We’re continuing this review of the last Kirby game in
Kirby’s Dream Collection – and before you ask, yes, we’re almost done traveling
across Dream Land, but we’re far from done freeing it from the evil that is
Dark Matter.
Pictured: The torture of a sound mini-game. |
I mean, I knew Kirby games could be pretty difficult
on the platforming side. It’s always been a part of these games. And, to be
fair, “hard” doesn’t always equate to “bad”. It can equate to “annoying”, “tedious”,
“frustrating” even, but it only gets “bad” when it’s unfairly tipped against
the player, with really cheap tricks making the game infinitely harder than it
could be – and even then, a lot of gamers actually like that added challenge. I
get that the mini-games were meant to add a nice color, but
in my opinion, they were done rather poorly. Their placement near the end of
the levels, especially at the end of a hard level, can make them really
annoying. Not to mention that the time window is very short to memorize what
the game wants you to. Even worse than that, I suspect the mini-game character’s requests
afterwards are also randomized, so sometimes it’s almost completely down to
luck. And as I said time and time again, I am about as lucky as a guy who opens
umbrellas inside, breaks a mirror once a week, and crosses the same black cat under
a ladder every day on his way to work. I finally managed to solve Kawasaki’s
mini-game… and I swear I’m never going back to that level again.
You'll believe a broom can sweep your ass. |
The penguin is tough, but this time around you are
allowed to keep your Animal Friend for the fight, and the Rick+Cutter combo
works like a charm. At first, King Dedede uses his normal attacks, but when
he’s defeated once he rises from the ground, his belly becomes an eye or a
mouth and it starts attacking like Dark Matter. Shooting blobs of darkness, turning into a mouth and trying to chomp Kirby... That’s some pure body horror
right there, can you even imagine the goofy, comical penguin suddenly looking like
that?
Once Dark Matter King Dedede is defeated, he falls to
the floor and the Heart Stars of World 5 join to expel Dark Matter from the
Iceberg region. Now, the center of the planet, the epicenter of Dark Matter, is
available, known as World 6. All thirty Heart Stars merge to form the Love-Love
Stick, a scepter that shoots hearts. Pretty much the number 1 reason why Heart
isn’t a power that sucks. Oh, and there’s also all that friendship stuff and
whatnot… But nobody cares about that.
HEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRTTT! |
When Zero is defeated, it seems to go away, but its
red pupil doesn’t yet want to leave. It can still kill you, so be careful;
thankfully, it also has only eight Hit Points and is fairly easy to avoid, so
if you’ve got some strength left, you should be fine. After 0’s center is
destroyed, Kirby, still floating above the planet, gets to see Dark Matter’s
grip vanish completely, leaving him with a beautiful panorama.
Of course, if you defeated King Dedede without
collecting all Hearts Stars, you don’t get to see any of that. Instead, you see
Iceberg freed from the evil, but that big dark mass in the center of Planet
Popstar is still there, ready to strike again anytime soon. Due to time constraints,
I tried to collect all of the Heart Stars as I was progressing through the game
(now that I have a job, I have a bit less time to write these reviews). Even
then, many Heart Stars were pretty tricky. You already know I raged at many of
them. The upside is that once a Heart Star has been collected, you can complete
the mission in a level again, but you’ll instead be given an extra life as
reward. Which, hey, an extra life. Those become rare in late-game, and you’ll
lose many trying to accomplish the later Heart Star missions, so you can’t
refuse them! It’s a good incentive to beat the missions in World 1 again
repeatedly!
Oh, but don’t you go and believe that this is over!
You know that the Kirby series loves to include additional material! Once
you’ve beaten the Story Mode, you can go back to the File Select to access the
bonus stuff. This includes three options:
Ado: "I'm contractually obliged." Dedede: "Can we NOT do this?" Whispy: "If I'm getting beat up again, SO ARE YOU!" |
-Boss Butch: You knew this was coming, almost every
game in the series has this option. You have only one Life, no healing items in
sight, no Copy Abilities, no Animal Friends, and you can’t summon Gooey either!
And you must defeat all eight bosses starting by Whispy, then Acro, Pon and
Con, Ado (and all the bosses she summons, god damn it!), Dedede, Dark Matter,
0, and 0’s eyeball. To say that this is a challenge is an understatement.
-Super NES MG5: A special mode that combines all five
mission mini-games. The advantage is that you don’t have to go across a level
to do them, the disadvantage is that you have to ace each and every single one
of them, yes, even the sound-based one. They’re a tad slower than the
originals, so with excellent memory you might be able to do it.
-Jumping: During Story Mode, when Kirby finishes a
level, he gets to a Goal Game where he has to jump to one square in front of
him. You press A and, depending on how much Kirby prepared himself to jump,
he’ll land on a square closer or further from his starting position. The squares include healing items, little stars, a
1-Up, and a few grinning faces that give nothing. The mini-game Jumping is
basically this, except you have to do it multiple times to reach the end
without ever getting a grinning face. Almost entirely down to dumb luck.
That’s all there is to this game, I can safely say
I’ve discussed every part of it. And yes, it is another fantastic Kirby game
from the folks at HAL Laboratory. Quite a few things are required to make a
game unique.
First is a unique style. On this front, many Kirby
games try to look unique, whether it’s Kirby’s Epic Yarn or the more recent
Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. Kirby’s Dream Land 3 looks like it was hand-drawn
and hand-colored. Of course, nowadays thanks to the burst of indie games
online, more games can look like this, but it was pretty special back on the
Super NES.
Who though hamsters were an effective way to scale mountains? |
Third is memorable characters. Kirby, Dedede, they’re
memorable alright, which brings me to the villain: Dark Matter. Notorious as
one of the most evil monsters in all of the Kirby Universe, being the villain
in no less than three Kirby games, and while it was already established as some
sort of Eldritch creature in the previous game, here it becomes downright
terrifying, despite still being nothing more than a floating sphere. It shoots
blood, for Christ’s sake! In a game for kids! You’re gonna remember it, that’s
for damn sure!
Pretty great that they upgraded some Kirby bosses... and then got very devilish with some others... Thanks again, Ado, for your Kracko... |
But do I have anything else to say? Nah, not really.
Awesome game, you should try it. And now, with these words, I have officially
finished reviewing the sixth Kirby game in Kirby’s Dream Collection, which
means I can finally move on to something else!
…Oh no, wait, I have to talk about the three episodes
of Kirby: Right Back At Ya that are also in that collector Wii game… Well then,
how about we do that next week?
No comments:
Post a Comment