Half Rail Shooter, Half Third Person Shooter, All Humorous: Kid Icarus Uprising is the Game Every 3DS Owner Should be Playing
After spending over 20 years in the dark, the Kid Icarus franchise has been brought to light in this long overdue sequel by critically acclaimed developer Masahiro Sakurai (creator of both the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series) and his team, Project Sora. Pit is summoned after a long slumber by the goddess of light, Lady Palutena, to fight against Medusa’s evil forces of the underworld and stop them from taking over the world. Despite the copious amount of death involved, Pit manages to stay overwhelmingly upbeat on a hilarious action-filled adventure that is unafraid to poke fun at itself and maintains its fun factor from start to finish.
Many of the game’s enemies are cut from the same nostalgic cloth that made the original. Classic faces like Reapers and Eggplant Wizards have been updated and placed alongside newer enemies like the Tempura Wizard (whose magic will turn Pit into a tasty deep-fried treat and try to eat him whole) and Star Pirates (who resemble Space Pirates from Kid Icarus’ sister series, Metroid).
The gameplay of Uprising is fun and easy to pick up, yet very challenging. Chapters consist of two portions: aerial combat and ground combat. It is usually your goal to fly to a destination, explore the area and defeat a boss. Those who have played Metroid Prime Hunters on the Nintendo DS should feel right at home with the control scheme: Pit moves via the Circle Pad, aiming and camera are handled via the touch screen, and shooting is done with the L button (though of course, various other button combinations exist as well). It’s a simple task to learn, but a difficult art to master.
The game’s built-in difficulty meter (The Fiend’s Cauldron) allows you to make the game as tough as you want it to be. Spanning from levels of 0.1 to 9.0, you’re allowed just as much challenge as you’re willing to take before each chapter. The upside of course being the harder you make it for yourself, the more you’ll be rewarded for doing so.
You’ll spend hours replaying chapters in tougher difficulties over and over again to unlock greater prizes each time. There is a ton of stuff to unlock; there are hundreds of Idols to collect, tasks to complete, and weapons to create. Weapons can be found, bought, created in-game and shared via the 3DS Street Pass feature with anyone else who owns a copy.
One aspect that particularly shines in Uprising is the terrific sense of humor. Though many Nintendo franchises have long followed the sacred mantra of “no voice acting allowed,†this game manages to take the long implemented preconceptions and shatter them completely in a way that is so hysterically tongue-in-cheek.
Players will be able to tell that the translators, script writers, and voice actors really had fun with their jobs. Pit, Palutena and the rest of the game’s cast banter back and forth humorous anecdotes that frequently feature meta-jokes of other Nintendo franchises (such as Metroid, Nintendogs, or Brain Age) while casually throwing in a few funny jabs at the economy, among other things.
As a game coming from the creator of Super Smash Bros, people should expect it to feature a multiplayer mode. Together, as it is called in-game, allows players to face off against one another in hectic 3-on-3 matches or a free for all frenzy in an wide open field. In addition, players are able to customize their characters with multiple weapon and power-up combinations to suit their tastes when duking it out either locally or online with friends and strangers alike.
When a series takes more than a decade to churn out a sequel, it usually falls flat on its face and ends up as a disappointment to many. Kid Icarus Uprising however, is anything but. Simply put, it’s challenging, witty, and so much fun to play. Definitely look forward to playing it, as it is easily one of the best 3DS games you’ll get your hands on this year.
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