3DS Hands-on: Kid Icarus: Uprising

February 4, 2011

When Kid Icarus: Uprising was announced at E3 2010, most assumed it would be a launch title. Since they said it was conceived as a launch title. Well it’s not, but it’s still Kid Icarus, and it’s a decent amount of fun.

 

 

 

The game’s stages are typically broken up into two parts: an air battle and a land battle. In the air, you slide Pit around and shoot with the touch screen. These stages focus on fast action, since you don’t actually steer around the air and just dodge obstacles. You can hold down the shoot button for rapid fire, and that’s what you’d do all the time except that it slows Pit down a bit. Sometimes you need to be more evasive.

The land battles switch things up a bit, since you’ll need to look left and right by swiping the screen to see more enemies coming at you. It’s a different type of gameplay, but we’re skeptical that it’s just as good.

An interesting twist is the inclusion of different weapons, which, while all basically functioning similarly, have different attributes, fire rates and drawbacks. This should be a nice way to play the way you want, as we preferred the fast-shooting options but could see others liking increased agility or more power.

We only saw two levels of each, so we’re still curious how the game will bring variety into the mix. For now, though, the core concept looks nice and we’re hoping it stays airborne more often than not.