Kid Icarus Uprising - Soaring to New HeightsKid Icarus was one of those games back in the days. It was fun, challenging and surprisingly funny. Its sequel, however, was pretty much the same, adding very little to the series. Any more sequels like that and we would have something similar to Megaman. And so Pit was lost in time, remembered by those who played the original 25 years ago. However with the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Pit made a playable character appearance, with a completely new look. He looked awesome, and there’s something about an angel with brown hair and blue eyes that makes it even cooler that I can’t understand. I was wondering then, wouldn’t it be great if there was a new game about Pit, with his new 3D style? I hoped, and my prayers were answered when I first heard of Kid ICarus: Uprising for the 3DS.
Looking at the trailers, it looked amazing, but no amount of trailers or screen shots or pages of information could prepare you for just how amazing the game really is. This game is good, like Ocarina of Time good. It makes you think why aren’t games made like this nowadays? It’s one of those rare games. It’s from the creator of Super Smash Bros., so this will be hard to hate. I mean, if you were to play any one game for the 3DS, it would be this. Why? I’m going to tell you. This is Kid Icarus: Uprising, the sequel people never thought would happen.
As you start up the game, you are greeted with a loading screen with the Dreamcast symbol spinning around. On the title screen, there’s a long scene on the top screen showing what’s in store for the game. I like how they added this in as if they expect you to watch this instead of playing the game itself. I was watching this and thought after a minute “Why am I not playing the game already?” As soon as you start up one of the three save files, you go straight into the game.
Wait? No cut-scenes? No back story? Nothing to tell us of the past of the games history? Just go straight into the game and.... have Palutena explain to Pit as to what is going on as you play the game? I like that. Instead of having a cut scene to explain everything, Palutena tells Pit the mission plan as you play. This is also an informal conversation, leaving rooms to leave witty remarks and jokes all over the place. They also use 8-bit graphics on the bottom screen to reference parts from the old games, such as Medusa and Reapers. Using snippets of the old graphics will bring a sense of nostalgia to those that played the original game, and will have a lot to relate to as they play. This gives the sense that the game isn’t caught up in its own little world, and is willing to be open and accept what it is. It’s very loose and doesn’t care that it needs to use the best of everything, but rather, what they think the players will find best.
This game is meant to enjoy and entertain people as they play, as well as what they are playing, rather than limiting it to just what they are playing. It really gives a sense of you being there with them in this crazy little world, without having to resort to using the 3D to make you feel that way. Be prepared to hear plenty of banter, and yes, most of the banter is of the upmost quality of amusement. Think you found a plot hole? The game exploits that and makes fun of it. Found something that doesn’t make sense? The game makes fun of that as well. Found a little reference? The game will probably make fun of that as well. Ever heard of the rumour that Kid Icarus was like the brother of Metriod due to its similar game play? Yeah, well the game makes a loose reference to that as well. They also enjoy to murder the forth wall rather than just break it. After completing the game, the forth wall will just be a pile of bricks.
So anyway, the story is you simply have to take down Medusa before she wipes out humanity. This works over a series of chapters, each one getting you one step closer to Medusa herself as you finish off her commanders and retrieve the Underworld key required to enter the Underworld and with it, to enter Medusa’s castle. The story gets more interesting after Chapter 5, I can assure that. The story is simple enough, but it’s the way it is told that makes it so great. Each and every boss has their own unique personality. No two characters are the same. You have the kind hearted Goddess who wants to protect everyone, the brave yet innocent angel as your saviour, the threatening evil villain, the group that quail all the time, the calm yet sharp tongued ball of vapour, the stern God who has a short temper…if there is a personality, you can bet that it’s in this game. They also don’t skip on their personalities as well. They exploit who the person is to the nth degree. They develop these characters really well, especially within one chapter. You know that Lady Palutena likes to mess with Pit a lot, and Pit himself, although quite young and innocent looking, might have some…”other”….thoughts in his mind, as hinted in Chapter 2. He also loves Hot Springs with a passion. Even after 140 hours of game play, these conversations bring a smile to my face, which goes to show how well they constructed this game.
Another thing I want to look at is the difficulty. As I’ve said before, games these days sometimes have fail safes which could essentially keep you going despite how much damage you have taken, just so long as you don’t take damage when your health is low. This game, however, will gently hit gamers today with a slap they all need. Those that play retro games will know back then it was hard. This game is hard, but only if you want it to be. You can
select anything from a difficulty of 0.0 (Effortlessly easy) to 9.0 (insanely hard), but you can pick anything in the middle. 2.0 is your standard normal difficulty, but I found my difficulty to begin with was 5.0 (maybe 5.5).
You bet hearts into the Fiend Cauldron as you up the difficulty, so there will be more enemies that hit harder, but rewards skilled players with more hearts per kill and chests to open, gaining more hearts than lower difficulties. Or you can spend hearts to down the difficulty, but this also lowers the hearts you can receive. It doesn’t cost any hearts to use 2.0. If you get finished, you are met with that classic game over theme from the original Kid Icarus game, and a classic themes game over screen. About half the hearts in the cauldron het spilled and are lost, and the difficulty goes down 1.0 points. If you want to finish a level on 9.0, you need to not die once, something easier said than done. Being able to complete any chapter on 9.0 is very tricky. Pat yourself on the back if you’ve done it.
The game offers nine different types of weapons to suit all fighting styles, including blades, staffs, cannons, orbitars and, my personal favourite type of weapon, claws. Each weapon type has 12 unique weapons to choose from, giving a total of 108 different weapons. You can fuse weapons you don’t need to make completely different weapons. At first, you can’t fuse many weapons, but in time, you’ll be able to fuse anything with everything. Each weapon also can have stat modifiers, which can be anything from increasing your health, to freezing your opponent, to increasing your charge shots attacks, and can even adds heart bonuses. This means that no two weapons are ever the same. Each weapon has a value and the higher the value, the stronger the weapon is. To get stronger weapons, you need to play on higher intensities. The game tells you all these little hints during the loading screen, plus more.
There are also things called powers, which are separate to your weapon. Each power is oddly shaped and there is a grid for you to place powers in. You know what this means? Tetris! If you haven’t played Tetris, you’ve missed out on a life skill. But in the “how to play” videos regarding powers, Pit refers to Dr. Mario when he uses his skills to place the powers in the blocks, not Tetris. Why? Tetris has odd shaped blocks, but Dr. Mario always has a 1x2 block. Maybe they wanted to relate it to a legendary Nintendo character. These powers allow you to do certain things, anything from recovering health, to making meteors land, to becoming temporarily invincible, to even jumping.
There are sort of achievements you can do to gain weapons, idles, powers and even hearts. At first, there might not seem as many, but as you progress throughout the game, you’ll unlock more panels. Some of these are fairly easy, such as getting finished 5 times and what not, some are really challenging, such as clearing a stage with a club on intensity 9.0, and some are completely unreasonable, such as clearing certain chapters without getting hit. I hate these challenges with a loathing. But that’s ok, because you get feathers from time to time which allow you to unlock a panel without doing the challenge. These show a feather on the panel, but if you can do the challenge anyway, then that feather disappears from he panel. It doesn’t get refunded, but at least you can prove you did it. I have one challenge left, which is to collect all powers. I just need Warp, but that appear at complete random in multi-player. I hate it when challenges require total luck to complete. I’m not complaining about multi-player, it’s awesome, but the fact I need to be lucky to clear this final panel is just an insult.
Each level has three parts to it. The flying stage, which is a very polished on rails shooter, where you can move as well as aim. It lasts for no more than five minutes, as the Power of Flight will only last that long. Any longer and Pit’s wings will burn up. These tests your dodging abilities as well as trying to kill as many underworld troops as you can. It’s something you need to keep an eye on, but looking at the 8-bit graphics that appear sometimes on the lower screen can be so tempting….
The next part after that is the ground stage. Here, you go on foot as the Power of Flight wears off, going the last distance to get to the boss room. These also require dodging skills, but at the same time using powers and items you pick up to good use. You’ll come across something known as an Intensity Gate. If you are on that level on a certain intensity, then you can pass that gate for extra goodies, as well as more enemies to fight in general.
The final part of the level is the Boss Fight. Here, you face the boss of that level in a one on one battle. These bosses are a load of fun, and each one is unique to their own. Each boss has their own fighting style and all have different weaknesses. Most of these bosses encourage you to use your dodging abilities to the fullest, especially on the higher intensities. Defeating these bosses on 9.0 really leaves you satisfied not only in defeating them, but knowing you were able to dodge their attacks and work around them. Not one boss fight is a drag, and are all intensely fun and challenging at the same time.
The graphics are very detailed, bright, and well done. The animations are smooth (95% of the time, there are very few spots where the animations jag a bit, and it’s always in the same spots) and all effects applied are amazing. I love the 3D effect in this game, as the little effects come into big focus. A thing I like is that during the ground stage, when Pit talks, his mouth moves as well. This just goes to show he looks like he’s talking to himself, but is communicating with the Gods with oral intent. That must be odd if you were hanging out with Pit, and then suddenly Lady Palutena talks to him and it looks like he’s having, as Magnus would put it, “a private conversation with himself”. The cut scenes after you defeat a boss are a joy to watch. They took the time to make the mouth movement sync with the English voice actors during these scenes, instead of just dubbing them.
The music is astounding. My favourite music is when you are fighting a boss. It just sets the mood for fighting. Every piece of music suits their level perfectly. It’s amazing how well it goes together. The flying stages have the music matching the events of the level, which allows them to use the right type of tone when something is happening, which is a really nice effect for hem to put all this trouble into timing the music correctly. That’s all I can say.
The controls…when this game came out, loads of people complained about the controls being weird and such, but to be honest, when I first started playing, the controls were perfect. I can’t imagine playing this game in any other way. The fact you need to think 360 degrees on the battle field, and spinning round to check if there is an enemy behind you is a great feeling. I got a little paranoid in real life though, spinning round every now and then to see if anyone was following me. I must have looked weird. Dodging is perfect and the running system is well balanced. My hands do get a little sore when playing like this, but I adapted and got used to it, using my right pinkie finger to support the 3DS so I could play more comfortably.
Multi-player is by far the best multi-player I’ve seen yet for the system. For a starter, online multi-player is live, instead of turn based or using the CPU of how well you played or stuff like that. It’s fairly rare for the 3DS to hold live on-line game play. You get to choose between two fighting games. Free-for-all, which as the name implies, you fight everyone and try and get the highest score possible, and Light vs Dark, which splits you up into two teams of three, one Light, the other Dark. You fight each other until one of the life gages is empty. When that happens, the person to die last in hat team becomes an angel. They are given a completely random weapon, with increased health and strength. The first team to defeat their opponent’s angel wins. I like Light vs Dark because I like the idea of being the one to defeat the angel, but in Free-for-All, I like it when I meet someone that’s slightly better than me, and I take it personally and pick on him and spar out. The feeling for meeting some of your skill level, and then just beating them is more satisfying than winning the match itself, which is why I love this multi-player.
Overall, I give this game a 9.7/10 This game was far more awesome that I expected it to be. It just blew my mind. The times it made my laugh, and at times I swore when dying on 9.0. This is a game worthy of any gaming collection of the 3DS. This had a lot of time spent on it during development, and what came out was of the highest quality. I’ll gladly wait 25 years for its next addition to the series.
Graphics
10 Sound
10 Addictive
10 Depth
10 Story
10 Difficulty
7
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