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> Results: Kirby's Air Ride
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Go Speed Kirby, Go!Poor Kirby. Heﾒs always been overshadowed by Nintendoﾒs more popular mascots. His newest game, Kirby Air Ride, is no exception as our pink puff has to compete with other racing titles like F-Zero GX and the upcoming Mario Kart: Double Dash. While I will definitely put my money on the line and say that the new Mario Kart game will be better, if you want something truly different in racing, and not be overly challenging like F-Zero GX, then Kirby Air Ride is the only way to go. Players race as Kirby, or different colored variants of Kirby, in a variety of 3-D racetracks. Kirby rides on a flying star, and as you play the game you can unlock other vehicles as well. The most unique aspect of Kirby Air Ride is the control setup. You only use the control stick and the A button. Your vehicle is always moving, you only push the A button to stop. While holding down the A button, a boost meter fills up and when you release it, youﾒll get a boost of speed. The trick is to use the A button around corners and come out of a turn with a boost. Each of the vehicles that you can unlock control differently. Some are slow on the ground but are fast in the air, others only go when you have a full boost meter charged up, and one wonﾒt turn at all unless you make it come to a complete stop with the A button. The other trademark of Kirby games besides the simplicity is Kirbyﾒs ability to absorb enemiesﾒ powers. Littered around the tracks are enemies that you can suck up with the A button when you are nearby and gain their power. Most of Kirbyﾒs powers are offensive weapons against other players, like swords, needles, fireballs, etc. But some powers make Kirby go faster, like the power that turns Kirby into a wheel. To use Kirbyﾒs powers, all you have to do is--you guessed it--push the A button. There are three main gameplay modes in Kirby Air Ride. The first mode, Air Ride, is the traditional race around 3-D tracks competing for first place. The tracks are well designed with lots of multiple pathways, shortcuts, and plenty of opportunities to zip by at blazing speeds. The second mode, Top Ride, is very cool as it gives a nod to older race games like Super Sprint. In Top Ride you race around a small track from a top-down perspective, snatching power ups and cutting corners along the way to first place. The last mode, City Trial, puts you and three others in a big 3-D city, and you have to run around in a given time limit and find power ups for your vehicle. Then when time is up you take your custom ride to the proving grounds for a competition. The challenges in City Trial range from a race around an Air Ride track, demolition derbies, and target practice (think Monkey Target from Super Monkey Ball). You can play all three modes with up to four players. Kirby Air Ride actually has LAN support, so if you have four GameCubes and four televisions, you can play against each other and not have to share a portion of your TV screen with other players. Of course, the only way anyone will be able to play like that is if they lived at Best Buy. Kirby games are made by HAL Laboratories, and they are also responsible for Super Smash Bros. Melee. That is really apparent in Kirby Air Ride in that you can unlock a multitude of secrets by performing certain tasks. Each mode has a grid with 120 squares. Thatﾒs 120 things to unlock in each mode, 360 in all. When you perform a required task, that square will be marked on the grid, and all the adjacent square will come up gray, revealing what you have to do to fill in those squares. So the more you do, the more you know what to fill in. Certain squares let you unlock things like new tracks, vehicles, Kirby colors, music tracks, and even secret characters! Goals range from completing laps under a given time, swallowing certain enemies, or simply coming in first place while flying. Like other Kirby games, graphics here are simple yet colorful. Itﾒs the music that shines in the game. All the music is scored and catchy, and Kirby fans will recognize many classic tunes remixed. If there is any problem with the game, itﾒs the play control. Youﾒd think that such a simple setup would be easy to grasp, but having to hit the A button to slow down instead of speed up is actually a little bit counterintuitive at first. It just takes a while to get used to the controls. But Kirby Air Ride is certainly a unique racing game because of it. Kid Factor: Since you can set the difficulty to insanely easy to ridiculously hard, young players and seasoned gamers will be able to enjoy this title together. The control setup may confuse players brought up on more traditional racing games, but at least little ones wonﾒt have too many buttons to worry about. With all those things to unlock, kids will have plenty to do and shouldnﾒt get bored for a long time. Young children will like the colorful and fun Kirby characters and settings. You can even see a Kirby cartoon on Saturday mornings on whichever station carries the ﾑFoxBox.ﾒ Watch it with your kids; itﾒs actually kind of fun.  Reviewer Recommended Ages: 6+ Genre: Racing ESRB Rating: E for Everyone System: Nintendo GameCube Publisher: Nintendo Developer: HAL Laboratories 
Since you can set the difficulty to insanely easy to ridiculously hard, young players and seasoned gamers will be able to enjoy this title together. The control setup may confuse players brought up on more traditional racing games, but at least little ones wonﾒt have too many buttons to worry about. With all those things to unlock, kids will have plenty to do and shouldnﾒt get bored for a long time. Young children will like the colorful and fun Kirby characters and settings. You can even see a Kirby cartoon on Saturday mornings on whichever station carries the ﾑFoxBox.ﾒ Watch it with your kids; itﾒs actually kind of fun.
Kid Factor by Cary Woodham
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