Ten-Fold Adorableness
If you've ever played a Kirby game before, you probably don't need me to explain the kind of warm, fuzzy feeling playing Kirby Mass Attack will give you. This game oozes adorable cuteness from every pixel, even when it has you attacking giant spiders or pummeling strange zombie plants.
Aesthetic similarities aside, this game is fairly different from your typical Kirby platformer. Similar to the last Kirby game Nintendo put out, Mass Attack won't have you inhaling your enemies and using their powers as your own. But rather than tearing Waddle Dee's apart with his magic yarn arm, this game has Kirby split into ten Kirby's, all of whom are controlled using the touch screen. The controls are all very intuitive and didn't take more than a minute to get a handle on. You simply click where you want the Kirby's to run to, flick them around one at a time, or draw a path you want them to float along. I experienced issues with the camera not wanting to scroll two or three times, but it never lasted too long or lead to any negative consequences.
In the 12 hours it took for me to play through most of the game and defeat the final boss, I never felt as though the game had started getting repetitive. There was always some new mechanic Mass Attack was ready to pull out, from riding around in a tank to steering a balloon by moving the Kirby's to one side or the other in the basket. Moreover, there are a ton of extra mini-games you can unlock, like a sweet pinball table and a shooter that reminded me of twin bee; these are all controlled with the touch screen in one way or another, though you can use the L and R buttons for pinball if you want.
These mini-games (and various other things) are unlocked as you collect medals in the stages, putting plenty of emphasis on exploration. One of the medals from each stage is also required for you to reach the final boss, which is a nice way of the game making you go back and play any stages you may have missed. This might be more of a problem if the game got repetitive, but each level feels unique, if not in the mechanics used within it, than in the art style. Even in the fourth world, volcano valley, levels have their own unique themes; I never felt as though the level I was playing through was just there as "filler". In addition to the medals scattered throughout the stages, the game has a "checklist" of what are basically achievements. Obviously, they don't effect anything on a system-wide level or get shown off automatically to your friends (Nintendo is allergic to the Internet, let's not forget), but it's still nice to have a set of optional objectives given to me by the game.
Overall, Kirby Mass Attack is a very fun, well-polished game that will most likely be remembered as one of the last great games released on the Nintendo DS. In any case, you should go out and buy it right now. You won't regret it; I promise.
