There were three separate Kid Icarus demos on the show floor this E3. The first of the demos featured three different missions from the main game whereas the second demo showed off the AR card battling and the third demo featured 3 on 3 multiplayer battles. Being one of the only new IPs developed by Nintendo on the 3DS, the game is one of the more enticing titles as well as it’s being headed by Smash Bros. creator, Sora. After getting my hands on the game, I can only say that I’m even more excited about its upcoming release.
The main game had three different scenarios, each with a different difficulty. I only played the medium and hard difficulty demos (because I’m a badass) but the easy level was shown previously before the conference. What I found was that the game is quite difficult, even if part of the difficulty was built in due to the short amount of time available to finish a level (for instance, the PR reps said that nobody at E3 had finished the hard level yet when I played through it).
The game is extremely simple in terms of controls, with movement done using the joystick and aiming via stylus. However, despite its simplicity, the game is still extremely hectic throughout your experience. Before a level begins, you can choose from a variety of different weapons that affect both Pit’s speed, and the speed, range, and strength of his weapon. The beginning half of each of level involves on rails shooting similar to Star Fox whereas the end of the level features the on-foot portions of the game that was shown off at E3 last year.
Graphically, I felt that this was the best looking game on the 3DS to date. The 3D effect really comes to life on the flying missions and the graphics themselves are quite impressive (while not showing any noticeable drop in frame rate during the time that I played). I also enjoyed the direction taken with the music and storyline. Throughout the mission, Pit and Palutena bicker back and forth about different things from the mission at hand to the makeup of responsibilities of angels, complete with anime caricatures appearing on the touch screen. Though the verbiage is practically non-stop throughout the mission, I really liked the dialogue as well as the voice acting and I felt it was a very unique part of the experience.
Secondly, the AR cards are a nice way to extend the gameplay for a younger audience wishing to collect and battle cards. They did say that the feature was still preliminary so there’s no telling whether the experience will be deepened in some way to appeal to an older audience but as of the E3 build, all that could be done were AR battles between the different characters created by special cards that were given out on the show floor.
Finally, multiplayer was the third available gameplay option and this featured a basic 3 on 3 team battle royale. With the same controls as the single player ground missions, the goal is to reduce the other team’s life meter by attacking their characters. Finally, if the life meter depletes low enough, one of their characters will get a Pit icon over their head. If this player is taken out, the match ends and the other team wins. I wasn’t super impressed with the multiplayer as the map was a little generic and the gameplay had little variation within a match. Still, it was a fast paced multiplayer that is definitely different than anything out there and I’m guessing that there will be many more options and gameplay improvements once the game is released.