Category: Nintendo News

It’s quite hard to categorise a game that tries its hardest to defy categorisation, but it’s often something that needs to be done, in order to inform the consumer what they will experience. Happy Birthdays is best surmised as a sandbox game which, while layered with wonderfully cute visuals of flora and fauna, is about stats, numbers and nuance. The concept is simple and deftly hides the baffling number of intricacies that you’re faced with when you first open the game. Admittedly, there’s a charming little sprite called Navi who attempts to guide your journey, but – and Navi freely admits – it’s a lot to take in.

As Happy Birthdays opens, you’re told about a map you find in the pages of a book. It must be a treasure map, thinks your faceless avatar and off you toddle to investigate. This all takes place in a non-playable intro; a narrative opening which sets up an odd transition into you becoming a terraforming deity. This game comes from the frankly genius mind of Yasuhiro Wada, creator of the Harvest Moon series, so you can see where the scope of the project comes from, plus the whimsy within the stylistic choices in the design.

It would be remiss to not comment on the fact that Happy Birthdays looks at environmental change and how it affects life. In terms of global politics, it goes far in teaching you how a world works, which leaves a lot of wondering as who this game is for. Kids will surely fall for the lovely look of dinosaurs and landscapes, but will unlikely be captured by the deeper aspects of the gameplay.

So, you’ve ended up in this bizarre world where you’re urged to pick a cube – grass, desert, stone or snow – grass is the starter zone, so it’s best to choose this. Navi tells you that this tiny cube represents the entire planet. It’s a small slice of a big cake. Here begins a 20-minute tutorial (which plays each time you start a new cube, though you can skip through the dialogue by rapidly pressing ‘A’) about how to move your avatar, zoom your view in and out and, most importantly, terraform the world. This latter skill is done by raising and lowering the land, which affects the temperature of the biome. Doing so allows specific animals to appear, evolve and procreate.

While this idea is simple and actually incredibly interesting, it goes even deeper. You don’t just need to think of temperature, but also humidity, the height of land, its proximity to water and even the depth of the sea. All of these factors must be taken into consideration when attempting to spawn either an animal or plant. Thankfully, there is a record book in the pause menu that not only tells you what can be created, but also how, and you can even view it as a family tree enabling you to choose a base creature and observe how the environment needs to change for it to evolve. Of course, it becomes a very fine balance; maybe you want to increase the temperature in order for an animal to appear, but doing so may kill off a plant that can only thrive within a cooler setting.

Adjusting the land is as simple as holding ‘R’ to raise or ‘ZR’ to lower the ground and you can scroll through the size of the grid-like area of effect with the D-Pad. There are special abilities to use which can instantly create pools or hills, even boost productivity of plants or animals and using these requires energy created by terraforming. More terraforming equals more energy, more energy equals levelling up and unlocking more abilities, which all comes back around to more terraforming. And while it all looks lovely, it’s not much fun.

There’s a lot of passive gameplay; lots of recharging your HP – which falls as you terraform the land, but you don’t die – while time in your cube flows and scientific names pop up in the list of new life. To do this, you must come into Macro Mode which is a zoomed out version of the world. But doing so means you can’t watch the new life appear ‘in the flesh’, it all happens on a quite boring looking list. Zooming back in, time pauses and though the dinosaurs and other exotic animals wander around, it feels a bit lifeless. There’s no soul, despite the depth in the mechanics.

As a learning experience, Happy Birthdays is an interesting experience. Experimenting with the ecology and evolution is very different to other sandbox or life sims and you’re often encouraged to play and explore, causing some species to die off as they are no longer needed in the world, allowing others to take their place. For much of the time things happen a little too fast , when they do happen– an animal can spawn and die quickly if the biome changes rapidly and the game gives you very little direction. Clicking the right stick causes Navi to hint at what you should try to create next, but without any linear progression it becomes a simulation in pressing buttons and reading lists. For someone who wants to micro manage, the game offers a lot of potential, but for others it can lead to tedium.

It’s frustrating that the wonderful level of charm in the style isn’t reflected in the playing of the game. A challenge mode sets you the task of taking on a world already in flux, asking you to spawn a certain dinosaur, but they aren’t fun. Choosing the other biomes increases the difficulty of balance and significantly slows down the evolution gameplay to a glacial plod. If you’re coming to Happy Birthdays for the dinosaurs, you may very well be put off by the lists and balance of mechanics.

Conclusion

The saccharine visuals and bold colours will easily attract the eye and when new species appear you’ll be begging for a photo mode. But that’s only if you aren’t looking at the endless lists or stats, or charging the ever-depleting energy banks. Interesting, educational and pretty, but ultimately soulless and a little boring. 

Every new(ish) console has its fair share of ports and remasters, and Nintendo Switch is no exception – especially when it comes to those that previously graced the perpetually sinking ship that was Wii U. And while we’ve been treated to Bayonetta/Bayonetta 2 and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, we’ve also got to contend with less memorable titles such as Legend of Kay Anniversary.

That’s not to say this port of port (the original appeared on PS2 back in 2005) is a bad game as such, but rather it’s simply an unremarkable experience that would have otherwise been lost to time had it not been for THQ Nordic picking up the licence. It does all the things you’d expect a 3D platformer from the mid-’00s to do – the combat is fun, the platforming does its job and the martial arts schtick adds an extra flavour – but even in 2015 it felt undeserving of a remaster. Also it doesn’t help when you just happen to be sharing a platform with the majesty that is Super Mario Odyssey.

So while it’s pretty standard fare when it comes to platformers – and a carbon copy of the version you may have already played on Wii U – there are at some mechanics here that are as enjoyable as they were 13 years ago. You take on the role of the titular Kay, an upstart young cat living on an island inhabited by a community of anthropomorphic tribes. With rats and gorillas forming a deadly alliance, Kay sets out to bring balance back to his homeland by unleashing all manner of martial arts.

So you’ve probably guessed where Anniversary’s strongest trait lies: combat. Combos are the big selling point, with myriad movesets on offer along with a directional block system to help counter incoming attacks when you’re fighting more than one foe. There’s a variety of weapons you’ll get your paws on over the course of your journey, with each one offering a distinct style, as well as consumables such as bottled hornets for disrupting groups of enemies mid-battle.

It also plays into traversing the terrain as well, with a press of ‘X’ sending you flying right into the next enemy for another strike. If you can keep your timing right you can zip around a group of enemies in seconds (a la the Batman: Arkham series), or use it to strike rotating bells that enable you to cross large gaps or reach higher ground. It can be tricky to get the hang of, especially when the game changes up weapons mid-combo, but it’s a unique mechanic that helps the rest of its pretty standard platforming fare feel a little less rote.

Unfortunately, the issues with the game’s camera persist, just as they did in the original and in the Wii U remaster. Cameras have often been a problem for 3D platformers, but the twitchy and unpredictable nature of Anniversary’s makes it an incredibly frustrating experience. Attempting to string together a series of combos, or avoid being overwhelmed by a group of enemies increases its difficulty tenfold. Should you stray into an enclosed area where the camera is forced to adapt, then expect to frequently lose sight of Kay.

Level design is hit and miss at best. The Ancient China feel occasionally affords the game some authentically designed buildings or motifs, but on the whole both the look and the general layout of its levels are incredibly dated. Like a lot of the game, its levels feel trapped in a time capsule that’s long been improved upon by other developers in the intervening years. Compared to the creativity and depth of Yooka-Laylee, Anniversary becomes a difficult sell to anyone other than platforming die hards.

Oh, and let’s not even go into the voice acting. While the soundtrack has its moments, the voice work for Anniversary is abysmal. Kay might be the most irritating character in the entire cast, which doesn’t bode well considering he’s the hero of the story, while the various rats and gorillas you’ll encounter will often spout the same cheesy lines over and over during combat. The use of the occasional ‘naughty’ word also still feels bizarre for a game trying so hard to be Kung Fu Panda before Kung Fu Panda was a thing.

From a technical point of view, it’s still a much improved graphical update over the original game. Character models and environments have been given an HD upgrade, although this does serve to show how undetailed and blank some levels are. The frame rate also holds up a little better than the Wii U version, with frames no longer evaporating with wanton abandon when the screen fills with enemies.

Conclusion

Legend of Kay felt dated in 2005, back when the PS2 platforming renaissance was already fading, so its transition to Wii U – and now Nintendo Switch – brings with it all the same tropes that were already out of fashion long before its inception. Anniversary’s combat offers something of a saving grace, with plenty of depth to be found with its combos and warping, but you’ll have to contend with camera issues and poor voice acting while you’re at it.