Flying High in Mystic Realms

The first Game that caught my Attention is... Kid Icarus – Uprising.

I have been playing this game for over 50 Hours now. Usually I play only RPGs for such a long time, the last one was Last Story, which will surely get its own entry, but the lil' Pit just caught me.

While I wasn't realizing it, small game vermin entered the needy greedy fun center of my brain.

The genre mixture between a shooter like STAR FOX 64 3D and a run- and gun shooter with a small spice of RPGs, the weapon creation (9 differnt weapon types).

SINGLEPLAYER:

25 chapters and a Boss Rush Mode (unlocked after the game is finished)

3 different treasure maps: designed like puzzles, to unlock one part and earning the treasure of that part several “Quests” must be done, e.g. finish chapter x in y minutes, if you do so you can earn a weapon an ikon or other things.

But there much more to discover than “just” these 25 chapter, the game itself is done within 10-15 hours, depending on how intensively you combine or hunt for weapons and of course which difficulty one chooses.

Difficulty leads to our next bis innovation the Fiend's Cauldron, in my opinion it's a pot of greed, at least I call it like this, because the more hearts (credits) you offer, the merrier weapons/treasures and the more hearts you earn, e.g. in chapter 1 “Return of Palutena” at difficulty 2,0 (of 9,0) you receive approximately 3 treasures only a few hearts and weak weapons with a value of 110-120 (one starts with a blade with the value of 100 (can't go lower :P)) The same chapter at max. difficulty will have 4/5 treasures, an additional area, which was blocked by a door, that only opens at a difficulty of 5 or higher, and of course a huge bunch of hearts (9000+) compared with the low-diff chapter and weapons with a value of 250+/260+ and also some nice bonus effects.

Because of the different weapons/skills/effects, one's greed forces to revisit each and every chapter to both finishing it at a higher difficulty and also getting better treasures. There are 9 weapon types, bow, blade, claws..., everyone with completely different properties like range, combo count, strength and so on, I prefer wands/staffs, because sniping the fiends from around 100 meter away is just smooth, but when they come closer, trouble starts very fast. So there's the perfect weapon for everyone, the fighter guys that like to immediate charge into a huge melee should use the arm, claws or clubs. For Mid-Range all-rounder the blade, which looks very much like a GUNBLADE of Final Fantasy VIII, or the cannon (very huge damage output compared to the other types but slow) is a good choice. Wide-range sneaking snipers choose the wand/staff or bow. By fusing your weapons you will automatically forced to learn their usage else you have to deal with it, when suffering :P (combining 2 claws won't lead to another claw, etc.) Let's go over to the Control Settings, you control Pit with your left circle PAD (when not using the CirclePad Pro) and target for your enemies with the stylus, which causes small hurts in your hand, when you'rev playing over many hours with just your hands. But therefor the game includes a small "tool/gadget" - put it on a table and "insert" the Nintendo 3DS, it will be hold now, so you can concentrate on moving Pit and firing around, without thinking about a comfortable way of holding your 3DS. This method of playing will definitely increase your efforts, but believe me, using it in busses, trains or cars is a bit difficult (in ICEs with a seat where you have a table, you're lucky). One will need approximately 1-3 hours to handle the controls settings, you can also switch them or use a Circle Pad Pro - I kept the standards and used the small 3DS-"desk".

Mastering all weapon-types will need a lot more time, but after a while one will have one's favorite, mine is staff/wand, it's a bit like Monster Hunter, where you have 12 weapon types, trying them out and finding one's perfect match will need some hours, mastering 3-5 weapon types both Kid Icarus and Monster Hunter is a good average.


STREETPASS


Many games, that are directly developed by NINTENDO have a Street-and/or Spotpass feature, Streetpass means, that when your 3DS is in its standby-mode (Wifi switched on) and your walking around and other people are doing the same with their 3DS, they will connect and share game information.
In Kid Icarus you can create weapon crystals of your weapon and everyone, who is also playing this game, and meets you/your 3DS will get your weapon crystal and you will get his/her. This crystal can now be forged into a weapon or can be combined with other crystals to produce new weapons for your inventory.
By using Spotpass (your 3DS "meets" with the internet) you will get a daily crystal by Palutena herself.


MULTIPLAYER
 

You can fight via a local adhoc mode or over the internet. When using the internet you can choose to play with your friends - you need their 3DS ID and have them registered in your friend section of your 3DS - or with someone you don't know.

The Fighting modes are ONE-on-ONE, a kinda battle royal mode, where everyone is your enemy, for every frag you get points and the one with the most will win - easy right - NOT really, because especially the players from Japan are very tricky and hard to defeat, their strategies and specials moves, also their using effects are pretty good, depending on the time you play, there will be more or less of them. The second mode is Light VS Dark, it's a team death-match with two teams and 3 players each. The team that defeats Pit will win, after 3 frags the last player, who was defeated returns as pit, eather dark or bright, when he is defeated, one's team looses. But even then it's possible to turn the game, because Pit is faster and stronger, than the others.

SUMMARY:

Everyone with a 3DS has to play this game, Pit's comeback was great - 20 years have past, but Pit didn't lose any of his charm. All fans of Pit wanted his comeback since they saw or played with him in SUPER SMASH BROTHERS BRAWL. The graphics are great the greed for more weapons and secrets and the Multiplayer will result in far more than 50 hours of gameplay, and if you discovered everything, just start over new, or give another family member the chance to explorer the same things (3 game save slots).

If I had to grade it, 38/40 points - A - 1 - the control settings avoided a perfect rating.

I hope you enjoyed my first game review, feel free to comment, what you have read, please give your feedback or wishes for further entries.

I'll give you 3 small previews for one of the next entries: