N-Philes

REVIEW: Klonoa

Posted June 10th 2009 by Jared Thomas.

I love platformers; I think it's currently an underappreciated genre.  I also tend to be attracted to cutesy, kid friendly games for whatever reason. (Go ahead, joke about my sexuality.) The Klonoa remake for the Wii should have been a match made in Heaven for me.  So what happened?  After playing through it, why do I feel so indifferent about the whole experience?

Let's talk about the good first. The visuals pop with bright colors and the game sports a great deal of interesting locales - from cheery towns to dark caves. Some of the textures seem overly flat and are reminiscent of the look of many Dreamcast games, but to me that's an easily dismissible nitpick. The 3D environments mixed with the 2D moving plane is great and makes exploring Klonoa's world feel dynamic and interesting, instead of succumbing the the traditional tedium of left-to-right platforming. The gameplay mechanics are intuitive and simple, but different and fun. The core mechanic is the ability to grab baddies and use them as projectiles, either to hit switches, kill other baddies, or to assist in a double jump. When starting the game and learning these moves, I couldn't help but get excited for how awesome it was going to be when I really started to get to use them in more difficult circumstances.

You're given the option of many control schemes (Wii Remote, Wii Remote plus Nunchuck, Classic Controller, or the GameCube controller), which is fantastic if you're like me and hate trying to play games with that tiny D-pad on the Wii Remote. The story cut scenes can always be skipped -- the game never forces you to sit around and watch annoying dialogue between a few wacky looking characters when you're just in the mood to jump in and plat some forms. 

The games biggest problem is easy to sum up. It's shamefully easy. Unless you jump down a hole on purpose or something, dying just isn't going to happen. And if, for some freakish reason it does happen, there doesn't seem to be any punishment for it; you almost always start out right where you died. Some of the bosses are kind of cool, but still far too simple to defeat.

Let me set something straight. I'm not saying that this game needed to be as hard as Contra or Mega Man. I'm just saying that when a game allows the player to be completely passive whilst playing, it's no longer fun.  I understand that the developers probably wanted the game to be an all ages experience, which is fine, but the Mario, Sonic and Ratchet & Clank series (to name a few popular ones) have clearly shown that you can have an all ages game that's not dreadfully boring to anyone out of grade school. To be fair, completing the game unlocks a mode that makes it slightly more difficult, but it's too late, and it's still too easy. By this point you'll be burned out and ready to play something that actually requires your attention. Was the original Klonoa this easy? It's hard for me to remember. But I don't remember it putting me to sleep.

Klonoa has all the building blocks of a great game, but is missing from it even the most moderate a challenge. It's a shame, too. As a remake starring a cult classic character in a genre that's begging for something fresh, it had the potential to be something really great. If you're looking for something to buy a child, look no further. This game is great for kids. Chances are, though, you'll get bored pretty quickly if you aren't one. Some will complain of that the game is too short, but to me this isn't an issue, especially when you take into consideration the discounted price point. Platformers are almost always short, get over it. The problem isn't that you'll finish it too quickly, it's that you probably wont have the desire to play it again once you do.

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Posted in: Reviews, Gaming

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