Análisis de Kirby's Epic Yarn (NOTAZAS)

Aunque aquí se nos irá a 2011 (menos mal que tengo la importación) en Estados Unidos y Japón, el nuevo juego de Good Feel y Nintendo sale a finales de este mes, y ya tenemos gran parte de los análisis norteamericanos y los textos y las notas hablan por sí solos.


Análisis

GameInformer: 9.5

[quote="GameInformer]On the video game cuteness scale, Kirby’s Epic Yarn achieves the designation "capable of instilling unadulterated joy into any soul." Case in point: When I close my eyes to reflect on it, I see Kirby sliding down a pastel-colored rainbow singing "I love you, Reiner!" as a festive Charlie Brown-like piano melody rings out. Watching a ball of yarn unravel and transform into a dragon is mesmerizing in its own right, but seeing how Nintendo sews this fiber into gameplay is where Kirby’s Epic Yarn really impresses. Epic Yarn reminds me more of a great Mario platformer than it does a traditional Kirby game. The action moves at a brisk pace, mixing skillful platforming with creative yarn-based interactions and split into mini-games – be it pulling apart an enemy at the seams with Kirby or deep sea diving as a dolphin. The design choice to not let Kirby die at any point didn’t bother me at all. In fact, it’s brilliant; everyone can get through the game, but only skilled players will be able to get gold medals. With riotous cooperative play and classic platforming that will make Super Nintendo fans weak in the knees, Kirby’s Epic Yarn is one of the best experiences you’ll find on Wii.[/quote]

Games Radar: 9

Games Radar escribió:

Make no mistake - this is straightforward, walk-right-to-win platforming. It's not re-writing the book on anything and it's probably not game of the year material, but it's just plain fun, and acts as a charming antidote to the M-rated avalanche we can't seem to pull ourselves out of.

1UP: 9 (A-)

1UP escribió:

"It kind of looks like Little Big Planet."

I get the first-glance comparison. Maybe it's because ever since the PS3 platformer drew our eyes with its arts and crafts-y aesthetic full of cleverly arranged bric-a-brac, we've yet to see another title pull off that style of carefully constructed simplicity. So when you see Kirby's Epic Yarn's fantastically vibrant visuals -- also featuring a yarn-spun protagonist -- well, it's human nature to categorize and relate the new to the old.

Click the image above to check out all Kirby's Epic Yarn screens.

Despite any "Kirby formula" preconceptions you might hold, Epic Yarn should still surprise you. Throwing most of an established series' playbook out the window can be risky, but here it's paid off. Rather than focusing on the adorable pink icon's ability to consume and replicate enemy powers, the game is crafted around the titular yarn motif, and the ingenuity with which Nintendo explores that theme had me positively beaming my first time through the game.

Interestingly enough, Epic Yarn's cut-scenes -- narrated storybook style -- pleasantly remind me of Little King's Story. But let's be honest: for an adult, it's all terribly cheesy. The basic premise of the game is that the evil Yin Yarn has gotten his hands on a magical sock (not a joke), which he's using to turn everything into yarn-creatures under his command. In his quest for world domination and other such sinister endeavors, he manages to rip asunder Prince Fluff's kingdom.

Kirby gets sucked into this mess, and he teams up with the Prince (the blue Kirby-esque character you can play as in 2-player co-op) to stitch up the world. Each piece is a new world (they have cutesy names, but you'll probably remember them as simply "volcano world," "water world," "ice world," and so on), with a handful of levels each and a boss fight. Besides simply getting from start to finish, each level has three hidden treasures, as well as bonus bell patch pieces (which allow you a higher chance of getting bonus currency at the end of a level), and will grant you rank medals based on the amount of beads (Epic Yarn's colorful currency) you collect.

The beads and treasures provide a reason for you to explore levels thoroughly (and sometimes replay a level), as they tie into Epic Yarn's meta-game: decorating Kirby's apartment. Searching for these hidden trinkets (and maximizing your bead intake) actually brings up the difficulty of the game a slight notch as some of the treasures are deviously well-hidden. However, the race-against-the-clock minigames you unlock by decorating vacant apartment rooms with the furniture you acquire are nowhere near as delightful as Kirby's Adventure's crane game/gun draw/bomb swallowing minigame trio.

Boss battles add a bit of challenge as well (relative to their respective levels, anyway), but they're also creative. Ultimately, you're always going to pull on a button (the weak spot) in order to hurt the boss, but the way you prep them to receive that damage manages to be a delightful surprise each time (my favorite requires you to unravel an octopus' giant knit hat while avoiding his deadly yarn-seeking tentacles...for his first form anyway). It's a nice mix of pattern recognition, skillful maneuvering, and adorableness.

The only time any milestone encounter with a Big Bad proved frustratingly difficult was when I couldn't quite figure out the "proper" way to defeat them. The game doesn't ever really tell you all the niche uses for Kirby's very basic arsenal of moves (lasso, parachute, and anvil), and that's one of Epic Yarn's subjective quirks: for a game that is in all other ways kid-friendly, it has a very minimal amount of handholding.


Sure, when you encounter a new Kirby "yarn-formation" (what I call the awesome machines and mutations Kirby can become by entering magical vortexes scattered around each world) and he turns into a tank, dolphin, or dune buggy, the game will display basic controls explaining how to use the power-up. But that, and the beginning tutorial, is all you get. The game doesn't explain that you can do things such as become an anvil and drop down on top of a bouncing pad in order to make Kirby jump further. These are things you figure out contextually along the way. And giving explicit instructions would result in Epic Yarn being a little too easy. The game's already very "safe" as you can't ever die -- you simply lose beads.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best parts of the game involve the various yarn-formations, as they provide an excellent break from the regular platforming. Not only does Kirby look amazingly cute as a giant tank, or UFO, but the way these power-ups change the gameplay are imaginative and fun. My personal favorite involves turning the game momentarily into a schmup featuring a flying Kirby shooting stars a la a sidescrolling Twinkle Star Sprites.

So while each level, and even to some degree, each world, has a strong flow (a beginning, middle, and end with the proper emotional response associated to each), the overarching pace and payoff of the game itself is a bit lacking. Call it a curse of excellence if you must, but after all the individual momentary delights, the final culmination of events doesn't register that much higher than the rest. While the final levels and the end boss are done as well as every previous encounter, it just doesn't feel significantly more epic.

But the visuals are obviously Epic Yarn's selling point, and on there it delivers. Yarn is thematically represented in all facets of the title; everything Kirby sees or does is yarn-related. Instead of sucking monsters in, Kirby lassoes them with a yarn-whip and unravels them into a ball he can then use as a projectile; he can slip through tiny openings by deconstructing himself into one long piece of yarn; monsters throw yarn-spears that he can snatch out of the air and roll into harmless balls of yarn; when objects explode, they do so in bits of string. Even in the subtle ways monsters and the environments move, it's absolutely clear that Nintendo has placed enormous attention to detail and effort into making Epic Yarn visually cohesive.

Even with the deviations from what you might expect from the plucky pink puff, Epic Yarn most assuredly feels like a Kirby game; you have solid platforming, off-the-charts cuteness, and even throwbacks to familiar Dream Land characters and settings. And with the collectibles, minigames, and medals, what would otherwise be a short outing has a lot of replayability. Put simply, Kirby's Epic Yarn is a game everyone can enjoy.

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?pager.offset=1&cId=3181897&p=

IGN: 9

IGN escribió:

9.0 Presentation
An amazing direction for the cute pink puff that reintroduces tried-and-true gameplay mechanics in a fresh new way.
9.5 Graphics
The game utilizes the Wii's limitations to an incredible level. The graphics are superb and the animation super-smooth.
8.0 Sound
The happy soundtrack fits the cute visual style extremely well, but you might drive friends/coworkers away with some of the more simple tunes.
9.0 Gameplay
It's traditional platforming with a visual style that enhances those traditional designs. It's as good in two player as it is in solo.
7.0 Lasting Appeal
The game is about six hours straight through, but that's not counting the unlockable hide-and-seek modes for all the levels and the additional level path for each world.
9.0
OVERALL Outstanding
(out of 10)

GoNintendo: 9

http://www.gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=139309

Joystiq: 9:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/15/kirbys-epic-yarn-review/

Gamesradar: 9

Citación :

You'll love

Classic Nintendo gameplay
Impossibly adorable graphics and world
Pleasing, soothing soundtrack

You'll hate

The no dying thing will turn off some
Maybe too cute?
Should have came in a pink case!

Gametrailers: 8.4

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-hd-kirbys-epic/706190

Kotaku:

Kotaku escribió:

The Bottom Line

Don't expect a drawn-out or challenging affair from Kirby's Epic Yarn. This is a game designed for constant smiling, a side-scroller that will soothe the stressed. As impressive as video game graphics often are, it often falls to creators in other media, say the folks at Pixar, to show how enchanting creative visuals can be. Kirby's Epic Yarn gets it right in video games. When even the unfurling of the map for the game's second world is so clever and lovely to watch that you tell people about it, you've got a game well worth looking at. And it is worth playing. Don't be afraid to smile at this one.

http://kotaku.com/5664746/review-kirbys-epic-yarn