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Review: Kirby Triple Deluxe⊟
Kirby Triple Deluxe has almost certainly been in the works since the early days of the 3DS. It’s absolutely loaded with 3D gimmickry – stuff going in and out of the screen with all the subtlety of those old 3D Three Stooges shorts. These days, nobody really puts in the effort to sell the “3D” aspect of the 3DS, and the arrival of the 2DS has all but deprecated the feature anyway. So this game must have been made before the world cooled on 3D.
Triple Deluxe is also really beautiful and polished, another point suggesting that it’s been cooking a while.
The 3D gimmick is the distinguishing feature here that makes Triple Deluxe stand out from previous Kirbies. But it’s not an annoying 3D gimmick, and doesn’t rely on stereoscopic stuff at all. Like Mutant Mudds, Triple Deluxe takes place on two planes, one in the foreground and one in the background, and you can travel between them with special Warp Stars placed throughout. Not only does this look cool, it adds an interesting bit of complexity to the level design, along with the enjoyable tease of visible treasure just out of reach in the other plane.
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image via Maxxie
Stuff also flies in and out of the screen, like enemies, environmental hazards and the occasional splattered Kirby. The creatures in Kirby’s world are simple, and therefore scale really well. The whole thing just looks nice!
It plays “nice” too. Well, thanks for reading my professional, expert review, everybody! Okay, kidding, I’ll try to be a bit more coherent than that. What I mean is that Kirby has a bajillion copy abilities, as usual, and he has just SO MANY moves that he can do with each. Dash moves, air moves, charge moves… it’s like a fighting game. It’s no surprise, by the way, that there is a local multiplayer fighting game mode in which you can face off against other Kirbies using chosen copy abilities!
Let’s use one of the new ones, Bell, as an example. Kirby can swing handbells in a combo attack, throw them out as projectiles (a few different kinds of projectiles, for that matter), and launch an area of effect attack that sends sound waves out on either side.
The fact that there’s so much to do with each ability, all of it feeling totally different, makes it inherently rewarding to play the game. It’s just fun to pick up a new ability and learn it.
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image via I Heart Nintendo
There’s a super special ability called “Hypernova” that pops up in specific places, and turns Kirby’s eating power into a ridiculous vortex, allowing him to devour enemies, bosses, buildings, scenery, etc.
I complained about the super abilities in the last Kirby game, and how they made it feel pointlessly easy. Hypernova is a lot more satisfying than that, partly because it’s used in really funny setpieces (like eating a pile of enemies through an enormous crazy straw) but partly because it’s not an instant kill switch, but rather a mechanic. Kirby’s Hypernova is used to destroy tons of enemies, but also to move huge objects around levels, like putting a giant snowman head on a snowman body.
In general, I think this is emblematic of the main difference between my experience with this game and with Return to Dreamland. The Wii game just felt too easy to me, and not just in the traditional, expected Kirby way. It felt like I was floating through the game totally unobstructed.
Whereas Triple Deluxe offers, if not difficulty per se, enough friction that I actually feel the impacts of all those fun attacks I want to use, enhancing the fun. It may be a distinction only in my head, but it’s real to me. Whatever intangible difference there is between these two (very similar games), it led to one being kind of a blah experience and the other being my favorite traditional Kirby to date.
I smiled through every play session. Even the few times I died! And after I finished the game, I felt just lovely, refreshed. Like I’d taken a nap and had really vivid dreams.
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