Review: Kirby’s Epic Yarn

It’s been ten years since soft and cuddly Kirby made his last major appearance on a home Nintendo system, in the form of 3D platformer Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (now available for download on the Wii’s virtual console). In the last ten years, a lot of things have changed; the rise of the retro re-imaginings has seen the likes of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns find new audiences, and now it’s Kirby’s turn in the form of Kirby’s Epic Yarn – a platformer with perhaps the most innovative art style the genre has seen since its inception. But – all puns intended – is Epic Yarn a stitch in time or simply sew-sew? Read on to find out.

The hot: As Kirby gets transported to Patch Land – a world constructed entirely of materials that wouldn’t be out of place in an arts and crafts store – Epic Yarn really innovates. Kirby eschews his trademark ability of swallowing his enemies whole and copying their abilities; instead, enemies get pulled apart or get unravelled, and environments wrinkle and fold. Kirby also transform into such things as a tank or a fire truck, and most of these transformations work really well. You’re not going to get bored with them, either; rather than making you turn into the same two or three things over and over, there’s something new to surprise you at every stage.

The meh: Behind the art style of Epic Yarn, however, is a pretty standard platformer; if you ignore the cuteness of yarn Waddle Dees, you’re just running and jumping around towards a goal. Strangely, Kirby can’t die; when he falls off a platform, he gets picked up and he loses some of the collectible beads he’s picked up. Unlike NSMBWii or Donkey Kong Country Returns, completing a level isn’t a challenge; instead, the challenge is in collecting – and keeping – enough beads to get a gold medal.

Whilst co-operative gameplay is included (like most retro re-imaginings) and is rather fun, it doesn’t really add anything special to the game; sure, you can pick up your partner and lob them in the direction of more beads, but otherwise it’s just the same game with a blue version of Kirby, known as Prince Fluff, jumping in.

The cold: Hunting for furniture and decorating Kirby’s apartment is, frankly, pointless. If I wanted to have an in-game house with in-game scatter cushions and in-game toy pianos, I’d go buy Animal Crossing.

Living in the UK, I’m used to Nintendo taking their time “localising” things for PAL regions, but I was annoyed at the localisations in Kirby’s Epic Yarn. It felt like I’d waited five months for an upbeat American narrator to transform into an old, lifeless British one, and for the word “Pants” to be replaced with “Trousers”, making perhaps the funniest sentence in the NTSC game a fairly pointless one in the PAL version.

Wrap-up

Despite my petty gripes, I really enjoyed Kirby’s Epic Yarn. To be honest, the art style and transformations outweigh the lack of a challenge and awful localisations, so it gets a solid rating. If you’re looking for a bit of affordable fun, Epic Yarn is for you; if you’re looking for a challenge, however, go get Donkey Kong Country Returns instead.