Kirby Mass Attack Review
When Necrodeus, the evil leader of the Skrull Gang zaps Kirby with his magic staff and divides Kirby into ten copies of himself, the pink puffball will have to pull himself together to save the day. With ten tiny Kirbys at your command, you’ll guide this ferocious swarm over enemies and obstacles across several themed areas, all in the colorful and adorable style one expects from a Kirby game. Though the controls could be tighter, Kirby Mass Attack is a delightful platformer for players of any age.
At heart this is a side-scrolling platformer complete with all the typical level designs of this genre–forest, water, desert, volcano, etc. What sets KMA apart is the multitude of Kirbys that you guide by dragging the stylus across the screen, sending them across the level, swarming over enemies and fruit alike. Though the game starts out easy enough, you’ll quickly find that keeping control over all these Kirbys can be a hectic task. Thankfully they aren’t prone to wander or separate, but keeping them in a tight formation for moving through narrow areas is a sometimes frustrating challenge that could have been alleviated by some means to quickly corral the Kirbys together. Nevertheless, there is something incredibly charming and engaging about directing a swarm of Kirbys. The game design offers up some unique situations as you build your tiny Kirby army and roll it over obstacles.
Familiar foes present new challenges when you're working with tiny Kirbys.
KMA may seem like a push-over at first, but the difficulty picks up as the game progresses. You still aren’t likely to lose all your Kirbys at once–barring any instant-death situations, at least–but this game requires more skill, planning, and speed than it might initially seem, especially since you have to anticipate the slow movements of the swarm of Kirbys. If you do have any trouble, a built-in hints and tips guide can help you on your way. Additionally, the game does a great job of keeping the stages varied. There are plenty of straight-forward stages, but peppered throughout the game are unique areas that include branching paths or special stages that have you balancing inside of a swaying tree trunk. Whether at the bottom of the sea or floating in space, the action doesn’t slow down.
The one truly problematic feature of KMA is the lack of camera control. When you’re rapidly moving Kirbys from enemies to platforms to fruit, the camera has a tendency to lock onto an inconvenient perspective, often preventing you from seeing what is directly ahead of you. There is no way for the player to move the camera aside from moving the Kirbys, and even then the camera’s movements can be haphazard. What is particularly annoying is that the game could easily have used the D-pad or ABXY buttons as a simple means of camera control, but instead the game is completely stylus focused and leaves this annoyance for the player to enjoy. At least the stylus controls work well, awkward camera or no.
KMA is a deceptively large game. In addition to the over fifty levels featured in the game, each stage has hidden medals that you can collect. Some are blatant and easy to pick up while others might require multiple attempts to find, searching down all branching paths. Medals unlock a variety of mini-games and other bonuses such as a music player. Amazingly, these mini-games are actually a lot of fun and are much more thoroughly designed than typical add-on mini-games. In particular, a top-down shooter dubbed Strato Patrol EOS is an awesome little game that can easily eat up your extra time. KMA also features a checklist of tasks–basically an achievement system–and scores on each level, but these aren’t nearly as addictive or entertaining as the mini-game offerings. In the end, this game can last much longer than the ten or twelve hours it might take to rush through the main levels.
Sometimes you need to direct the Kirbys to a specific target; pull the ripcord to defeat this enemy.
It’s no surprise that a Kirby game would be full of bright, colorful, and cheery scenery packed with enemies that are almost too cute to fight. In a word, KMA is adorable. Granted, the scenery and enemy designs repeat themselves just a little too much, but it never gets old watching the mass of Kirbys scramble over one another as they run. The music, meanwhile, is somewhat of a hidden gem. It doesn’t stand out much while playing, but it will certainly grow on you, and listening to it in the music player with no other distractions reveals the subtle quality of it. Like the graphics the songs can be repeated just a bit too much, but nevertheless the entire visual and aural presentation sets a great tone for the game, and a great mark of quality.
Kirby games have a way of flying under the radar; these quiet, unassuming titles hide a great deal of cuteness and quality, and Kirby Mass Attack is no different. The stylus-based platforming is a clever control method that provides a unique personality to this platformer, and though the camera isn’t always cooperative, the mix of platforming, action, and Kirby management is a blast. Topped off with adorable graphics, delightful music, and addictive mini-games, Kirby Mass Attack offers it all in a neat little package.
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