When a character has wings for ears, you know its a platformer
Klonoa is a remake of an old PS1 platforming game (which I never played), and it certainly carries that "old school platforming" feel into the current gaming generation, and does so with a nifty $30.00 price tag. This game is about as simple as they come, with you basically being able to move, jump, and pick stuff up, but it does what I love oh so much: it takes simple mechanics and puts them to use in every situation the developers could come up with. The result is a solid platforming experience.
In Klonoa you follow the story of a young boy-cat-fox-hipster-thing and his trusty sidekick Huepow the floating rubbery ball thing with a crown. So yeah, it's kind of childish, deal with it. The story is nothing to talk about so I'm going to do just that - not talk about it. This game is a straight up platformer; you run across various worlds solving puzzles, jumping alot, and gathering collectables. The main mechanic of the game is Klonoa's ability to shoot his friend Huepow out of his magic ring to grab things for him. You can grab enemies, most notably, and this is your only means of defeating anything. Once an enemy is grabbed you can run around carrying it on your head, and then fling it as a projectile, or use it mid jump as a stepping stool for another jump. That's pretty much it. You have a standard amount of health the entire game, and gain no new abilities or anything - you just grab enemies and abuse them to achieve your own goals. I personally love the simplicity, and how they are able to do a good bit with these few mechanics.
There are a few drawbacks to this game: most notably it's length. It will run you around 5 hours most likely if you get pretty much everything from every level. If you want to go back after beating it, you can play each level in "reverse mode" and also unlock some bonus stages, but overall the game is still pretty short. I suppose that is why it is $30.00, but I would still say it is a bit too short. It's also not incredibly hard until you get into the bonus stages, but that really isn't that bad because in order to make this game hard they'd just have to make it annoying, and nobody wants that.
Basically, if you are a fan of platformers, you'll definitely want to try this game out. Whether you put down the 30 bucks for it or just decide to borrow it or rent it is up to you.
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