Every time I get a new party member I imagine Kirby saying “do you want to be my friend?” and practically tear up. This was a thing previously (here goes that Super Star callback again), but now it’s a fully-featured thing, and it’s almost infuriatingly cute. Once again you’re going to be working your way through side-scrolling 2D sections (with gorgeous rendered backgrounds, which, according to Nintendo, are responsible for the 30 FPS performance), but this time you’re going to be recruiting enemies as “friends” by way of a new heart-throwing mechanic. After all these years you might need more out of your Kirby projects, but at this point I’m not only used to it, but anticipate it as a welcome arcade-centric “let’s get on with it” perk. Maybe one day we can get a complex multi-layered meta-narrative out of a Kirby game, but for now, he’s following in the footsteps of Mario in the brevity department. After a quick “hey, it’s Kirby, he has friends!” opener, we’re chucked into the Dream World once again to do battle with old enemies, who may or may not be controlled by new ones. A Mario Party-esque wood-chopping jaunt and a Home Run Meteor (read: Super Star Megaton Punch amalgam) are available immediately, allowing for distractions from the campaign.īut the core narrative is indeed the main course, and four-player co-op is the chief ingredient. And like nearly every game in the series, Kirby Star Allies doesn’t cut any corners.ĭeveloper HAL has smartly modeled several of the Kirby games after Super Star, and Star Allies smartly carries on that tradition. Seven years! It almost seemed like Nintendo was ready to plop the little fluff ball onto portables permanently, and given that the Switch is technically a portable system, that’s kind of still the case.

I had to do a double-take once I realized we haven’t had a mainstream console Kirby in seven years.

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