Nintendo Switch has been on the market for a couple of years now, continuing to ring in successes and record sales all over the world. The great results that the hybrid from Nintendo is achieving, however, have not prevented the Japanese company from continuing to support the 3DS., the small portable console that despite its eight years of honorable service continues to be coveted by many gamers, especially the youngest. Although the general attention has clearly been shifted in the direction of Switch, Nintendo has in fact continued to expand the 3DS playroom with porting and remakes of old glories that have characterized the history of the company, titles of great depth that have given users a further reason to continue using your laptop. Kirby is the new stuff of the hero fits perfectly into this market maneuver, a revised and improved version of the work originally released on Wii back in 2011, which aims to conquer the public again thanks to its style and that sense of freshness that has always distinguished all Nintendo productions. After a long wait, we at Resources4Gaming have finally been able to explore in its entirety the adventure of the most famous pink ball in the world and now, finally, we are ready to give you our final judgment on it.
My kingdom for a ball of wool
In the heart of the Dream Land, a strange sorcerer called Malangrana is disturbing the tranquility of the place by casting dangerous spells capable of transforming everything they touch into wool. The cruel wizard soon ends up colliding with dear old Kirby who, totally unaware of the danger, finds himself being swallowed by a strange sock-shaped pendant that catapults him into another dimension where everything is made up solely of wool. A few moments of settlement, a quick glance on the prairies that surround him and here our hero rushes to the charge in these unknown lands, ready to do anything to return home. As easily understood from these few lines, Kirby and the new fabric of the hero rests its foundations on a very simplistic incipit and designed solely to push us to complete the different levels that will arise as we advance in the adventure. The work of Hal Laboratory and Good-Feel takes the form of a 2D platformer which, as usual, makes use of a particularly inspired level-design that goes alongside ingenious ideas capable of leaving you speechless. The "new" adventure of Kirby will in fact see the plump pink ball in a new woolly shape, a peculiarity that has brought important changes on the gameplay side. Forget about sucking in enemies to get their powers and rather get ready to take advantage of a practical whip through which to face enemies and manipulate the stages.
Each new map that we will face, in fact, bases a large part of its progression on the transformation of the same, so we will soon find ourselves being able to open zips to access new areas, pull strings to restrict the surrounding environment and much more; small but nice ideas not only stylistically splendid, but also capable of enhancing the playful offer. To all this we must then add the many transformations that will allow Kirby to obtain useful skills and transform himself into various means with which to deal with internships created ad hoc and designed to variegate a game formula that, otherwise, would have risked to tire quickly. In all this, we are sorry to see how the general difficulty of the title is really calibrated downwards, to the point that in game there will never be a real Game Over to deal with. Whenever we are hit, in fact, we will end up only by losing a part of the beads scattered in each map that we will face. These are nothing more than a kind of coin with which to buy objects to furnish and decorate the houses of Kirby and his friends, who sometimes will also ask us to find specific objects with which to embellish their outfits. In addition to the beads, each stage will then contain three hidden treasures, or two unique furnishings and a musical track, all to compose a soundtrack full of great classics that the most avid fans will appreciate.
The painful unstitching
Kirby and the new fabric of the hero, however, remains an enlarged and improved re-edition of the original chapter and, as such, presents some innovations that have not really impressed us particularly. The first addition that stands out among all the others is the presence of the so-called Demonic Mode, an additional difficulty level designed to try to offer a more demanding challenge in a title that, otherwise, would be a real walk for any platform enthusiast. By accessing this level of difficulty, you will in fact find yourself an annoying little devil who will follow you undaunted throughout the various worlds you can face, always ready to hinder you by throwing you against dangerous balls of thorny wool, all accompanied by a lesser amount of life for our pink hero. . Secondly, the title features six new headgear that will offer the current player as many usable powers, new combat options that unfortunately only end up simplifying the adventure even more without ever proving to be truly capable of offering something that can go outside the box of the original product.
Finally, the title has been enriched with two new minigames, namely "Fila, Dedede, fila!" - a timed challenge with the Penguin King in which we will have to try to collect as many beads as possible - and "Meta Knight chopper" - in which we will have to face hordes of enemies as Meta Knight -, undoubtedly nice additions but at the same time unable to motivate the purchase of the work for anyone who has already played the title at the time of its first release. We are also sorry to see how the co-op mode of the work released on Wii is totally absent here, a lack that could make more than one gamer turn up their noses. From a purely technical point of view, despite the reference hardware appearing extremely backward, Kirby and the new fabric of the hero can show off a curated, original and extremely colorful artistic direction that offers splendid views and capable of leave you breathless, a high-level work that goes alongside a soundtrack that does its job with dignity. On closer inspection, boss fights sported some annoying slowdowns on a 3DS basis - all accompanied by commands not always as responsive as one would have liked - but we are talking about small defects that never risk leading to the gamer's frustration. Finally, we regret the total absence of the option to activate 3D, a wasted opportunity to create an even deeper and more intriguing playful world.
