The least adorable thing about this game is the box art

I had my eye on Kirby’s Epic Yarn since it was announced at E3 this year, I like Kirby as a character, hell I even liked Kirby’s Dream Course, correction I really liked it. Anyway, the reveal trailer was very charming, you knew it was skewing young based on the graphic style, and music, well, see below.

Getting into the game, we’re given a brief intro about how Kirby ends up in the stringy situation and presented as a narrated story book, which to me, fits the patchwork popup book aesthetic and what I assume to be the target audience very very well.

The gameplay is that of a left to right 2D platform game, it features some familiar mechanics, Kirby can run, and float jump that allows you to clear gaps, you can swim, you can pick up your enemies and throw them into other enemies, all things seen in platform games before but the way that they are executed here is pretty unique. To dash Kirby transforms into a car, to swim he transforms into a submarine of course. And sure it’s a simple cosmetic on top of these tried and tested mechanics, but it makes it feel new, and it’s cute as hell… Using your whip to tear down patches to find treasures is adorable. And using the patches found in previous levels to open the next level always results in some sort of cute animation to unlock the next door. The girlfriend and I were playing multiplayer and she was giggling nearly the whole time… and whether it was the game itself or if I was just glad she was having such a good time with it I too was grinning ear to ear. It is unbelievably charming but not challenging, but fun looking around for the hidden treasures and fighting the bosses, especially with the coop.

The game looks really good, especially for a Wii game, it just goes to show that if a developer acknowledges the limitations and agrees to work within them they can create some noteworthy graphics. Also the music is gosh darn adorable.

Early thoughts are that if you have a Wii, you probably wouldn’t regret picking this up, but we played through 4 worlds last night and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a very long game.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks that part of the reason the Wii is collecting dust on many gamers’ console shelf (assuming they haven’t been pawned off already) is the total lack of confidence in 3rd party developed titles, mostly created by the utter and complete lack of quality control on the hundreds of crap mini-game compilations available for the console. Your branded games like Burger King, and Chucky Cheese titles, and the miscellaneous “<insert unique word here> Games” titles I’m sure appealed to some poor gullible/uninformed parent or grand parent trying to do something nice for their (grand) child, and throwing $40 down on something that had no business getting out of development.

I mentioned a while back that I think Playstation Move has the potential to be very successful with some support from the 3rd party developers, as long as they don’t fall into this same trap Nintendo did of companies simply trying to cash in on the fact that something is new and interesting. Fact of the matter is I like to believe that the PS3 user base is significantly more educated/aware than the Wii user base. It’s no secret that Nintendo marketed to families, and casual gamers, and was very successful in doing so. Sony however, is ~now~ marketing to that same audience (right or wrong strategy, remains to be seen), but they already have a huge user base in the core gamer. The thing is that it is also appealing to these existing users, and perhaps specifically ~their~ families and the casual gamers there in. Hardcore gaming fathers buying move setups for their kids for example (same logic may apply to Kinect as well, but for the sake of this article I will stick with Move).

Now the reason I wanted to write this article is because today there has been a steady stream of Little Big Planet 2 videos released as the result of the non-disclosure agreement for the beta expiring. Huh?… what does LBP2 have to do with this?… good question. LBP2 has the potential to replace any and all mini game collections by way of it’s user content creator. As long as the “educated” ps3 user base does well at informing their Move motivated families… What I saw in these videos is a collection of self-motivated game designers creating what look to be fun little distractions, that will be freely available in the play-create-share model that LBP is known for. Since LBP2 supports Move, there is absolutely no reason that any number of simple little mini games using motion controls will be infinitely, and freely available to the entire Move user base presuming they are well enough informed to buy LBP2.  I see no reason for since even on it’s own it’s an incredibly charming platform game with an adorable leading character and a great reputation.

While the launch titles for PS Move did not appeal to me at all, and I don’t have the device, I’m really hopeful that this will act a deterrent from would be minigame compilation creators and allow for Sony to build a strong relationship with 3rd party developers that will perpetuate to it’s users by way of some truly amazing, and unique experiences that integrate motion controls that Wii has been unable to deliver thus far (Honestly if Ubi were to port Red Steel 2 and get rid of half of the doors we’d be talkin’) .

Good luck Sony

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll remember that I had some concerns about the holiday season line up this year. Since then, both The Last Guardian (at no surprise to me), and Crysis 2 have been pushed back to 2011. So to recap (loosely) what is still coming that I’m at least moderately interested in.

We’ve got the hardware battle to think about, the girlfriend has been sold on Kinect, and specifically Dance Central, so that’ll be around, but to be honest, I may not be able to play that game due to pride constraints. I think move is interesting, I could play some of that, however… I have no interest in the launch titles at this point, on top of that, like all new tech, it’s going to take a while (I’d say almost a year), for developers to be able to deal with the hardware, while Move has an advantage here because one could assume that Wii developers have some experience here and would be able to get a head start on the learning curve, the disheartening part is that most of the good games on the Wii were made by Nintendo, I think the only exception is going to be Red Steel, a game I felt was limited only by the technical short comings of the Wii hardware. When this team makes a game for the Move I’ll pay attention, and perhaps some credit to Team Ninja for the upcoming work with “The Other M”.

Consoles

We’ve got the EA sports 11 line up, Football and Hockey are going to be bought for certain, that’s great because the franchise modes there can be a huge time sink if I can get into them. A few no brainers, Gran Turismo 5, Fallout: New Vegas, RockBand 3 (I still play RockBand or Guitar Hero a couple times a week). Vanquish won me over with the media bust about a month ago, and while I assumed I was going to pass on the upcoming Call of Duty offering, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist when the time comes. The upcoming Spiderman game has some potential, but I’ve got major concerns, that I’ll share in a focused post in the near future. Little Big Planet 2 will make an appearance. Maybe Max Payne 3 if it does actually make it out this year (I assume this one will be the next to be pushed into next year).

A couple Wii games worth thinking about, but it’s hard for me to get excited for a Wii game at this point, Metroid: The Other M, and Kirby Epic Yarn are on that list.

PC

Civ 5 should be a good time, and I’ll try Final Fantasy XIV when it comes out. Truthfully I’ll probably end up with fallout for PC in the end.

It sounds like a lot of games to play, but when I think of last year’s holiday season, there were games every week starting in September that were must buys, and then a couple more in the months that were compelling enough to consider buying. This is going to be a slow holiday for the hobbyist gamer like me. The kind of gamer who really gets into the single player of an experience and then moves on.