Every game needs a moment - a moment that it alone can offer.
(Random examples; I played both over the weekend.)
Kirby’s Dream Buffet review
Kirby’s Dream Buffethas that moment.
It has the moment that purely belongs to Kirby’s Dream Buffet.
It comes at the end of one of the races.
It’s fabulous stuff.
One last strawberry ere we die!
And at first this moment is just one bit of business in a game made of bits of business.
Slowly, though, slowly and steadily, structure emerges.
But even within the structure there is a certain headlong wildness that remains.
The theme is pudding and breakfast and lunch - spongey burger buns and buttery pancakes.
This is what the world is made of.
Then it forms arenas for mini-games and a climactic battle royale.
Whoever has eaten the most strawberries - and grown the biggest - by the end of it all wins.
The races are a lot of fun.
Fall off and you get a sort of Yoshi float period to get back on the track.
The confusing thing is that you’re not only racing to the finish line.
Like many of life’s conundrums, I am still pondering this one.
In between races you get mini-games, which tend to be top-down and deeply chaotic.
Collect strawberries as they fall from the sky or spawn in teacups!
Defeat enemies as you collect strawberries!
The courses are elbowy and swift, the mini-games filled with accidental disaster.
It all ends with four Kirby-alikes set on scales as various bonuses are applied and the biggest Kirby wins.
And the subconscious desire, perhaps, to eat an awful lot of strawberries.
