I never really got into Kid Icarus, short lived as it was. My greatest exposure to the series was Captain N: The Game Master. I also wouldn’t have figured it’d have retained much of a fan base over the years. So it was pretty surprising at least year’s E3 when Nintendo announced Kid Icarus: Uprising as one of their initial offerings for the Nintendo 3DS. This take on the series comes off as an entirely different kind of game, which I do believe is for the better.

The demo for Kid Icarus: Uprising was surprisingly detailed, featuring three stages to try and a selection of seven weapons to equip Pit with. Since I’d had no prior experience with the game, I decided to take the conservative route in selecting the beginning stage and equipping Pit with his trademark blade. The stage had a flying segment followed by a ground segment, and then a boss battle. Curiously, the stage was timed to five minutes, but every enemy beat adds seconds to the clock. I finished the flying portion with 4:30 to spare, even though it took about three minutes in reality. I’m unsure if this was an element of the game or just for the demo, since such a lax timer seems a bit unnecessary. The final score stage score didn’t appear to account for time remaining

The flying portion seems to play pretty similarly to Sin & Punishment I believe, although that’s only based on observational evidence of the game. Pit basically flies through the stage on rails, with enemies cropping up from all directions. You move around with the analog pad, aim with the stylus on the touch screen and fire with L (and I would imagine the controls can be swapped for lefties). Holding L shoots a continuous stream of blasts, but otherwise your weapon charges up automatically to fire a more powerful shot the next time you use it. I thought aiming on the touch screen might be weird since it’s not the same dimension as the upper screen, but it worked incredibly well.

Incidentally, the bottom screen also contains images of Pit, Palutena, and whoever else happens to be talking at the time, with different expressions. It’s a little like something out of a light novel game, and boy there is a good deal of seemingly telepathic conversation while Pit battles with the underworld forces. If I’m not mistaken, Pit sounds different from last year’s trailer. His voice seemed a touch more youthful, which makes his corny lines a little more bearable.

Things became a bit trickier on the ground. Using the analog pad, Pit can now run around in 3D space. The attack mechanic still works the same, although Pit automatically switches to melee style attacks when he’s up close to an enemy. What made it hard to get used to was flicking right and left on the screen to turn the camera angle. This wasn’t always precise, and a little tough to manage in the heat of battle when you’re not always sure where you’re getting attacked from. It probably needs more time to get used to than I allotted. It was also balanced by the fact that none of the enemies were too challenging in this stage. Even the boss, a fiery two-headed demon dog that got a few big hits on me, went down pretty handily.

There was also a demonstration of the newly announced multiplayer battle mode, although unfortunately I didn’t get around to it. I did, however, take the chance to see a demonstration of the AR cards they intend to pack in. Each card loads a character onto the screen. Placing two characters together makes them fight, although this is merely for show. A novelty for sure, but nice that the whole AR gimmick still has some new content I suppose.

Kid Icarus: Uprising was fun and action packed, if only a tad on the easy side and requiring some patience with the controls. It’s one of the few titles I enjoyed reasonably well that’s not a continuation of something I already love. Kid Icarus: Uprising is being slated for a holiday release this year.

Tags: 3DS, E3 2011, hands-on impressions, Kid Icarus, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Nintendo, preview, Project Sora

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 16th, 2011 at 5:00 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.