Kirby Going Full-On Super Mario Odyssey On The Switch Is Brilliant - Kotaku Australia

Kirby fans finally get to feast.

Yesterday, Nintendo announced Kirby and the Forgotten Land, a 3D adventure platformer set in a post-apocalyptic world whose ruin may or may not have been caused by a certain insatiable pink gelatinous mass.

I haven’t been pumped for a Kirby game in [does maths] oh no….

As so often happens with these things, the game leaked a bit before the official unveiling, showing up as Kirby Discovery on Nintendo’s Japan site.

When a Kirby game featuring bombed-out skyscrapers popped up during yesterday’s Nintendo Direct, many observers already knew it was coming.

(It is and forever will be a tragedy that this game isn’t called The Last of Puffs.).

Read More: Kirby’s Next Game Goes 3D For First Time, And It Looks Sick.

I’ll be honest: I’m not the biggest Kirby fan.

The only game in the series I’ve loved — like, burn-entire-weekends-playing loved — was Kirby Air Ride, the 2004 GameCube racing game and a genuine masterpiece.

I mean, seriously, it’s the sort of release cadence that leads to games like Kirby Fighters 2, the street faire version of Smash Bros?

But Kirby and the Forgotten Land looks promising?

Some of the combat tricks, like Kirby freezing one enemy and kicking it into another, seem a whole lot more creative than “swing sword and swing it again.” And that giant fight against a primate that’s clearly grown to preposterous sizes because of radiation exposure pretty much seems like Death’s Door: Kirby Edition.

I’m keen to see how Nintendo applies the Kirby touch to an open-world structure?

(See: Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Metroid Dread, which, yeah, isn’t technically out yet but c’mon.) It stands to reason that Kirby and the Forgotten Land could follow in greatness

And if it’s a total bust, well, hey, there’s always Kirby Air Ride