Insufferably Cute

"This game is insufferably cute."

"Be sure to blog those exact words" she says.

My wife is so helpful.

As soon as you land on the ground in Kirby's Epic Yarn, your see through character makes a slight divot in the fabric covered ground that you're walking on. This persists throughout the game. Whenever you go through a door Kirby makes the cloth bulge out like he's inside of a pocket. Cool looking stuff.

One of the neatest things about past Kirby games was the ability to copy your enemies abilities and use them as your own. In this new one you're given a nice set of things to change into, but you don't ever really gain any new ones as the game progresses. Outside of turning into specific vehicles in very confined areas, that is. Probably my favorite part of the old games was deciding which abilities I liked the best, then trying to hold on to it for as long as I could. If I had a rare ability somewhere that it felt like I wasn't supposed to, it sometimes felt like I was "breaking" the game. In a fun way. But it only happened if you were good enough to hold onto the ability by not getting hit by anything. So your excellent play was rewarded with being able to play the game however you wanted. That's something that feels missing in this game. Since you only have a limited set of powers I got bored after a while despite the unique and charming visuals.

I got to a point where I was sort of bored with the game, but continued on since A: I wanted to have more to write about and B: It was Christmas card season and I'm sure the USPS appreciated me not dropping another piece of mail in their box when I sent the game back to GameFly. But then again, screw them. They can't seem to get a game to me from Austin in less than a week.

Anyway, I hit a level that made me glad I'd kept playing. It was Melody somethingorother and it was all music-based. Jump on a giant drum or a symbol and a music note pops out with a gem to collect. Travel through a wind instrument and collect gems in a pattern based on a musical scale. Swing Bionic Commando-style on certain attach points to make a harp release it's notes. Interesting stuff.

I suppose this game could grab hold of you if you were playing it with kids around or were obsessive about collecting every little thing they threw at you. Neither were true for me.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that this game was made for four year olds. The visuals, the ridiculously easy play, and the very excitable narrator that sounded like he was reading a picture book to, well, a four year old all made me get a bit annoyed with it.