Kirby's Return to Dream Land

Kirby's Return to Dream Land is a return to what the series does best, after the previous Kirby on Wii experimented with a fabric-style look and shelved enemy-inhaling altogether. Here everything is back: the pink hero swallows foes, copies their abilities, and with them gains a hammer, sword, electricity, a leaf saw, or a whip. The story is simple, the player helps a stranded traveler named Magolor gather the pieces of his ship, and it mainly serves as a reason to work through colorful worlds at a familiar pace.

The main new feature is so-called super abilities, temporary exaggerated versions of the usual weapons that take up half the screen and literally smash entire chunks of the level, background included. They're designed as a celebration of power and always lead to a hidden area with more collectibles. The other big addition is co-op for up to four players on one screen, where the other players control familiar characters from the series, each with their own fighting style. With more people the game turns into a pleasantly chaotic affair where nobody needs to worry, since a knocked-out player is back in a moment.

Difficulty stays very mild for most of the game, which is typical for the series, but after finishing it a substantially harder mode and several challenges unlock that surprisingly put up a fight. Technically the game never pushed the Wii to its limits, but it has clean, clearly readable graphics and a smooth pace that never stutters even with four characters on screen. The music mixes new compositions with rearranged classics from the series and ranks among the catchiest ever heard on the console. Reviews welcomed the game warmly, with the usual reservation about low difficulty and conservative design. Today it's one of the best choices for playing with kids or with someone who doesn't play platformers regularly. In hindsight, it's clear this very installment set the template the series still follows today, since later Kirby games borrowed its level structure and its handling of copied abilities. It also later got a port to newer Nintendo consoles.