Kid Icarus: Uprising

“Who is this Kid Icarus fella? I’ve never heard of him.”

If you hear someone mutter these words please try to remain benevolent. It’s an understandable situation, although one totally alien to me. Even people referring to the protagonist as Kid Icarus gets my pedant blood boiling a little. After all, his name is Pit. In reality there have only been two Kid Icarus, one on the NES and another on the original Gameboy, this was followed up with Pit appearing as a playable combatant in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, no doubt where most gamers will recognise him from. The reason Kid Icarus is held in such high regard is that the original NES games was absolutely enchanting and those of us that owned it adored playing it over and over again, as was the tradition of that generation. Kid Icarus was my Metroid. Pit was my Samus. A choice unwittingly decided through the perusal of box art. Aliens or angels? I chose angels.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is both a departure from the previous titles and a trip down memory lane. Everything about the game feels like a Kid Icarus game despite the almost entirely different gameplay it offers. As expected you play as Pit, a heroic young angel called upon by the goddess Palutena to defend the world from Medusa who has once again reared her serpentine head.

As Palutena can only grant the previously grounded Pit the gift of flight for short periods of time each level is split into a a flying section and a grounded section. Flying sections play like a on-rails shoot ’em up viewed from behind Pit, dodging bullets and enemies while unleashing a stream of bullets back at them. There is no need to hammer the fire button as it will continue to fire whenever held, when released for a short time the next shot will become charged up and be able to deal more damage. Survival is the name of the game here. Just keep aiming and shooting and you’ll make it through while collecting a seemingly unending number of collectable items from fallen enemies. It gets pretty intense as the game progresses and could have held up as a game on its own but as I said, the gift of flight is limited and at the end of the section Pit will be forced to land.

While shooting remains unchanged once on the ground Pit gains a few new moves with which to battle his way though these more expansive environments. Once face to face with an enemy you can hammer the fire button to dish out a meaty string of melee attacks while flicking the stick in a direction will trigger an evasive dive. The player has much more freedom once grounded and you are more or less free to wander about and engage enemies in whatever manner you prefer before preceding to the next area. To do this you will need to master control of the horizontal camera. While the touch screen is generally used to aim, swiping it left and right will rotate the camera and tapping will stop this rotation. If you think this sounds tricky then you are right. At first it seems almost insurmountably cumbersome but it quickly becomes manageable and, eventually, second nature. Once you find yourself shooting, dashing and diving around a level with ease you will have found the real joy this game has to offer.

Inspired by a variety of greek tales, character and enemy designs are bright, cute and often delightfully recognisable from the game’s 8-bit origins while the environments have been crafted to make the most of the 3D capabilities of the console, often looming over Pit or giving the impression he is being sucked through a wormhole Doctor Who style. The really refreshing aspect of this release is that there seems to be an unending amount of things to do. There are a huge amount of collectables, weapons to find, a vast array of powers ups, an achievement based picture puzzle to complete and the option to play any section again at a higher difficulty by betting collected hearts on your outcome. Not to mention the full and rewarding multiplayer competent offering arena based combat using your powers and weapons from the single player game.