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Touch me, I’m Kirby
Nintendo paints a minor masterpiece
BY MITCH KRPATA

Slog through a viscous underwater level! Shield yourself from the blast furnace of the fire level! Thrill as you avoid splattering against a wall in a forced-scrolling level! These side-scrolling platformer standards were perfected by the time Nintendo released Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990, but they’re given new life in Kirby: Canvas Curse for the Nintendo DS thanks to an innovative control input that defies the rules of the 2-D action-adventure game.

The story line is perfunctory at best. Kirby is jaunting through the countryside when an evil witch robs him of his arms and legs and condemns him to a life inside magical, living paintings. If this were your typical platformer, you’d just be expected to jog through the levels and squelch any enemies you encounter. But Nintendo has taken the DS’s slogan, "Touching is good," and made a believer out of this gamer. Kirby, having lost his independent means of locomotion, is consigned to rolling in whatever direction he’s facing. He can’t jump, can’t stand still; his movement, save for a temporary "dash" maneuver, is at the mercy of his environment. The solution? Why, manipulate his environment, of course.

The Nintendo DS’s stylus is the witch’s magic wand — er, paintbrush — and your task is to paint on-screen rainbows that allow Kirby to traverse gaps, ascend and descend to different platforms, and change direction. There’s a limited amount of ink available at any given time (I’m not sure why the paintbrush uses "ink," but that’s the nomenclature), and rainbows evaporate quickly; you have use enough ink to get Kirby past a particular obstacle but not so much that you leave him high and dry over, say, a fatal drop. The ink meter recharges speedily once he’s on solid ground, but there are lots of tense airborne situations at each level.

The versatility of the paintbrush makes for innovative solutions to familiar problems. A brushstroke can shield Kirby briefly from enemy fire, and the right combination of aerial curlicues can propel him to almost unreachable areas. The physics behind his movements feel just right; though he rolls uphill in brazen defiance of gravity, the inertia of his airborne movements makes for intuitive gameplay. Drawing a three-quarter circle in mid air, for example, will snatch Kirby and slingshot him around like a spaceship using a planet’s gravitational pull to accelerate.

The "wand" serves other uses: you can stun enemies by tapping them, and there are several obstacles, like blocks and boulders, that you can pulverize by jabbing them.The wand also activates cannons and elevators, and you use it to solve the sparse, pedestrian puzzles (the toughest of which involves opening a colored door next to three panels that change color when you touch them, so good luck figuring that one out). Tapping on Kirby activates his special moves — in addition to that dash, he can copy certain enemies’ powers to emit electricity, turn into a streaking fireball, and more.

The difficulty increases perceptibly as you progress through the game’s seven worlds (three levels to a world), but this is the sort of game whose enjoyment is derived not from victory but from simply doing. Most games include extras like item hunts as a transparent gimmick to increase replayability; here the exploration of the levels and of the control scheme is the substance. As you acquire the coins and stars floating around each level, you can unlock new paint colors and musical tracks, but those aren’t what make it so easy to get lost in guiding Kirby through his canvas hellscape — it’s the liberating sense of motion. Although Kirby doesn’t alter the language of video games, it does toy with the grammar. It’s one of the best arguments yet for the Nintendo DS.

Score: 8.5 (out of 10)


Issue Date: July 1 - 7, 2005
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