Currently Playing: Kirby All Star Allies Is Neither Wowing Nor Wooing Me
Kirby All Star Allies is, very bluntly, not impressing me.
It's beautiful, and cheerful, and impressive in the way that you can combine different powers together using the elements, but that's pretty much where the positive comments end. Some reviewers commented on it being a touch too easy, but that really is a gross understatement. This is so barely a game. It fails to actually give you gameplay, namely: the process of teaching the player an ability, and then presenting them with a series of challenges so that the player gains mastery of that ability in the face of opposing forces. The argument of "what is a game" can run for days, but I think (I hope) that most people would agree with the outline above in it's very broadest terms. The "opposing forces" can be anything from traditional 2D or 3D animated enemies, to more abstract ideas such as "the player's own preconceived notions of gender" and so on. All we are really trying to say, through clumsy language, is that a game should be interactive. A film, book or play is static, it tells you something. A game should teach you something, and test whether it has taught you it well (or not) through exercises of ability.
Kirby All Stars Allies fell short of my expectations because it failed in both the requirements - to teach and to test. It didn't give me challenges to overcome, because both puzzles and combat are disappointingly, laughably easy, and it didn't teach me any understanding of the possible skills and abilities on offer. I still have only the very scantiest idea of how the game actually works. Every time I try to test my understanding of the mechanics, the game assumes I am stuck, or stupid, and sends an NPC character rushing in to do the job for me. On single-player mode, there are three NPCs charging around, doing their own thing, adding an extra level of confusion in attempting to figure out who is doing what, where, and occasionally, why. The visual affect is joyful, but too frenetic to be interpreted, leaving me confused and irritated, with no sense of having actually accomplished anything. I'm a spectator, not a player, admiring the constant goings-on on the screen, with very little idea of which of them are actually down to me pressing buttons on the controller.
There is also far too much reliance on nostalgia. This is my first Kirby game, I have no idea who any of these characters are, and I care even less. Is one better than the other? I don't know. Does it matter if I swap them out, or stay with the same line up for every level? I don't know. Does it matter if they die? Does that make me a good or a bad player? Genuinely, I don't know. And, as is so often my gripe with Nintendo stuff, it's thematically weird.
Make friends by brainwashing enemies to fight for you, unless they have something you want, in which case, swallow them whole to cannibalise their abilities for yourself, so you can continue to kill their brethren.
Wholesome.
In this Kingdom of Peace, it really makes no sense for everything to be so aggro towards you, all the time, or you towards them. From my perspective, Kirby is just a psychopathic blob on a killing spree.
I bought Kirby Star Allies because I wanted a cutesy, fun, relaxing game to enjoy playing co-op with my partner. The single-player mode has left me wondering if I've made a horrible mistake. Hopefully the game comes into it's own when played with friends. If not, it may yet turn out to be the first Switch game I trade in. Judging by how little effort it makes to involve me when I'm actually playing it, I doubt it will miss me when I'm gone.
