Review by: Danielle Riendeau

After Kirby’s recent adventures in strategy/puzzle-land (with Kirby Mass Attack), and last year’s insanely adorable Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Return to Dreamland definitely lives up to its title. Both a return to Kirby’s “regular” hopping and bopping with a hefty reliance on eating enemies to gain their powers, and a more familiar art style, it’s practically new retro, just like New Super Mario Bros. Wii before it.

That’s far from the only similarity to the earlier game, since it also sports a delightfully chaotic 2-4-player mode. If it weren’t a “Return” it would’ve surely been a “New Super Kirby Heroes Wii”. Just like the 2009 hit, it’s riotous, if familiar, fun – a new adventure through the same sort of world, made even better by bringing along friends.

Sitting down to play solo feels just like picking up an earlier game from the series. You run and jump (and float) through gorgeous 2D landscapes of the typical cartoon platformer variety - grassy gardens, underwater worlds, ice levels, etc. Kirby’s spin on the genre has always been his ability to inhale the enemies he comes across, in doing so, gaining their unique powers. There are dozens of different abilities to gain – fire, wind, ice, a super-hammer straight out of the original Donkey Kong, swords, spears, and even an awesome “ninja” power. New for Return to Dreamland are “super” powers – crazy, amped up versions of the various abilities that come with a limit (you can only use them for a short time before they vanish). These have a tendency to clear the screen of enemies and reveal secrets, so you should basically never pass them up.

As always, there are minibosses to best, secret passages to scout, and collectibles to find (magical gears that unlock bonus stages and entire minigames in the overworld, so it actually does behoove you to seek them out). Successfully sussing out all the gears takes judicious use of the powers at your disposal, though things never take much more strategy than, say, “get the fire power from eating that dinosaur-thing, and don’t die until you get to the ice block you need to melt”. Think of it as very light, on-the-fly puzzle solving.

It’s simple, satisfying fun, though chances are you’ve played it before. In fact, I kept thinking I was playing Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (a criminally underrated iteration from around 2000) – the art, gameplay and even the music all have the same general feel. This isn’t a bad thing by any means and Hal even throws in a few tricks from other recent platformers, like barrel blasting segments straight out of Donkey Kong Country Returns. However, the wonderful art style of Epic Yarn is missed at times – nothing can beat that sense of awe (and also “d’aww!”), and genuine visual creativity.

Where Return to Dreamland makes up for its less innovative style is in the wealth of additional content and the 4-player mode. There are challenge stages to unlock, “ability” rooms that play out like timed mazes and teach you the finer points of say, the sword ability, and entire minigames like the sub minigame and the ninja star challenge, which has you flinging projectiles at targets using the wii-mote. There’s an absolute ton of stuff to unlock and play and enjoy, should you ever need a break from the main game.