Heavens to Hades!

Kid Icarus: Uprising is a game that was released several months ago by Nintendo. You know, Nintendo. That one game company in Japan. The one that is infamous for their wonderful franchises and their endless repetition of games.

Well, it's refreshing to see something new finally come out of Nintendo, for once. Well, technically it isn't new, because Kid Icarus is yet another Nintendo franchise, but it hasn't had a game in 25 years since its original game on the NES, and from Pit's popularity on Smash Bros. Brawl, it seemed like a proper foreshadowing of his own modern game.

Now that I've played through it, I can give my opinions. Personally, I love the thing to pieces, but it does have its own problems.

First, the good. The style that Nintendo put in this game alongside some of the marketing done before the games release is just to die for. The humor and dialogue is treated very much like a dubbed anime (almost as if the game was made in Japan or something, go figure), and I was very surprised to see a product like this come out of Nintendo, which usually goes along with the voicelessness of Link or Mario. Most of the jokes and humor was pretty cheesy at times but something I really adore is the fourth wall, which was practically dead from the get-go.

The gameplay is pretty fun, and there's no shortage of content. There are tons and tons of weapons to collect of several different types, online PvP which pairs you up in a team of 3, three different achievement boards and unlockable "trophies" similarly to the ones found in Super Smash Bros., and adjustable difficulty levels for those who want a challenge. A fair warning on the difficulty though: 1 is simple and easy, and 9 is the fires of Hades filling you with burning agony and pain.

Now the not-so-good. Although I really liked the gameplay itself, I can see why many professional critics are citing it as a problem. The controls are a little bit weird, and they are comparable to a previous Nintendo title, Metroid: Hunters. You aim by sliding your reticule around the touch screen with your stylus, move around the screen with the control stick, and fire with your L or R button. It sounds simple in theory, but these default controls are basically making you steer and fire with one hand while aiming with the other, and in this third-person game, it can feel very sticky or unnatural at times. You can change to a couple other control schemes, but trust me when I say that the default one is probably the best out of the three available, unless you think you can steer with the lower D-pad or with the ABXY buttons (i.e. you probably can't without growing another arm).

Aside from that, there would be times when random things would happen in the story for no apparent reason that nobody saw coming, and Pit would have to deal with it for the level while the main plot's characters stood aside and talked/cracked jokes. Granted, you probably don't play Nintendo games expecting a lot out of story progression (except maybe a modern Metroid game like the Prime series) or character development for that matter, but to have all this dialogue with heroes, villains, conflict, and an actual story that's different from "hero saves girl from bad guy", I came out of the game wanting a little more. All that is essentially here is our hero, Pit, flying off with the aid of Palutena to defeat Medusa and the army of the Underworld over 25 levels, and yet, about 80% of that is either flying off to get some macguffin item to help them or defeating some other secondary enemy that just so happened to pop up at this very moment.

Overall, I can see why many find Kid Icarus: Uprising to be a mixed bag. It certainly has the traditional Nintendo flair strewn about it, and it does feel like a lot of effort was put into this game. The kinds of issues I have with it hold it back from me playing it over and over and over despite it clearly having lots of content within that give it a lot of replay value. However, I can appreciate the work that Nintendo put into this game considering that the last installment was 25 years ago, and the type of anime-esque, fourth wall humor is something I really like personally. I had fun playing it, and I don't regret purchasing it. Give it a shot if you wish, because honestly, you're probably going to end up buying the next Mario/Zelda game anyway, so something actually refreshing from Nintendo is something you don't see every day.