"It kind of looks like Little Big Planet." I get the first-glance comparison. Maybe it's because ever since the PS3 platformer drew our eyes with its arts and crafts-y aesthetic full of cleverly arranged bric-a-brac, we've yet to see another title pull off that style of carefully constructed simplicity. So when you see Kirby's Epic Yarn's fantastically vibrant visuals -- also featuring a yarn-spun protagonist -- well, it's human nature to categorize and relate the new to the old.
Despite any "Kirby formula" preconceptions you might hold, Epic Yarn should still surprise you. Throwing most of an established series' playbook out the window can be risky, but here it's paid off. Rather than focusing on the adorable pink icon's ability to consume and replicate enemy powers, the game is crafted around the titular yarn motif, and the ingenuity with which Nintendo explores that theme had me positively beaming my first time through the game.
Interestingly enough, Epic Yarn's cut-scenes -- narrated storybook style -- pleasantly remind me of Little King's Story. But let's be honest: for an adult, it's all terribly cheesy. The basic premise of the game is that the evil Yin Yarn has gotten his hands on a magical sock (not a joke), which he's using to turn everything into yarn-creatures under his command. In his quest for world domination and other such sinister endeavors, he manages to rip asunder Prince Fluff's kingdom.
Kirby gets sucked into this mess, and he teams up with the Prince (the blue Kirby-esque character you can play as in 2-player co-op) to stitch up the world. Each piece is a new world (they have cutesy names, but you'll probably remember them as simply "volcano world," "water world," "ice world," and so on), with a handful of levels each and a boss fight. Besides simply getting from start to finish, each level has three hidden treasures, as well as bonus bell patch pieces (which allow you a higher chance of getting bonus currency at the end of a level), and will grant you rank medals based on the amount of beads (Epic Yarn's colorful currency) you collect.
The beads and treasures provide a reason for you to explore levels thoroughly (and sometimes replay a level), as they tie into Epic Yarn's meta-game: decorating Kirby's apartment. Searching for these hidden trinkets (and maximizing your bead intake) actually brings up the difficulty of the game a slight notch as some of the treasures are deviously well-hidden. However, the race-against-the-clock minigames you unlock by decorating vacant apartment rooms with the furniture you acquire are nowhere near as delightful as Kirby's Adventure's crane game/gun draw/bomb swallowing minigame trio.
Boss battles add a bit of challenge as well
(relative to their respective levels, anyway), but they're also
creative. Ultimately, you're always going to pull on a button (the weak
spot) in order to hurt the boss, but the way you prep them to receive
that damage manages to be a delightful surprise each time (my favorite
requires you to unravel an octopus' giant knit hat while avoiding his
deadly yarn-seeking tentacles...for his first form anyway). It's a nice
mix of pattern recognition, skillful maneuvering, and adorableness.
The only time any milestone encounter with a Big Bad proved
frustratingly difficult was when I couldn't quite figure out the
"proper" way to defeat them. The game doesn't ever really tell you all
the niche uses for Kirby's very basic arsenal of moves (lasso,
parachute, and anvil), and that's one of Epic Yarn's subjective quirks:
for a game that is in all other ways kid-friendly, it has a very minimal
amount of handholding.
Sure, when you encounter a new Kirby "yarn-formation" (what I call
the awesome machines and mutations Kirby can become by entering magical
vortexes scattered around each world) and he turns into a tank, dolphin,
or dune buggy, the game will display basic controls explaining how to
use the power-up. But that, and the beginning tutorial, is all you get.
The game doesn't explain that you can do things such as become an anvil
and drop down on top of a bouncing pad in order to make Kirby jump
further. These are things you figure out contextually along the way. And
giving explicit instructions would result in Epic Yarn being a little too easy. The game's already very "safe" as you can't ever die -- you simply lose beads.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best parts of the game involve the
various yarn-formations, as they provide an excellent break from the
regular platforming. Not only does Kirby look amazingly cute as a giant
tank, or UFO, but the way these power-ups change the gameplay are
imaginative and fun. My personal favorite involves turning the game
momentarily into a schmup featuring a flying Kirby shooting stars a la Twinkle Star Sprites.
So while each level, and even to some degree, each world, has a
strong flow (a beginning, middle, and end with the proper emotional
response associated to each), the overarching pace and payoff of the
game itself is a bit lacking. Call it a curse of excellence if you must,
but after all the individual momentary delights, the final culmination
of events doesn't register that much higher than the rest. While the
final levels and the end boss are done as well as every previous
encounter, it just doesn't feel significantly more epic.
But the visuals are obviously Epic Yarn's selling point, and on
there it delivers. Yarn is thematically represented in all facets of the
title; everything Kirby sees or does is yarn-related. Instead of
sucking monsters in, Kirby lassoes them with a yarn-whip and unravels
them into a ball he can then use as a projectile; he can slip through
tiny openings by deconstructing himself into one long piece of yarn;
monsters throw yarn-spears that he can snatch out of the air and roll
into harmless balls of yarn; when objects explode, they do so in bits of
string. Even in the subtle ways monsters and the environments move,
it's absolutely clear that Nintendo has placed enormous attention to
detail and effort into making Epic Yarn visually cohesive.
Even with the deviations from what you might expect from the
plucky pink puff, Epic Yarn most assuredly feels like a Kirby game; you
have solid platforming, off-the-charts cuteness, and even throwbacks to
familiar Dream Land characters and settings. And with the collectibles,
minigames, and medals, what would otherwise be a short outing has a lot
of replayability. Put simply, Kirby's Epic Yarn is a game everyone can
enjoy.
Originally published 1UP.com.
