Kirby finally returns in his own game after a seemingly long hiatus. Fans have long clamored to play as the cute, little creampuff once again (if you can call him that; that's what us fans call him), and now, he's back, and Kirby's packing a nastier bite than ever before. While the game won't blow you out of your stance/position when you turn it on and gaze upon its visuals, the game tends to make up for its lack of graphical and lackluster depth of gameplay with the same, old-school appeal and funfactor that Kirby fans have always enjoyed. "I wonder why?" you might ask. I'll tell you why. Even though this game is really not a contender for 'Game of the Year', it is still fun. More inside...

The story begins on a distant planet (told through a wordless, speechless cut-scene), filled with fairy-like beings, who are happily going about their daily life. Suddenly, the sky grows dark, overcastting the planet. Panic begins to set in this small village of fairy-beings. A dark, invading force from another planet has come to steal what seems like a 'large Crystal'. The Queen of the fairy-beings has one of her 'guards' (all appear to be of the female gender) to take the Crystal and escape the planet. On her way out, the evil force spots her with the crystal and gives chase. After a bit, the being hits the fairy-being, causing the Crystal to break into multiple pieces, and causing the fairy-being to crash to the nearest planet - Kirby's home star...

Yes, it is true that the game is overly simplistic. Basically, the main objective in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is to collect as many shards as you can, and beat the stages to advance onward throughout the game to finally stop the evil forces trying to steal the shard pieces. There are seven worlds (stars in this case) with about four levels/stages per star, and a boss enemy. In each stage, there are three Crystal shard pieces, and one for the boss fight. In each stage, expect to fight at least one mini-boss. And that's about it as far as the gameplay and levels go. Well, that's not all. Kirby has seven different skills to choose from, which are the 'Burn', 'Stone', 'Frost', 'Needle', 'Bomb', 'Spark', and 'Cutter' skills. With all of these primary skills, you can mix them together to create entirely new skills by either inhaling the enemy and spitting them back out into another enemy, or inhaling one, absorbing it, desorbing it (it will turn into a star-thing of the skills color) and holding it above your head, then hitting the enemy (one with another skill) with it in some fashion. So, in total, that's about thirty-five different abilities at Kirby's disposal. Pretty neat, huh? Well, err... maybe not...

The actual gameplay sticks true to the roots of the series. The stages look like they come out of "Yoshi Story", except with many more 3-D objects. This is the true "2 1/2-D" game, therefore, it looks to be 3 dimensional, but you have to in fact follow a predetermined path. Also, the same enemies from Kirby's past games make a return, with the absence of a few noticeable ones, and some new ones. Simply put, this game feels like Kirby.

There's a lot of problems with this game as far as gameplay goes. First off, the skills primarily have only one function. You push the button, and that's all they do. There are a few exceptions to this, but what this leads to is a lot of mindless, boring killing. There's no real fun in using the skills. Once you use all of the combinations, it gets rather pointless. And to top it off, no skill is really that flashy. No cool movements, no cool animations, no over-exaggerated effects, nothing like that. This is definitely a step down from previous Kirby titles. Secondly, the gameplay is a tad slow. Kirby has just lost so much grace, finesse and speed. He can't move fast at all, his flying abilities suck (flies upwards at small, scaling intervals), and the use of some skills can make the stage you're on seem like hell because you have to use it a lot to kill the numerous enemies. Yet another bad factor against the skills in this game. And for the biggest gripe of them all; LACK OF DEPTH!! This game was disappointingly shallow. So shallow, in fact, that I almost broke my neck diving into this game when I got it. In the paragraph above, you can kind of get the picture at how shallow this game was. Very, very straightforward and simplistic. If this game would have incorporated the use of the expansion pack, there's is no telling how good and godly this game could've been. Just think. Each skill-combo could have had many functions to it, instead of one (possibly two), just like in Kirby's Super Star for the SNES.

Kirby 64's graphics are pretty innovative, at least I can give it that. But, they lack "juice" and "flavoring". Once you first glance upon them, you'll just see blandness written all over the screen. Not that it's that bad, but if the Expansion Pack was used (dammit, why didn't they use it!), then the game would've probably looked brilliant. The special effects are there, but nothing spectacular once again. I'm just thankful that there are no negative ailments to the graphical performance of K64. Hardly a trace of anything bad. The problem is that it is just so tasteless.

If there is one thing that you can praise K64 for, then it would be the Music and SFX (the funfactor also). With his return, Kirby packs the same, upbeat and familiar tracks that have followed him throughout his gaming career. While they seem a bit watered down from Kirby's Super Star, the musical tracks are still great. The SFX are of the classical performance also. If you feel the need, just head into the options and listen to the sixty-two music tracks, and the 631 SFX (and you can watch K's expression change when he's listening to music. Cool!).

Overall, K64 is a good game to rent. Very good. But, to buy it might not be the best investment you ever made. However, if you are a Kirby fanatic, this is a must have as always (Hal Labs wouldn't screw its loyal fans over). But, if you are more of the casual gamer, you might want to give this one a rent first. If you like it, then I suggest you go back and find the older Kirby games if that's possible. Anyway, this game would've really been awesome if the Expansion Pack was used. Well, that's about it, folks. In the mean time, wait around for Earthbound 64 (I believe I heard that it WAS coming out stateside finally). It's should be yet another stellar title from Hal Labs, especially for the loyal fans (like me!)

Overall: 6.7

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