Kirby: Canvas Curse

Nintendo DS

HAL Laboratories, Inc. / Nintendo – 2005

When people used to talk about pink balls and rainbows, you would almost immediately think they were referring to something having to do with gay men. However, now you must ask them "Are you talking about homosexual males, or Kirby: Canvas Curse?" because, believe it or not, K: CC is all about a pink ball and rainbows. Kind of.

The story for the game is that Kirby is peacefully living in peaceful Dream Land, taking a peaceful stroll. When all of a sudden, A WITCH COMES AND TURNS THE WHOLE WORLD INTO A PAINTING, AND MAKES KIRBY INTO A BALL FOR NO REAL REASON! Well, the world is obviously doomed. Rather, it would be, if Kirby hadn't found A MAGICAL PAINTBRUSH! Now you can roll through the painting world, helping Kirby along with your MAGICAL PAINTBRUSH and drawing RAINBOW LINES for him to roll on!

...Bad plots aside, the game is amazing. It actually creates a real game that you MUST use the touch screen for, unlike Wario Ware Touched, where the game could've worked with just the A button and D-pad. And the reason the touch screen is needed is because it would be too damn hard to draw prettiful rainbows with a d-pad.

Speaking of the prettiful rainbows, they're probably the best thing about the game. Like, you can set Kirby up on a loop-de-loop, and he goes like WOOSH! Or, you can get Kirby a wheel power-up, draw a curvE on the screen, roll Kirby into the line and watch the little thing FLY! The lines can even be used to protect Kirby from some projectiles, which is always a good feature. Especially if those little cannon things are surrounding you.

Of course, in every good video game, no matter what, there will be something bad, especially for people like me, who feel the need to collect EVERYTHING. In this game, while rolling on top of enemies around on rainbow colored slides, you can collect little medals, which are scattered around the map. These medals can be used to get neato things like different colored lines (for those who don't like rainbows as much as me), and unlock new characters. Some tasks are easier then others, though.

Example. In some courses, you roll around, and while rolling, you look on your top screen map and say "Hey! A medal!" and roll over to pick it up. Other stages, however, require you to get an ability, press a switch, and use that ability to zigzag to a canon before a brick wall forms, limiting your access to the area with the medal. That particular medal took me at least an hour of game play. The feeling of knowing I got all the medals for that world was incredible compensation, however.

And the bosses aren't REALLY bosses, per say. It's not a conventional boss fight where you would roll around to bonk them on the head or a different contrived weak spot. Instead, you get to choose from three different 'challenges'. You can either go up a tower full of monsters to fight Krako the Cloud, go into a fierce mine cart race with King Dedede, or get stuck in a tube and trace images drawn by the Paint Roller to make you go faster before the Crash Bombs kill you dead.

So, if you ever happen to stop by your local Gamestop/EB/EBX/other convenient store, cough up the $35 for Kirby: Canvas Curse. Totally worth the money my mom paid for it.

What liked: Rainbows!

What disliked: Some medal collecting stages

What to expect: Prettiness

What not to expect: The easiest game in the world

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: I personally have never seen a game where you have to continually tap a pink ball to roll across a screen while you draw rainbow gradient lines for said ball to roll upon.

Ratings on:

Control – N/A: It's all the touch screen

Graphics – 8: Has a nice 3D-2D feel to it

Sound – 6: Remixes of all the old song, and some don't sound all that good.

Style – 10: "This game oozes style from every crack of my (insert name of system)"

Difficulty – 6/9: Six if you're just running through, nine if you're going for all of the medals

Time Intervals

5 minutes: WOW! This is amazing!

30 minutes: Oooh! Boss fight!

A minute later: Not a real boss fight...

2 hours: I hate collecting medals

4 hours: More 'boss fights', more rolling, I hate damn underwater physics engine

5 hours: I seriously hate collecting medals

9 hours: Oooh! Time trial medals!

#1 (and, for this one time only, #2) reason why I hate this game: #1 reason, the underwater physics engine makes no sense, and #2, some medal collecting stages

by Tim , who finds enjoyment in tapping pink balls and drawing rainbows.