Platform: Nintendo DS | Developer: Flagship | Publisher: Nintendo-HAL Laboratory | Released: June 22 2007 | RRP: £29.99

For those who don’t know (Which is certainly possible, considering their previous sales record) the Kirby games revolve around the main character, Kirby (Not that you’d have guessed), a marshmallow-y pink ball of fluff who has a number of talents, most notably sucking. Not like that, this is a kid’s game! Or at least that’s certainly what the look of the game would suggest.

Now I won’t lie to you, the Kirby games are almost definitely intended to be played by children, in much the same way that Mario games are, or RPGs with terrible storylines (or lack of). This of course does nothing to prevent Mario games or awful RPGs being played, and of course loved, by people of all ages. It seems strange that the Kirby games, which would appear to be based on a far more interesting concept than the typical and rather basic concept of ‘Run and jump’ in Mario games, have not been as well received…

The basic idea of Kirby is that in addition to running and jumping through the levels, Kirby’s incredible sucking powers enable him to inhale enemies, only to spit them out on others to kill them. Or, if the enemy you inhale has a specific power, you can instead steal that power for yourself and use it to your advantage. Typically there are a wide range of powers to choose from in each game, but Mouse Attack has by far the largest selection. There are old favourites such as Sword, Fire, Ice, Lightning and the welcome return of the Ninja power, as well as new ones such as Metal, Bubble and Animal. I’d like to say that each of the powers have their own advantages and disadvantages for different situations, but to be honest it’s not really true, and you’ll probably find that some powers, while fun or cute, are simply not as useful as others, and you’ll probably end up choosing a few favourites and re-using them throughout most of the game.

There are advantages to a few of the powers in certain situations for a change, however, but all the ones that do anything useful are probably the best for killing enemies anyway, so the powers feel a bit unbalanced. For the first time in a Kirby game the powers can be used to alter certain parts of the levels, to uncover hidden routes or items, or simply make it easier to progress through the level. The Ice power will freeze hot lava or water for you to walk on it, or extinguish hazardous flames to allow you past. The Fire power can burn away clouds in sky levels, and the Sword power can be used to cut away large bushes to reveal doorways or items. This aspect of Mouse Attack, while not adding an enormous amount to the game, does give you a greater sense of involvement with the surroundings, which just makes the game seem a bit more complete.

The DS’ second screen has been used in Mouse Attack to (at least attempt to) improve the system of collecting and using various powers, by allowing you to collect up to 5 items (Such as extra lives or recovery items) or powers contained in bubbles which are scattered around the game. You can tap these bubbles to burst them and use whatever is inside, or use the touch screen to drag items or powers on top of each other to mix and create new ones (Only seen in one Kirby game previously), which are again tapped with either the finger or stylus to use. Unfortunately combining powers often seems nonsensical and is partially random (For example, combining the Sword power with the Fighter power may, for some reason, give you the Cupid power in return), and then almost all the powers that you can get from combining powers are simply ordinary powers that can be stolen from an enemy anyway, meaning that there isn’t any real advantage to doing so.

There is apparently a ‘system’ to the way the combinations work, for example, holding the finger or stylus over the combination will cause the bubbles to gradually change colour, giving you a more powerful power the longer you hold it, but again all the powers you gain can be taken from enemies about the game… So there’s no point. Besides, you would probably have to have something very wrong with you to take the time to memorise which combinations and durations of hold-y-ness gave you which powers since few of them make any sense anyway…

Now you would think that combining, for example, Fire and Sword would give you a… Fire Sword? Surely? Well yes you would think that, but apparently Flagship didn’t, at least not at first. You see in Mouse Attack there are several treasure chests hidden within each stage which contain various items for you to collect, such as different colour schemes for Kirby or different backgrounds for the palette on the bottom screen (The leopard-print one I found particularly amusing). Why these chests are there is not particularly important, because the storyline in Kirby games has never been very important, but if you must know there are a bunch of dastardly mice called the… Squeaks (It’s o.k to cringe, I did) who have stolen Kirby’s slice of Strawberry Shortcake and locked it up in a chest somewhere.

You’re told all of this at the beginning of the game to give you plenty of time to laugh before the actual game starts and you begin playing, which I thought was quite considerate of them really. In any case a member of the Squeaks will appear on most levels to try and take back any chests which you may have found throughout the level, especially the large shiny ones, which don’t actually seem to contain anything more special than the ordinary ones… If by some miracle the Squeak manages to get back to his little hide-y hole with one of your chests, which there is very little chance of them doing since a single hit with any power will make them drop it, then you will be forced to fight them for it.



These fights are essentially completely optional, but I chose to go into the little hide-y holes even if I hadn’t had a chest stolen, simply because it was something to do, and because cutting up a bunch of mice with a big sword feels really satisfying. Anyway, these chests hold a number of things, such as big hearts to extend your life bar, a mysterious ghost emblem (Which certainly doesn’t unlock a secret Ghost power), music for the sound test and, possibly most importantly, scrolls for each of the main twenty three powers which unlock extra moves or stronger versions of the power. Collecting these scrolls is the secret to being able to use the proper combinations the game contains. For example, collecting the Sword scroll will tell you that you can in fact combine a Sword bubble with a Fire bubble to create a Fire Sword. And all of a sudden it works! Why you couldn’t do it before you knew with absolute certainty that you should be able to is anyone’s guess, but still it makes you feel like you’ve achieved something. Sort of…

Collecting these scrolls will let you use all of the sensible combinations the game is willing to let you use, such as the Fire Sword, the Thunder Sword, the Ice Sword, the Thunder Bomb, and the Ice Bomb. And… Well that’s it actually… That’s as far as the combining element of the game has really gone. Disappointing considering the brilliant combinations which Kirby 64 allowed you to use (In that game combining Sword and Thunder equipped Kirby with a Yellow double-ended lightsaber! He looked like something right out of Star Wars he did. Well the Kirby re-make of Star Wars anyway…) but it’s fun to combine them anyway because you know you worked so hard to be able to, and besides, it’ll allow you to run through the levels killing all the one-hit-kill-with-almost-any-power enemies even more easily…

Unfortunately you’ll soon come to the realisation that the game is incredibly easy. Despite being probably the most difficult Kirby game so far, and while I did die a few times throughout the game, it was still far too easy, with most deaths probably being caused by a silly mistake or one of those annoying thoughts of ‘I wonder if…’ which always lead to you jumping into a deep chasm or some lava or something similar. There is still much fun to be had in playing the game though, as the typical Kirby formula is incredibly fun in itself, almost addictive in fact, and you can always try to run through the levels as fast as possible, pretending you’re one of the insane Japanese guys you’ve seen in those Mario Bros speed runs, jumping off platforms and landing on the tiniest specs of land with absolute precision.

In fact that brings me onto all the good things about the game, now that I’m done with all the bad (It seems there’s always more to describe about the bad unfortunately). The controls are incredibly tight, meaning that you really can be insane and run around the levels like a mad-man on Speed as long as you have fingers fast enough to do so. It definitely feels as if some work has been done since the brilliant GBA Kirby game, rather than Flagship being content to simply copy over the already brilliant Amazing Mirror’s gameplay.

Visually the game has also been upgraded from the GBA games, with both the back and foregrounds being far more detailed than before, the backgrounds in particular looking stunning. It seems as if Kirby’s animations have been tweaked as well, they’re incredibly smooth and easy on the eye. There are some nice additions to the animations of each individual power too, for example the Fighter power has Kirby standing in a typical fighting pose, bouncing back and forth if left standing still. If left for a few seconds he’ll even rub his nose and give a nice long Martial-Arts scream with that insane Bruce Lee expression on his face. Brilliant.

Unfortunately the upgrades still feel as if they’re not quite enough, additions like the occasional particle effects from burning grass and rocks bouncing off the ground when you land feel like they should have been there in the first place and even if it looks great it’s not that much better than the GBA games if you really sit there and look at it. Then there’s the fact that all the time you’re playing it you have that little niggling thought in the back of your mind that you’ve been lied to about combining items, and it feels worse than being kicked in the nuts right after being dumped by your really hot girlfriend.

And then you don’t have long to think that thought because all of a sudden the game’s over. Just like that. As well as being way too easy it’s also way too short. This wouldn’t be particularly bad if you’d picked up the game for the budget price of 10 or 15 quid, but for a full-price DS game it feels a bit like robbery. Really really fun robbery that lasts a good few hours, and has a few things to collect to extend it a bit, but robbery nonetheless. That’s never a good feeling, and so you might be better off getting Kirby and the Amazing Mirror on the GBA for cheap and waiting for this game to get about half it’s price shaved off.