Kid Icarus review by Tyson
Overall
Pass
Kid Icarus is one of those games that I have great childhood memories of but now I can't get any enjoyment out of the game.
Gameplay
Kid Icarus stars the hero Pit who is out to save Palutena and Angel Land from Medusa and her dark powers.
I felt the story was basic but nicely done. I also liked how the game gave an overview of the story when
you start up the game. Very few games seem to do this and its a unique feature of Kid Icarus.
Where I find all my faults and hatereds with the game come with the gameplay. Kid Icarus uses a side scrolling
setup similar to games like Super Mario Bros. but where this differs is that the you generally are scrolling up
instead of just side scrolling though it does have some side scrolling levels. what frustrates me about this
is that once you scroll up high enough the the bottom of the screen turns into a bottomless pit. This means
that any missed jumps become instant death traps. What makes this worse is that stages have no check points in them
so dying means starting over at the start of each stage...yuck. Also the game breaks up the scrolling sections with a
few fortress levels that are one screen room affairs but these end up becoming boring maze like levels. While you can
get a map but I didn't find it helpful at all. Also what makes these fortress stages so frustrating is that you can
get turned into an eggplant in them and the only way to cure it is to find a hospital room. Like most terribly designed
game logic where you get turned into an eggplant and where the hospital room is located is always as far apart as possible.
What is kind of cool about the game is its basic role playing system. As you kill various enemies with your arrows you collect
points and hearts. Points are used as experince points and hearts are currency to buy things but everything costs so much.
Even at the start of the game you have to pay hundreds of hearts for items. It makes no sense to not have some form of price scaling
as you go through the game. Also what sucks is that if you die on a stage you start back to whatever you had at the begining of the stage.
Its just so frustrating.
Control
Kid Icarus has a decent control scheme. It borrows from other games where the Directional Pad moves and the A and B buttons are used for jumping and attacking. Though I did find the jumping control to not be as smooth as other games like Super Mario Bros.
Graphics
This was the part of the game where I wasn't disappointed. Each level looks nice and I liked the desgin of the various enemies and our hero Pit. THe only flaw with the graphics is some slowdown that will happen when a lot of enemies are onscreen.
Sound
This is another area of the game that wasnt disappointing. I liked the theme song at the start of the game and the various little jingles that show up at different points in the game. I also enjoyed that the game doesn't have any annoying beeping sounds when you get low in health that other games have had.