I’ve written before that I’m not terribly pleased with Nintendo’s direction on the latest Kirby title for the DS. Of course, as it happens Nintendo heard my concerns and went about creating one of the greatest Kirby games in years if not decades. So truthfully I could care less what happens to Kirby Mass Attack. Still, that’s not any reason not to give the game a try.

Curiously, Kirby Mass Attack didn’t really have its own booth. There were one or two demonstration units strapped to Nintendo hostesses, who for the most part asked people in line for Wii U if they wanted to try it. Unless one of them was to approach you, there’s a good chance you’d never even know the game was there.

Kirby Mass Attack follows the theme of other Kirby titles in the past few years where some evil entity comes to Kirby’s world, casts a spell on Kirby that gives him a curious attribute, and then Kirby must use that attribute to combat against said evil entity. In this case, the villain splits Kirby into multiple Kirbys (actually that sounds kind of familiar), which is just great. Make more of the guy who’s going to beat you. Kirby’s villains have about the same proficiency as James Bond’s villains, they’re just a lot more adorable.

As you’d expect, Kirby Mass Attack is entirely touch screen controlled. Kirby will go towards wherever you press on the screen, and he’ll interact with anything he comes into contact with. To make progress you must find fruit, and lots of it, which is strewn about stages and dropped by enemies. Consuming fruit fills up a meter on the top screen, and every time it hits 100 you’re blessed with another Kirby. The meter keeps rolling over, and you can have up to ten of the cream puffs at once.

Having many Kirbys quickly becomes necessary. There are many items and obstacles you can’t interact with if you don’t have enough. Thus, a bit of backtracking in stages becomes necessary, returning to previous areas when you have more Kirbys. Since managing multiple Kirbys at once can be a little troublesome, you can hold down on the pack with your stylus to make them clump together, then draw a line outward which they follow. You can only draw the line so far, though. It’s also possible to flick the Kirbys at things one at a time. Occasionally, you’ll also have the Kirbys tugging on something, which makes an “effort button” appear that you need to continually tap.

Trying to keep your Kirbys safe can be a bit of a pain. Since there’s no direct combat, the Kirbys will just jump onto any enemy they come into contact with and start pummeling it. Larger enemies require more Kirbys to take down effectively, and can damage and kick off you Kirbys if their efforts aren’t enough. Even more tricky is trying to navigate your Kirbys around precariously placed spikes and the like. You lose points on the top screen meter as they’re damaged, and after enough abuse they can perish, with a little sad looking Kirby angel floating away. This will break your heart, guaranteed.

To tell you the truth, I really enjoyed Kirby Mass Attack more than I expected I would. It’s still a bit slow and plodding compared to a regular Kirby game, since you’re always having to manage your Kirbys appropriately and it’s not entirely in your control. But there are enough interesting aspects and gimmicks that seem to keep it interesting, and the game still has a bit of charm. I have to agree with what Adam Milecki said in the last podcast; it does come off a lot like a 2D platforming Pikmin.

Kirby Mass Attack is set to release on September 19th for the Nintendo DS. That’s actually around the same time I was told that Kirby Wii is coming out. I hope some signals didn’t get crossed there.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 was the one real surprise announcement from Nintendo concerning their 3DS hardware. I had some requests from friends to check the game out, but there was one problem: I had never played nor did I know anything about Luigi’s Mansion. Fortunately, the pal I was staying with owned the game, and I gave myself a brief tutorial in it the night before to have a basis for comparison. What new horrors await the timid, second Mario Bro?

Best I can tell, the premise is roughly the same as the original Luigi’s Mansion. Instead of exploring one big mansion in search of Mario, Luigi is now sent to various mansions to gather metaphysical research for Professor E. Gadd, who is hands down the dumbest Mario character ever conceived (yes, even dumber than Waluigi). He’s obviously just written in as an excuse to introduce some kind of technical device the gameplay centers around, and he’s never fit in as a Mario series character in my eyes. Fortunately, he’s been relegated mostly to extraneous games like this, but I still wish they’d stuff him already.

The demonstration level was roughly fifteen minutes, and tasked Luigi with tracking down a brainy ghost that enjoys loitering the mansion’s library. It was a pretty basic level, consisting of only five or six rooms to explore. Stashed around the area were plenty of coins and cash (???) for Luigi to suck up with his vacuum. There were also various surprise stingers, pretty much only frightening to the man in green.

I can’t say I got really involved into the mechanics when playing Luigi’s Mansion, but nevertheless the play control in Luigi’s Mansion 2 feels a bit more streamlined. This perhaps owes to not having to use the Game Cube controller, which I’ve never liked. Rather than turning the flashlight on and off now, it’s always on and you hit A to pulse it and stun a ghost. Vacuuming is handled with the R button, and curiously L will make the vacuum blow. I don’t know that the original Luigi’s Mansion had this feature, and I never found a use for it in the demo. The vacuum can also suck up the ends of curtains and table cloths and the like, and pressing A tugged them off. Moving Luigi’s aim up and down can be handled either with the 3DS’s gyroscope, or by using the X and B buttons. I found both to have their strengths and weaknesses.

Ghost combat also seems unchanged for the most part. You stun the ghosts then whittle down their resistance as you suck them up. The one difference here is occasionally you’ll see the A marker briefly appear while ghost busting. Hitting A while it’s up will give Luigi a boost and knock a few points off of the ghost’s resistance immediately. I still don’t quite understand the mechanic or, I guess more appropriately, the skill for beating ghosts. While wrangling them I’d seemingly get knocked back for no reason and lose some coins. I believe it depends on holding the analog pad away from the direction the ghost is tugging, but I never really got a feel for it.

Although Luigi’s Mansion 2 is definitely more along the lines of an adventure and puzzle game, I couldn’t help but be charmed by Luigi’s characterization and the game’s theme, ridiculous as it is when you really consider it. I’m not usually into this sort of game, but I’m interested in checking out more of it. I think this probably has to do with having no previous experience with it; the same thing occurred with Animal Crossing. Many of my friends bemoaned that Animal Crossing: City Folk rehashed too much content from Animal Crossing: Wild World. However, never having played one previously, I enjoyed City Folk a bit. (And that could change if the 3DS Animal Crossing suffers the same fate.)

Luigi’s Mansion 2 is slated for a 2012 release. The name is still technically temporary, so there’s always a chance it’ll end up being called Luigi’s Mansion 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Sometimes a game will catch your eye for no other reason than an interesting piece of cover art. In the case of Toki Tori, it was the high adorability factor that drew me in.

Toki Tori was originally developed for the Game Boy Color by Two Tribes B.V. and released by Capcom. They have since done versions for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, WiiWare, and PC. The GBC version was itself an update of Eggbert for the MSX 2.

I saw it on one of the many Steam sales last year and picked it up on the cheap. I had heard it was a cross between Lemmings and a platformer. They had me at Lemmings.

It is a simple concept; You are a chicken trying to rescue your unhatched brethren. For some inexplicable reason, their eggs have been hidden throughout a series of maze-like levels. As Toki Tori, it is up to you to use everything at your disposal to save them.

Toki can’t jump or fly, but he can flap his underdeveloped wings (he is a newborn chick after all) to float down from any height to safety. More importantly is his access to puzzle solving tools. At the start of each level, you are given a limited number of tools used to solve that particular level’s puzzles (this is where the Lemmings comparison originates); everything from a gun that turns enemies into blocks of ice to simple platforms you can use to cross gaps. It is really all a matter of figuring out where and in what order to use the given items in to get to all the eggs.

You are given several options on the control scheme. You can use only the mouse, the keyboard, or even plug in a controller on the PC version. I can only assume on the iPhone edition it is completely touch based. For almost the entire first three worlds, I found using the mouse only controls to work really well. Later, once there were a lot more enemies on the screen and precise timing to run past them was required, I found the keyboard controls invaluable.

The Steam version had an update earlier this year that has increased my enjoyment of this game exponentially. Originally if you made any kind of mistake, you had to restart the entire level. The update added a rewind button that lets you go back as little or as much as you want. It feels like cheating at first, but once you hit some of the more complex levels, it will keep you from quitting the game out of frustration.

"Floating to Imminent Doom"

For a $5 puzzle game, you can do a lot worse than Toki Tori. It is a great one to pick up and play for a few minutes at a time. The difficulty doesn’t start to ramp up until near the end of the second world. If you are enjoying it but find it too easy, stick with it. The main game gets tougher and the 20 unlockable Hard levels put the regular levels to shame.

"Panel de PokéMon!"

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Long before the sequel to Meteos was themed with Disney characters, a Japanese puzzle game named Panel de Pon came over to North America after being re-branded with characters from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and renamed Tetris Attack. Jump four years ahead and we find the game now re-re-branded with a paint job of the ever popular PokéMon series.

PokéMon Puzzle League’s base concept is the same “match three” (or more) concept we’ve seen so many times before. And like many of the other games based on the concept, it is a lot of fun to play

Rather than dropping blocks downward from the top as Tetris does, new rows of blocks will gradually come up from the bottom. It’s up to you to use your 2×1 cursor to switch the different colored blocks around in order to make a match of at least three. As soon as a match is made, you won’t be able to add more to it. Instead, you’ll have to plan ahead to pull off large matches.

All blocks are 1×1 squares and obey the laws of gravity. You can move blocks out of tall stacks and have them fall down to where you need them and even set up large chains of combos which can rack up your score. If the blocks stack too high and reach the top, it’s Game Over. Inversely, if you’re doing so well that you run out of blocks to work with, you can speed up the rate that rows come up from the bottom.

"Clearly this is a PokéMon game."

PokéMon Puzzle League has a decent number of modes. You can play the “story” in which you fight the various gym leaders in a Vs. CPU battle. There’s an endless mode where you play until you lose. And the puzzle mode gives you a limited number of moves to clear every block on screen.

The game is the most fun when played with a friend. Even multiplayer has a lot of options and modes. You can battle to the death, sending deadly extra blocks to your opponent with your combos, or you can compete purely for score without affecting each other’s playing field. There’s also a strange mode where you try to get a block down past a line before the other player. You can adjust speed settings on a per player basis, so people of all skill levels can compete with each other.

The coolest feature in PokéMon Puzzle League, which was not in any of the previous Panel de Pon clones, is 3D Mode. In 3D mode, the rectangular playing field becomes a cylinder, allowing the left and right sides to wrap. Having to pay attention to how high your stacks of blocks are in a 3D space is daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll never want to go back to 2D mode.

While the actual PokéMon theme the game has is largely unnecessary, it’s both nostalgic and hilarious (or if you were never into PokéMon, just the latter). Much of the game’s music is made up of MIDI remixes of the theme song to the TV show. Racking up combos makes both the trainers and their PokéMon shout out hilarious clips including James’ (Team Rocket)  incredibly flamboyant, “I feel giddy!”.

"How many puzzle games have a fully animated cartoon intro?"

Why did I pick this game?

While I missed out on PokéMon Puzzle League in its day, I had always heard it was a really solid title, despite its odd choice of theme. Also, I was a pretty big fan of the PokéMon series back in the days of the original 151. I had been meaning to try this for quite some time.

How does it hold up with time?

Like many other games in the puzzle genre, time has very little negative effect on PokéMon Puzzle League. Even today, it’s a fantastic puzzle game. The addition of 3D mode sets it apart from the games it is based on and makes for a very satisfying experience in both single-player and multiplayer.

Thankfully, the game is currently available on Virtual Console so you won’t need to go hunting for your Nintendo 64. It’s definitely worth the ten dollar price tag if you’re fond of the genre. You’re guaranteed both crazy-fun gameplay and hilarity. What more could you ask for?