I do not like the original Kid Icarus. I didn’t like it in its heyday and I didn’t like it when I played the recent 3D Classics downloadable version. So make no mistake that when I say I absolutely adore Kid Icarus Uprising on the 3DS, it is in no way related to nostalgia.

That said, I adore this game.

Like the original’s mix of Ice Climbers-esque platforming, Metroid-like exploration, and shmup style final stage, Kid Icarus Uprising divides its time between a few game types. For the most part, stages start with you flying around as Pit in a third person rail shooter that plays like Sin & Punishment: Star Successor practically verbatim. These sections never waste a moment of your time. Every second is a roller-coaster of arcade action.

The sky stages are tuned to the nth degree. Between the highly deliberate camera work, the huge variety of environments, the comedic dialogue, and the non-looping music (perfectly matching the onscreen action), each and every moment won’t rest until it makes sure you’re entertained on multiple levels.

With so many aspects manufactured to play out in a precise way, it’s an impressive feat that multiple playthroughs are not only encouraged, but incredibly satisfying. No, they’re not mandatory. But with a highly scalable difficulty system tied to an addicting risk/reward loot system, I found myself voluntarily replaying stages before I had even finished the game.

Ground stages shed the shmup-like nature of their rail-oriented counterparts allowing freedom to explore. While the individual ideas feel familiar, their combination is unlike any game I can think of. The immediacy of rail-shooter aiming is retained, but within the free camera, open level structure of a traditional action game.

This strange amalgam of gameplay styles admittedly takes some getting use to. But after about two or three stages, I was able to shoot, melee, and dodge roll around with relative ease. After a bit of practice, I was even able to maneuver the camera to any point almost instantaneously with the momentum based stylus controls. Of course, with such an atypical control scheme to match this fairly unique style of play, it will take some longer than others to master.

Difficulty can be set anywhere between 1.0 and 9.0 (decimals!). Setting it above 2.0 will force you to gamble hearts (the game’s currency). Win a stage without dying and you’ll reap huge rewards. Die and you’ll lose a portion of the hearts you bet along with the shame of having the difficulty set back down a level before dropping you off at the checkpoint.

"Boss battles are short, but fun while they last."

Playing at higher difficulties not only awards more hearts, but also lets you access more secret areas in the ground stages and gives you access to more loot. You can customize Pit with a Tetris grid of items and an absurd arsenal of weapons divided into nine classes including gunblades, cannons, bows, giant clubs, and Gradius-like options. You can even fuse weapons together while retaining passive skills from each, meaning even two of the exact same weapon can have different abilities (which you can share with your friends over street pass). We’re talking Sin & Punishment meets Borderlands here.

Aside from better loot motivating you to play stages on higher difficulties, they also come in handy during multiplayer. Free for all is a bit too chaotic, but the team mode titled “Light vs. Dark” is actually rather clever and quite fun. To level the playing field, each weapon is given a numerical value. The stronger the weapon you have, the more health your team will lose when you die. Once your team’s health is depleted, one member will turn into Pit (or Dark Pit) and attempt to wreak havoc. Once the powered up hero/villain dies, their team loses.

But in addition to just being incredibly fun, Kid Icarus Uprising is also bursting at the seams with personality. Like Star Fox before it, there’s constant chatter as you progress through each stage. The twist, though, is that it’s an over-the-top, fourth-wall-breaking comedy hell bent on making you smile at every turn.

"Sometimes you have a motorcycle that shoots lasers because why the hell not?"

It also never relies too much on its origins. Sure, you’ll take on Medusa and her minions at first, but that’s merely a prologue (which, despite the familiar faces, is also filled with imaginative new locales). Within a short time, you’ll be flying into moon bases, crossing dimensions, and fighting a boss while simultaneously racing unicorns in space. And during it all, you’ll hear the amazing score of Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger), Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage), and other game music legends.

If it sounds like this is a big game, that’s because it is. To give you a frame of reference, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor featured a meaty seven stages. Kid Icarus Uprising has twenty-five, nearly all of which consist of both a sky stage and ground stage, making it feel closer to fifty. Frankly, with the amount of content the genre has trained me to expect over the years, this feels like two or three games worth of material.

With Kid Icarus Uprising, Nintendo has created something that feels new and fresh despite using an old brand to do it. It’s full of old-school, arcade action combined with modern ideas and polish. I hold it along side favorites like Star Fox 64 knowing full well that I’ll go back and play it over and over instead of shelving it indefinitely like so many other modern games. The learning curve of the ground combat will pose a challenge for some, but Kid Icarus Uprising is worth it and easily the best the 3DS has to offer so far.

This review is based on a copy of Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS purchased by the reviewer.

Tags: 3DS, action, Kid Icarus, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Nintendo, Project Sora, rail shooter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. 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.