Creo que los rail shooters son lo más cercano en la actualidad a Dragon's Lair. Una peliculita animada en la que no dejan de suceder cosas rimbombantes de fondo mientras como jugadores nos limitamos a una suma de comandos anecdótica. Nada de lo que ves se siente real y encima todo está sobrelabrado, cada animación de caminar, de disparar, de atacar, de esquivar es excesiva a la vista en esta estética kingdomheartera de polígolonos inflados y destellos para todo. Y entre todo este artificio está un sistema de control que te desliga más todavía de lo que acontece. Con todas las acciones posibles en un único botón se crea una falta de consistencia constante. Pegar cuerpo a cuerpo y disparar se hacen con la misma acción, girar la cámara y apuntar lo mismo, o moverte y dashear. Y no es un asunto de sistema de control extraño al que cuesta acostumbrarse (estoy jugando Resident Evil 5 en paralelo y su control es tan peculiar como consistente), es un tema de falta de saber ligar todo este desorden de animaciones, acciones, destellos y juego de cámara en un sistema compacto. Porque entonces se perdería la pretendida espectacularidad de estos juegos donde hay que creerse que lo que ves y juegas es lo más increíble que has visto y jugado nunca.

Back when I got this game in 2012, I was in a tight spot when it comes to my passions in media. Most of my family and friends considered videogames as a "worthless waste of time", that are only capable of damaging your mind and will never be able to make anything other than that. Behing a big insecure fella, this pressure would have led me to agree with them.

Then I played this game, and it changed my mind forever.
Not only it's one of the best game I have ever played... it's probably the piece of media that shaped me the most and is responsible for the person I am today.

This game is a masterpiece. The main director, Masahiro Sakurai (the mastermind behind Super Smash Bros and Kirby) takes the premise of a goofy NES title, ressurrect it and evolves it in so many ways, that makes it stand out so hard over the landscape of modern videogames. It does so many things well that are even hard to list in a single review.

The presentation is immaculate, using the console it was build for to its limits. It takes big inspiation by greek mythology while also twisting most of the things we know about it, to create a really creative, wacky and endearing world.
The writing is incredible, lighthearted and full of hilarious moments, but it's also able to hit hard when the story is at its darker moments.
The characters and their banters are some of the best part of the game. All of them have these bombastic personalities, enhanced by the always amazing voice acting performances, and the way they interact with each others lead to one of the best cast in Nintendo's catalogues of heroes and villains.

The gameplay is addictive, with almost infinite levels of customization and over 100 types of weapons and combat styles to perfect.
The music and graphics are stuck in my mind for years, and complements really well the wacky adventures the games unfold.
It has one of the best multiplayer mode I have ever seen in a game, so good that has been active for more than a decade, with a community always open to new players.

Like everything, it does have its flaws: the fact that this gem is a Thid-person shooter stuck on a portable console means that the way the control works can be considered janky or even hurtful for a lot of people. I totally get that.

But aside from that, if people come to me and ask "What kind of game you consider timeless art?".....
THIS is one of the things I will immediately point at!

PLAY KID ICARUS UPRISING.
My favorite videogames ever and an incredibly underrated masterpiece.
You will not regret it.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is the best game on the Nintendo 3DS. Every mode in the game is fun, and what started as me playing the online again, before it was gone for good on April 8th, turned into a full replay. I really love how this game mixes story and character interactions into the gameplay, having every character talk while you play, using the on rails sections as playable cutscenes but keeping the challenge and openness of an actual game compared to a lot of modern games today. This game is full of a lot of the Sakurai design ethos in maximizing customization, fun, and challenge, similar to Kirby Air Ride, which makes me consider this both his best game and probably one of Nintendo’s best games ever. The story is great, the characters are all largely full of depth and well written, and the level design is amazing. The only way this game falls short to me is the controls, now a lot of people hate the controls as it hurts them, I’ve never had this issue somehow. My issue is instead that I feel like the controls are just not precise enough, I found myself sprinting when I wanted to walk, constantly falling off platforms because of this and fighting the camera to turn it at all. I think overall this is always going to be somewhere in my favorite games ever,.

Juego excelentísimo, jugabilidad y misiones bastante entretenidas y divertidas.
A pesar de que prácticamente Kid Icarus solo había tenido un título en los 80's, el estudio que está encargado de este juego logró hacer un muy buen trabajo. Hay bastante que sacar de esta saga, así que ideas para una secuela no van a faltar.
Mejoras y trofeos y demás, no son tan mi especialidad, me dedique solamente a jugar y ya esta.
La historia es simple, pero da bastantes vueltas para alargar el juego, cosa que no veo mal, ya que no es como que el juego merezca durar poco xD.
Lo jugué en la 3ds.

Historically, shoot em up games that focus on dodging and shooting as the central mechanic have not really appealed to me. To be fair, I probably haven't given them enough tries, but this game makes me want to because it is a lot of fun all the way through. Not to mention the land battling that contains a lot of the game's complexity and strategy.

The flying sections which are the most similar to traditional shoot em ups were actually some of my favorites in the game. I'll get into the controls later but they actually feel pretty comfortable during these sections. It feels like they were designed for the flying and not the land battles. Gliding around the stage while aiming at demons is a great rub-your-tummy-pat-your-head kind of challenge that I enjoyed refining as the game went along. The levels and visuals are really beautiful during this sections whether it be gliding over a human town at war, exploring an outer space stronghold, passing through Viridi's nature depots, or whatever wacked up idea the devs had. I appreciate how the levels typically open with these sections due to Palutenna's limited power of flight. It gets me excited to play each level and creates a solid structure for the experience. One criticism of the sky sections I do have is that the enemy variety does fall off towards the end to where it feels like I am shooting the same cacophony of demons, forces of nature, and aurum troops over and over again.

The land battles are where the bulk of this game takes place and is also where most of the challenge comes from. This is where the wacky controls start to really be a factor. They take some time to get used to honestly cause a little bit of pain and numbness if you play for too long. I appreciate that they are very unique and very functional once you get the hang of them though. The land sections are where the game gets a lot of it's personality. Each level and location carves out a unique environment, identity, and personal storyline that the characters discuss and get you interested in. There are often a handful of enemies that get introduced that build to this feeling as well. Then, obviously there are bosses to each chapter that are mostly exclusive to the ground sections. Most of them are interesting and build to the identity that these chapters build for themselves even more. There is decent gameplay variety and strengths and weaknesses to most of them as well. My one main complaint would be that most of the bosses are actually much easier than the levels themselves. However, this is partly due to my biggest pet peeve of the game though, the death descending difficulty slider.

In general, I really prefer not to choose my difficulty, just set the game at a good difficulty level and let me enjoy it with hopefully a solid level of challenge that is uniform for all players. If you want me to choose a difficulty at the very beginning, fine I'll pick one and we ball, but this game makes you pick one every level with collectibles locked behind certain difficulty intensities that you don't even know before hand. Not only that, but if you die and don't want to restart the level the game LOWERS the difficulty. Whatever happened to gritting it out and trying to power through a tough challenge. This basically means if you lose to a boss the next time you face it, it's going to be a little bit easier, so it leaves me wondering did I win because I played better or because the game made me lower the difficulty. Overall, I just really don't like how ever present the difficulty slider is. On the positive side on design choices, I found the Sakurai menus and staples to be charming and functional. I also enjoyed fusing my weapons and experimenting with all the different different cutomization options even though sometimes I did fuck things up.

The story is actually pretty fun as well. The voice acting within the levels goes a long way in building up individual storylines as well as a broader narrative that comes together at a few different climax points. I like a lot of the main characters, despite sometimes being a bit cringe. Pitt and Palutenna's discussions are great background to kill demons to and characters like Magnus, Viridi, Hades, and a lot of the bosses add so much to the experience. Lastly, I want comment on how creative the game is. They took a game series with not much to work with and challenged themselves to get crazy with it. There are so many cool ideas. The chapter where you play as a little girl, a dog, magnus en route to killing Pit exemplifies the success of their experimentation.

Overall, Uprising is a really creative, beautiful, and unique experience. Although, the controls can quite literally be painful at times (I actually paced myself by taking a lot of breaks) and the intensity slider kinda pisses me off. That does not soil what is a tremendous game that experiments with a variety of different ideas and even gameplay styles.

https://imgur.com/cxXhk3t

Just for the soon-to-be dead online, this game is amazing and ranks top 3 3ds games for me. Great gameplay, great characters, great online despite the lagginesss. Endless and fun grind, including for just playing online to get more hearts + weapons to fuse to make even better weapons. Online maps are a little hit or miss unfortunately.

I heard complaints about the controls, but I disagree. The touch screen is vital for precise aiming, and the mechanics behind them (different normal shots + charged shot moves depending on the direction your moving, strafing, dodging, etc.) makes it a very well in-depth game.

I'll do a proper review sometime soon when I replay the game, I'm just very sad that the online is soon going away.

"Owowowowww, the game hurts my hands!" Has it dribbled anywhere in-between your simpering pauper neurons that maybe your hands are simply not powerful enough for Kid Icarus: Uprising?

In all seriousness, the controls are rough. That's the only negative point against a game that takes the on-rails shooter to new heights. It uses the genre's fixed timing and perspective to launch you through environments with all the flair and chaos of a theme park ride. The game is stuffed with priceless dialog and is overall just a pitch-perfect reinvention of Kid Icarus. It's a real shame there's been no port or follow-up to speak of.

Kid Icarus Uprising es un juego desarrollado por Sora LTD y Nintendo y lanzado en 2012 para Nintendo 3DS. Este juego es el renacer de la saga Kid Icarus tras unos 25 años de letargos. A pesar de que tuvo un juego para NES y otro para GameBoy, la saga fue prácticamente olvidada hasta que en 2008 Sakurai rediseñó el personaje para incluirlo en Super Smash Bros Brawl. Tras ver el nuevo rediseño de Pit y Palutena, Nintendo le encargó que resucitará la saga y este juego es el resultado.
Kid Icarus Uprising me ha sorprendido desde el minuto uno por sus conversaciones, que son muy entretenidas y divertidas. La mayoría de ellas ocurren durante la acción del juego, por lo que pueden ser un poco difíciles de seguir (recomendó subir el volumen de las voces y bajar el de los efectos, así como subir el texto a la pantalla de arriba si es necesario), pero creo que son parte imprescindible del juego ya que es en esos momentos cuando más se enseña la personalidad de los personajes y cuando más evolución tienen. Por supuesto gran parte de la historia se cuenta a modo de estas conversaciones también y aunque no de mucho tiempo de apreciarlas, están acompañadas de varios artes distintos de los personajes con expresiones varias.
El gameplay hace homenaje a la dualidad de gemapley que tenía el juego original. En el Kid Icarus de NES hay niveles en los que avanzas de abajo a arriba, mientras que en otros avanzas de izquierda a derecha, y entre medias hay niveles tipo mazmorra con un jefe final. En Uprising cada nivel tiene 3 partes: la primera en la que vas volando y disparando al estilo Star Fox, la segunda que es una fase a pie de libre movimiento y la tercera que suele ser un jefe final. La verdad es que el sistema funciona mejor de lo que puede parecer al principio, ayuda a que el juego sea menos repetitivo. Personalmente creo que las fases áreas son las más épicas y espectaculares, me jugaría un juego entero solo con esas fases. Pero aparte de eso, la variedad de escenarios y situaciones que nos encontramos es abrumadora: desde batallas en ciudades amuralladas, pasando por plantas gigantes aéreas y hasta batallas en el espacio.
Gráficamente el juego luce ESPECTACULAR. No podemos olvidar que es un juego de 2012, de principios de la vida de 3DS, pero aun así, el equipo dirigido por Sakurai de las apañó para hacer un portento gráfico que va todo el rato a unos fluidos 60fps y en el que la profundidad de los escenarios destaca mucho gracias ala efecto 3DS de la consola. En cierto modo, se nota que es un juego pensado para utilizar todo lo posible las nuevas características de la consola, ene este caso el 3DS, el botón deslizante y la pantalla táctil.
Pero el juego no se queda ahí por que acompaña esos graficazos con una banda sonora que es divina, no se hace apenas repetitiva (ni la música del menú) y está constantemente aportando ambiente a la experiencia.
Este juego merece un apartado especial sobre los controles. El juego permite casi todas las combinaciones posibles de controles que te puedas imaginar usando el botón deslizante, los botones, la cruceta, el lápiz táctil e incluso el botón deslizante Pro. Lo único que le falta es soporte para el C-stick de la New 3DS. La opción de poder remapear casi todo es todo un detalle que se agradece mucho. Tras probar muchas combinaciones decidí que la que mejor control me daba era la predeterminada, que usa “L” para disparar, el botón deslizante para mover a Pit y la pantalla táctil para apuntar. Desafortunadamente, para poder manejar bien la 3Ds con estos controles hay que sujetar la consola en una posición que creo que es incomoda, lo cual puede quitarte un poco las ganas de jugar.
Kid Icarus Uprising es un juego que tenía pendiente y por el que no tenía especial interés, pero ha sido todo un descubrimiento ya que combina un buen gameplay con situaciones divertidas, inesperadas y variadas, tanto a nivel de niveles como a nivel de personajes. Pienso que es un juego que todos deberían de probar y que un relanzamiento en una nueva consola le vendría muy bien para ganar accesibilidad.