Review – Kirby’s Blowout Blast

Kirby’s Blowout Blast is the newest Nintendo release for the 3DS, a small and very affordable platformer starring the good old munchies-suffering pink ball. The small price can sometimes be considered something to make you worry about a game’s overall quality, as most times those are poorly-made games with little content and no replayability. Does Kirby’s Blowout Blast fall into this spectrum as well?

Kirby's Blowout Blast

Hail to the King (Dedede), baby.

Kirby’s Blowout Blast is a very simple game. Reusing the same assets from the other Kirby games on the 3DS, all you need to do is go from the beginning to the end of very short three-dimensional levels, defeating all enemies in your way. In a way you can say Blowout Blast is a beat-em-up of sorts, given its “focus” in combat. Controlling Kirby is as easy as it can be, even with this new 3D perspective. Controls are fluid, simple and responsive. The only sad aspect of the gameplay in Blowout Blast is the fact you cannot copy any enemy’s abilities. All you can do with them is either swallow them or use them as projectiles.

All of the levels look pretty nice, with good textures and lots of colors, and so do the enemies, even though they are reused assets from Robobot and look too blocky at times. Same can be said about the soundtrack, with some decent enough tunes, including the classic tune from the first Kirby’s Dream Land game on the original Game Boy. All in all, Kirby’s Blowout Blast has a decent enough presentation, with a very polished feel for a 6.99 game.

Kirby's Blowout Blast

Why are you so gosh darn adorable?

Sadly, there isn’t much more I can say about it. The game is unbelievably short. It took me less than two hours to beat all the levels, including the “harder” EX ones, getting a gold trophy in each one of them. If you don’t want to fully explore each level and beat every single enemy, you can even beat some of the stages in less than a minute. After you pass all levels in a train ride, there’s little else to do in the game, with the exception of maybe trying to beat your high score. Oh there’s also Amiibo support, but that won’t actually affect the core gameplay.

It’s nice to see Nintendo still supporting the 3DS, but don’t expect much from Blowout Blast. It has Nintendo’s trademark level of quality, for sure, and it’s entertaining while it lasts, which isn’t very long. Thankfully, it only costs less than $7, and you’ll get your money’s worth.

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