Review
Played on: Switch
Released: 2022
There’s no shortage of colourful platformers on the Switch, Nintendo holds an iron grip on the genre. Perfecting and renewing it, with small, but innovative ideas. My latest venture into Nintendo’s fantasy world of cute platforming heroes, is Kirby.
This pink creature has been in Nintendo’s roster of characters all the way back to the 8-bit days of the NES, with his iconic ability of inhaling enemies. When inhaled, Kirby can either spit the enemies out like projectiles or take over their ability. The latter reminds me a lot of Cappy’s ability in Super Mario Odyssey, read my review of that game here.
Let’s inhale and take a closer bite at the Forgotten Land.
While Kirby and the Forgotten Land is strictly a platformer, it deviates from the typical platforming formula as it focuses more on combat. Not just jumping on, or inhaling enemies either, the gained abilities allow new combat forms. From sword swinging, gun shooting, freezing, burning or even drilling beneath the enemy. Cleverly, the attack abilities are also used to gain access to hidden areas within each level too.
Kirby and his friends, have been pulled into a vortex, landing in the forgotten world. This post-apocalyptic, human-like, world is what fascinated me the most when testing the demo before purchase. It’s an overgrown, fallen society, with many relatable locations like shopping malls, amusement parks, factories and derelict buildings, spread across various worlds with environmental themes. We have a jungle world, lava world, beach world, ice world etc. There are a handful of levels in each world theme, ending with a boss level. A familiar, but sound structure to the game.
Kirby is on a mission to retrieve his kidnapped friend Elfin, and all the inhabitants, called Waddle Dees. The Waddle Dee creatures are many and scatted across each level. If you wish to unlock further levels, you're required to save a set amount of Waddle Dees on each level. The hidden ones are cleverly disguised within each level, giving each one replay value to find them all, with hints at the end level screen on where to find them. You can breeze through the game collecting the bare minimum or go all in and collect everything.
For even more variety, there’s a home village for Kirby and his Waddle Dee friends to explore too, as well as numerous bonus levels that raise the difficulty, requiring you to use a set weapon ability to complete them on time. Within the village there’s tiny mini games, like fishing or marble mazes, as well as a colosseum to test your skills in a boss rush styled fighting tournament.
Kirby’s ability to change his attack or movement style adds further variety. Even cooler, than just inhaling enemy abilities, is to take over large objects. Like stretching around an old car, allowing the player drive about a level. Or how about a vending machine that allows Kirby to fire soda cans at enemies? Or how about a traffic cone, allowing Kirby to crush through the cracks in the ground with the pointy end?! Charming and very funny addition!
Boss fights need a mention too, upping the easy difficulty of the levels a few notches. The bosses often have a weapon ability weakness, but finding out which one is up to the player. Some of the bosses are quite tough, pushing your life bar to the minimum. Worse still, is when some of them turn up as mid-level bosses within later levels.
That said, the overall difficulty on the main levels is quite low. I played the Wild option, which is normal. The most challenging being the boss and bonus levels. The actual platforming never pushed my limits, but I guess the combat is where the difficulty lies. There’s even an easy mode, which is perfect for young kids, allowing for a massive amount of damage before Kirby goes down. The most challenging aspect of the game is probably finding all the secrets in each level!
Visually, I found Forgotten Land incredibly charming. The overgrown worlds, with the ruins of a society, is an interesting setting for a colourful platformer. It’s a dark setting when you think about it, but somehow, they managed to match it together with a cute platformer. There's a heavy usage of a close depth of field, blurring out the backgrounds considerably, it helps give the levels a larger size in appearance than they perhaps are.
I found the design of the various world environments and backgrounds very colourful and nice looking, considering the limitations of the Switch hardware. While it’s not quite up there with Super Mario Odyssey, it’s still a solid looking title for the system.
There are some downsides though, framerate drops happen every so often, when things get hectic on screen. It’s far from a locked 60fps game. There’s also a lot of use of invisible walls holding the player within the level structure, usually levels are moving inwards in the screen. Controls are floatier than the precision of a typical Mario game, but it’s nothing alarming. A lot of the music is overused too, it’s charming but, man, do they repeat a lot of the tunes.
Warmly recommend title for people that enjoy platformers, Nintendo ones especially. The cool gameplay mechanics with Kirby copying enemy abilities, and somehow nailing the aesthetic of combining a post-apocalyptic world with a cute platformer, makes a strong title.
There are some downsides though, framerate drops happen every so often, when things get hectic on screen. It’s far from a locked 60fps game. There’s also a lot of use of invisible walls holding the player within the level structure, usually levels are moving inwards in the screen. Controls are floatier than the precision of a typical Mario game, but it’s nothing alarming. A lot of the music is overused too, it’s charming but, man, do they repeat a lot of the tunes.
Warmly recommend title for people that enjoy platformers, Nintendo ones especially. The cool gameplay mechanics with Kirby copying enemy abilities, and somehow nailing the aesthetic of combining a post-apocalyptic world with a cute platformer, makes a strong title.
If you really liked the idea or Mario Odyssey's Cappy ability, you’ll enjoy this one. It's especially suited for family play too, with mini games, a super easy mode and the a two player coop option!
