluff is just an amazing character.

...gameplay...

I think the "babies" joke has run its course, don't you? Let's stop that here. Don't want to beat a dead baby.

While the story segments are highly insulting to what little masculinity resides within my body, the gameplay is undeniably fun for adults - even if they won't admit it. The design choice of making an entire game's world and characters out of yarn isn't just an unique aesthetic - it's integral to the game itself.





Enemies unravel, the patchwork scenery can be manipulated with zippers, pullstrings, buttons and cloth. The first few levels are guaranteed to surprise and delight you as each new way of interacting with the environment is revealed. Nintendo managed to capture that elusive "magic feeling" that we all used to get when playing video games back in the 80s and 90s. However, about halfway through it feels like they ran out of ideas and the initial charm wears off to the point where you're just playing a platformer - still an expertly designed platformer, only it's missing that indescribable magic.

Actually beating the game may be the easiest achievement of this generation since there is actually no way to die. Instead the game encourages you to collect as many gems as possible on each level. Getting hit by enemy attacks or falling into a pit will cost you gems - collect and keep enough gems on each level and you're awarded with a gold medal - proving that you're a badass yarn master to your one friend who would be mildly impressed by that.

This approach to the difficulty works well for the target demographic - older gamers attracted to the game "because it's Kirby" will enjoy the challenge of gold medaling every level, while stupid little babies will get to enjoy the story without frustrating deaths. Couple that with 2-player co-op and you have a perfect father-son game day on your hands.

Gold medal. Every level.

Bosses provide an interesting and unique approach to this as well. Each world contains about 8 levels - but you're given access to the boss after beating 3 or 4 of them. The remaining levels must be unlocked by scoring and keeping enough gems during the boss fight, encouraging perfect, no-hit victories. No easy feat.

Rounding out the gameplay is the dozen or so transformations scattered throughout the game. Every few levels, these powerups turn Kirby into a train, a UFO, a surfing penguin and even a screen filling, missile shooting mega Kirby. Since his trademark swallow and copy ability was given the boot this time around, these transformations allow players to still get that old-school Kirby feeling.

YarnTank.

...presentation...

Two things are immediately apparent when you look at Epic Yarn: 

1) This is an imaginative, beautiful and elegantly integrated art style that pops off the screen with bright, rich colors. 

2) It's for babies. 

It's a real shame that the aesthetics just make it scream "I'm for ages 5 and under!" because there is a really excellent game here.  The music is appropriately cheerful, the sound effects fit perfectly and the graphics work well within the confines of the Wii's technical limitations to create something that is really beautiful. For babies.

Two Years BackBlogging

Two years ago this Saturday I started chugging through my backlog, and I thought it would be sort of fun to discuss how I thought this was going to go versus how it's actually going.

Time Commitment: 

When I first started this back in June 2010, I thought I would be done with all 91 unfinished games in about a year, maybe 18 months. Well, the fact that my 360 died certainly helped lighten the load, but in two years, I've only managed to beat 33 games.

That's actually not too bad now that I'm looking at it. Before I committed to beating everything I had, I would probably average 3-5 games a year, so its significantly better than what I was doing. Especially now that I have a budding photography career on top of my day job and wife and dog and 5-times-a-week gym membership - I would say I'm doing OK.

On the other hand 33 games isn't even the halfway point of my collection. I've still got 51 games to go.  Buh.

This graph adequately represents my gameplaying habits. Yes it does. No, you're stupid.

The Rules: 

These were the original ruled on day 1 of my adventure.

• I will go through my collection chronologically by generation - starting with Nintendo, and ending with PS3. I will of course be saving the Super Mario Bros trilogy for the end. 

I'm still saving Super Mario Bros for the end, but I didn't go chronologically. I ditched this rule right out of the gate as my first game was FFXIII for PS3. 

• I can make no new game purchases until every single game in my collection is beaten. This is key - and one of the major reasons I'm doing this blog. I spend too much money on games and don't value them enough. I want to really appreciate the value of each of my games. So making this public statement will keep me honest.

I held out for a long time on this one, and for about a year and a half, I didn't even accept borrowing games as I wanted to focus on my backlog. But these past few months I've accepted quite a few borrowed games and actually bought Xenoblade with real money. No more! I can't let this get out of control again.

I must resist.

• I will only play games that I have not yet beaten. Games that have been finished can stay on the shelf for now. In some cases I may play through a game that's already been beaten just for fun. 

I held on to this one for sure. I've picked up a game here and there for fun, but haven't really been distracted from the main objective. 

• No cheats. No warp zones. I want to gain complete mastery over every game in my collection. If I get really stuck I will allow myself to use a walkthrough, but nothing that modifies the game or makes it easier to beat. 

Fail. Though I generally stay away from cheats, I cheated on Mega Man 1's cyclops boss. It was just too tough. 

• Some games don't really have an end or a way to be beaten. I will analyze how to approach these games on a case by case basis. 

The only one of the "orange games" on my list that I've attempted was Geometry Wars - and I wasn't able to get my goal of 1million points, and my 360 died before I could achieve it. 

• If I decide I cannot beat a game, I must either give the game away or if it is a game I downloaded, give the cost of that game to charity. 

This I have not followed at all. Hold me to this rule, fellow readers. If I quit a game, send me your mailing address and I'll send you the game. 

I could be saving orphans $5 at a time.

•  After beating each game, I will write a review about it. 

I've stuck to this rule hard core. I've now got 32 game reviews - and a few iOS reviews - up on this site. I hope to make this a resource for people interested in buying older games as my reviews are honest and untainted by the free copy that most reviewers get. 

___________________________________________________________________________________

So I pretty much suck. I've broken almost every rule I set for myself, but I've made some progress and spent significantly less money over the past two years. You've probably got some great games sitting in your backlog just waiting to be finished. Challenge yourself to beat at least one game in your backlog before buying a new one - then up the ratio to 2:1 - there are some real treasures in your unfinished games. All you gotta do is find them.

Finished: Kirby's Epic Yarn

Completion Time: 7:23
Completion Percentage:  70%


This was pretty easy. The hardest part was actually staying interested in the later levels. I feel bad saying that because the game comes out of the gate with the magic Nintendo is known for - when I first started playing I got that old nostalgic feeling. But as the charm of the art style wore off, there was very little substance there unfortunately.

Full review coming shortly.

Lunch Break: Kirby's Epic Yarn

In addition to writing this blog, I am also a photographer (website), and the other day I did some extra work for a client and got a $50 GameStop gift card in return. Nice! So with that, I'm sadly adding three more games to my collection: Kirby's Epic Yarn, NHL 10, and 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

Since I was starting to get "ye olde burne oute" on Xenoblade, I figured I would jump into my newly acquired, relatively short Kirby game as a palate cleanser, and I'm actually almost done. I'm been chugging through this delightful platformer for the past week and have already reached the final world.

I should finish it up in the next couple of days then I'll have a review for my eagerly awaiting audience of three readers.

The Best of E3

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the Super Bowl for gamers. A three day conference where all the big games are revealed and all the shocking announcements are made. This year was a bit underwhelming when compared to the huge announcements of years past, but there are still some things I'm very excited about. The following are what I consider to be the top three things to come out of this year's E3 conference.

THE LAST OF US GAMEPLAY DEMO



From the creators of the peerless Uncharted series, comes this post apocalyptic story of a man and a girl surviving with what's left. The relationship between the man and girl is unclear, but it's an interesting story dynamic. There's also talk of "reactive AI" where enemies react to your current weapon, sounds you make, whether or not you're out of ammo and so on. Graphically it looks incredible. Only downside? No release date, and it's definitely not coming this year.

ZOMBI U GAMEPLAY TRAILER

 
Considered by many to be the only somewhat positive thing to come out of Nintendo's abysmal E3 Press Conference, Zombi U shows off what the Wii U Gamepad can do for a mature themed game. Little else is known about the game overall, and many are predicting that this will ultimately be an on-rails shooter experience - but nonetheless, this is the only hope gamers are clinging to for the new Wii U.


PAPER MARIO STICKER STAR




In my opinion the most exciting 3DS game on the horizon. It looks like this will be the game that really sells the 3D in a fun and creative way. They're shaking things up by eliminating experience points and having you collect stickers for attacks. Interesting concepts indeed. Looking forward to this one.

Still Playing Xenoblade Chronicles

Current Progress: 9.5 Hours Played

As I've invested more time into Xenoblade Chronicles, I'm seeing the amount of thought that went into the development of this RPG. It's almost as if they asked gamers for a list of the things they hate most about RPGs and made a point to address all of them. Here is a list of common sense conveniences incorporated into Xenoblade that other RPGs can't seem to embrace: 

- Save anywhere, anytime

- Dying sends you back to the last checkpoint and retains all items collected and XP gained, removing needless do-overs

- Battles occur in real-time, without a separate battle screen

- Health automatically regenerates outside of battle (this has been implemented in other RPGs as well) 

- No Magic Points - instead, special attacks have a "cool down" period, removing the need to carry countless ethers

- Ability to pull up a quick summary of the current story at any time to remind you what's happening

- Quest arrows to lead you to the next objective. You can stray wildly from the quest arrow too, if you're the explorer type

- Serviceable voice acting, likeable characters, interesting universe. 

With all these innovations, the story still hasn't got it's hooks in me yet. I'm certainly staying on the horse, but as of now it's going at a slow trot, and I'm just enjoying the breeze.