Sucked In
a Kirby: Triple Deluxe review
This article is part of a series called “Reviews You Can’t Use”, in which the author sets out to tell you if a video game is enjoyable but gets so caught up in it that he forgets that if you take a cat apart to see how it works, you end up with a non-working cat.
Kirby is a contradiction, although his appearance would never suggest it. He’s so simple. He has no fingers, toes, or legs. His eyes are dots and don’t even have eyebrows unless they’re needed to express some kind of emotion. His mouth, most of the time, is a short, straight line or a small circle. He does not talk. Yet Kirby contains volumes, literally and figuratively. Japanese Kirby is always cute. American Kirby is hardcore. He lives a double life. His gentle, puffy appearance is counterbalanced by his name, picked to sound rough and tough (no, really). And that even has another layer of contradiction, because Kirby is an adorable name. That all of this rests behind such an uncomplicated facade is perhaps yet another contradiction.
I don’t know what that has to do with this game in particular. It’s pretty consistent. It’s cute. But I wanted to mention it. Hopefully you feel enlightened.
Kirby: Triple Deluxe is the first Kirby game for the Nintendo 3DS family (excluding Virtual Console). It is a game that we all knew would happen, since every Nintendo console gets a Mario game, a Zelda game, and a Kirby game at the least. Triple Deluxe checks all of the boxes for a Kirby game. It has a couple of new mechanics, some cute mini-games, and collectibles. You can inhale enemies and take their powers. You traverse levels, generally left-to-right, and go through doors until you reach the end and play a mini-game. Sometimes, you encounter a boss, and the screen will not continue scrolling until you beat it. This isn’t Dream Course, Star Stacker, or Avalanche. It’s an unmistakable main-series Kirby game.
So what’s different, then? What new tricks are available to this Kirby that weren’t to Kirbys past? Well, the first difference you’re likely to notice is that Triple Deluxe is 3D. I don’t mean that in the sense that Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards was 3D, although, yes, Triple Deluxe is 3D in that sense. I mean that it’s also 3D in the sense that Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D is and Donkey Kong Country Returns isn’t. Things appear to have depth. Characters can appear to do things “at” you, provided, of course, that you’re playing on a 3DS rather than a 2DS and you haven’t turned the 3D slider to off. The gameplay is also sort of 3D in the same sense of Donkey Kong Country Returns, in that Kirby mostly moves in two dimensions but can sometimes hop onto alternate paths behind the main path. Sometimes this mechanic is used creatively, but for the most part, the alternate path is just a place to hide collectibles or food. The 3D will make you say “neat” once or twice.
The other major difference that defines Triple Deluxe is that Kirby has a new “Hypernova” ability. Every few levels, you will encounter a large vine sticking out of the ground with a glowing fruit on it that looks not entirely unlike one of those metal wind spinners that many an aunt has purchased at The Home Depot and hung in her garden. If Kirby eats this wind spinner, he will begin glowing in rainbow colors and his ability to inhale will become exponentially more powerful. Suddenly, things five, ten, or even fifty times Kirby’s size become movable by having Kirby inhale at them, and some of them can even be swallowed entirely by him. As you might guess, it’s hard for him to die in this state. This, combined with the fact that Kirby retains his Hypernova power until the end of the level, makes the Hypernova segments feel like something of a reward. They’re used by HAL (the developer) to implement some mild puzzles and play what are essentially small cutscenes. I won’t miss Hypernova in the next Kirby game, but I didn’t get tired of it, either. HAL did some fun things with the concept, but they’ve probably gotten as much mileage out of it as they can.
Somewhat less significantly, Triple Deluxe features a new villain, a vain and power-hungry wasp named Queen Sectonia. I spent basically the whole game thinking she was a bee. She’s not; she’s a wasp. She doesn’t pop up much, and at the end of the day, she’s just a different villain making you feel a non-specific need to save the world. This time, a beanstalk is involved. This series has never been big on plot, so this isn’t a big surprise. In fact, having a new villain is honestly non-trivial for the series. Kirby recycles villains effortlessly, perhaps because his games only have cartoon violence. The villains can just pick themselves up and dust themselves off! On top of that, it’s entomologically noteworthy that Queen Sectonia has managed to press a spider into service as her henchman. In that sense, she may be the strongest female character in the Kirby series in a long time.
Even if you totally discount the new features of Triple Deluxe, it’s a very good traditional Kirby game. Graphics, sound, and level design are all up to the series’s usual standards. Cuteness and color abound. The music is better than it needs to be, too.
The bottom line is that Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a platformer game. It’s a good one, and its series is arguably a “founding father” (will accept submissions of non-gendered similar terms) of the genre, but it’s nothing more than that. It’s slower-paced and more combative than a Mario game, and it’s not particularly hard. If you really like robots, get the next game in the series, Planet Robobot. Then again, Triple Deluxe is cheaper. Make the choices that work for you.
I wanted to use the word “suck” about 25 times in this article, and I didn’t because I’m a journalist.
Final Score: Drawcia Keychain / Queen Sectonia Keychain
