As in all the best Nintendo games, there is a physicality to the world itself, and in the way you engage with it: each input prompts a tactile response. To compensate, HAL ensures that every action is in some way pleasurable. Kirby can float over most pits and hazards, swallow most enemies in his path, and refill any lost energy with an abundance of foodstuffs and other healing items that require little effort to obtain. As platformers, these games present a lightweight challenge. The secret of Kirby's success is in these moments, and the dozens of others like it. Some don't have an appropriate function, but you'll gain a random ability instead, such as with Wolf Link and Ryu.

and you get Bomb Kirby for Rosalina, it's Ice for Luigi, Fire and Captain Falcon translates to Wheel Kirby. Other amiibo figures are also compatible, with each giving Kirby a health top-up and a relevant ability. Notably, the currently available Kirby figure has different functionality, giving him his Smash Bros. Each of these conveys a different Copy ability, including the rare UFO ability for Kirby, otherwise only available by achieving 100% completion. There are four amiibo figures designed specifically for Planet Robobot - Kirby, Dedede, Meta Knight and Waddle Dee. Kirby himself seems to relish the change, weaving between pipes as he mounts his first Power Star, waving to the camera as he invites us to join him. One stage reduces Kirby to a speck, the camera angling upwards to show the full imposing scale of a machine factory, as our hero climbs this tower of gleaming chrome. Trees are encased in lightbulbs, their branches forming the filaments. Environmental shifts from pastoral to urban can often result in drab, muted palettes, but there's no loss of vibrancy here.ĭelightful details and visual flourishes abound. His ESP ability, meanwhile, sees him don a cap in tribute to another beloved Nintendo character.ĭirector Shinya Kumazaki and his team have a lot of fun with the setting, as a giant spacecraft launches a fleet of burrowing drills that instantly mechanise Kirby's world: a literal and figurative industrial revolution. The splashy Poison ability gives Kirby a range of corrosive attacks. Happily, HAL Laboratory seems consistently incapable of making a bad game, and beyond these obvious (and thankfully occasional) cut-and-paste jobs, this is every bit as bright and entertaining as Kirby's last outing. In these moments, Planet Robobot betrays a shorter-than-usual development cycle. World 2's boss, meanwhile, conjures holograms of a selection of guardians from Triple Deluxe and earlier Kirby games.

In Triple Deluxe you ferried balls of snow past flaming hazards to create a giant snowman here you do the same to prevent an ice cream from being melted.

This is a game that uses its predecessor's engine and many of its assets. It's a view this follow-up to the entertaining Triple Deluxe sometimes struggles to entirely dispel.

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