Remember when I used to review stuff? Yeah, me neither. Regardless, I thought I’d spend a moment talking about Kirby Mass Attack for the DS. I recently finished the game after spending what seems like an eternity playing it. Not that it wasn’t fun…but I just found it long. Very long.

First off – If you haven’t seen the game or been to the website,

check it out here !!

It’s so cute!! Look at all those Kirbys and Waddle Dees. WADDLE DEE EVEN THE NAME IS CUTE.

Anyways, I’m going to get right into the review. To be honest, I’ve never reviewed a game with criteria so I’m just making stuff up as I go along!

GAMEPLAY: 8/10

First – the awesome thing about this game is that it plays very uniquely. You don’t use the D-PAD or any buttons, you only use a Stylus Pen. To be honest, I think that every thing they (Nintendo) could think of to make a game use just the stylus is incorporated in this game. I can’t count the times I thought “oh wow, that’s unique!”. Basically you just use the pen and guide Kirby’s around. Here’s where it’s annoying. With 10 Kirbys taking up the screen, and not all of them moving the way you want them to, it’s pretty damn impossible for them not to get hurt during some levels. And unfortunately, to get 100%, there is a requirement that none of your Kirbys get damaged in every level. Freaking stupid. And why I won’t ever get 100%….despite finishing the game with all the special medals you collect in each level. I’m at 94%. The rest of the “achievements” that bring you to 100% are dumb to me, not worth my time/effort.

Anyways, that’s a side rant. Gameplay is original, unique, intuitive and innovative. But I’m dropping it because of it’s lack of precision around a game with 10 characters (and you need 10 characters at certain parts of the game to advance).

GRAPHICS: 8/10

It’s a DS game so they’re not fantastic. It’s cute and Kirby-like though. I don’t know what else to say…check out this image below:

MUSIC AND SOUNDS: 10/10

I love the music. And I love the cute sounds the Kirbys make. I found that while some of the music is repetitive, they use a lot of unique tracks for many of the levels. They really spent a lot of time on the music for this game and I give them kudos for that. I have the intro song stuck in my head at random parts of the day sometimes >_<

FUN: 4/10

Ouch, 4?! Are you serious?! :( So low! While the game is innovative, I found it just gets simply boring to play. Especially going for all the Gold Medals, doing level after level…and there are so many levels, and some of them take so long. Also, my pet peeve about games is doing something again because you’ve missed it (damn you scary hand in Zelda that takes you to the beginning of dungeons). Well, I guess that can be your own fault but sometimes not so if the path forks. Sometimes I’d play, 6 minute levels two or three times which is awful. Everything took so long and I was at a point midway through the game where I couldn’t play more than 2 or 3 levels at a time without falling asleep. Afterwards, I simply forced myself to play 1 or 2 levels at a time, and then put it down and do something else. By the end of the game and after long levels and battles, my stamina for this game was done.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m not sure if I’d recommend this game. It’s fun to try. Fun to play some worlds, some uniques stages…but not the whole game. Especially if you’re a completist. I’m sitting at 94% and that really bothers me but some of the achievements are so annoying…it just doesn’t seem worth it.

My overall rating below is low for the game despite all the scores except FUN being high. But that makes sense…if the game’s not fun, why play it?