Kirby's Epic Yarn

Despite what YOU might think about Kirby, I have been a fan of the puff ball since his origins on the original Game Boy. The Adventure was my favorite of the games and I could play that one to 100% in a few hours I know it so well. I even bought it again when they rereleased it on GBA! Dedication! Though I have been less than excited about the more recent Kirby iterations, they have fallen a long way since those glory days you know. I did have a secret desire to see what this reimagining of Kirby would hold up. Epic Yarn was as far as I can tell intended to get new fans for the round mound and not to appease fans of Dreamland. So going into this knowing I am one of the latter and not of the former, I can honestly tell you Yarn had a lot of work ahead of it to impress me.

So let us get one thing straight right out of the gate. This is not exactly clearly noted anywhere so I am doing you a favor. This game is a kid’s game. I mean mad kid’s game. This is insanely evident when you start the game and a guy in a soft voice starts narrating a story for you. He even does those little pitch changes when he is reading the dialogue. It almost takes me back to George Carlin’s Shining Time Station days. Sure the old Kirby games were slightly kiddy in nature, but seriously, and I will fist fight anyone who says otherwise, they were still good games for older gamers. I would put them in the same boat as Mario games. My kids can play the New Super Mario Bros. Wii but I still get something out of it too. In this instance, there is not a lot available for older gamers. Some of the level designs are neat but its wrapped so tightly in kiddy-ness that it is hard to extract any enjoyment from it.

The ascetics are the real draw for this title. Nintendo being no stranger to using strange inspiration to develop a game around, yarn seems to be perfectly natural. Much like Paper Mario uses its theme and hits it hard, here the strings are clearly showing throughout this game. Yarn being front and center, Kirby will use his own excesses yarn as his tool to untangle enemies, manipulate the environment, and transform into a tank. Wait what? Yes, again much like Paper Mario, you will be transforming Kirby into a tank, a UFO a surf board, a car etc. aside from the car, these transformations are one off and limited to certain sections of the level. They also occur a lot. Not every level has a transformation sequence, but most do, and there are even certain levels that feature nothing but a transformed Kirby. These are neat I suppose, much like they were neat in Paper Mario, but there are instances where the controls really cripple the experience, especially when you are the train. In fact the controls, though simple and intuitive NES style, give issue in one particular aspect: the D-pad. I don’t know if I am alone in this but there are a lot of times when I am expected to press up and another button. On the controller it reads my pressing up as up and a direction. So I am going up and left or up and right instead of just plain up. This happened a lot in this game but it has happened in other games as well so I suppose it is a design flaw in the controller. I am just pointing out that you will need to be able to throw your yarn straight up in certain situations and good luck doing that.

Luckily, there is a few things in Kirby’s Epic Yarn that can distract you from the awful story. The music and over all sound is straight from Kirby’s wheelhouse. You will recognize many familiar sound effects and music tones such as the victory tone that dates back Kirby’s origins. You will also hear that great boss battle music when Kirby goes up against King Dedede. (That battle was a pain!) The sound design goes hand in hand with the enemy design. There are a lot of old favorites that have been turned into yarn counterparts. Unfortunately, you are unable to suck them up to take their powers this time around and you have to instead yank at their threads to untangle them into nothingness. Add a few cameo appearances of Whispy Woods, the aforementioned King, and Meta Knight and you have at least a few good boss battles to play through.

Basically Kirby’s Epic yarn is a gamble. The only reason I see this game with Kirby and not Mario is because Nintendo was unsure how successful this idea was. Mario has been turned into Paper, and I don’t know what the minis are but I could see this game just as easily having a Mario theme instead of a Kirby theme. When I saw this game at E3 it was being touted as the return of Kirby. This is not the return of Kirby. The return of Kirby is probably Kirby: Return to Dreamland. That is a game for Kirby fans. This game is for kids. I did admit that there are some neat parts in some of the level design, so I won’t say it’s a waste of money. If you have kids that will play this game too, then by all means pick this game up. But if you are the only one in your household that plays games, then this is a pass. There just isn’t enough here for you.