(Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/14/2023)
[Image from gamerevolution.com]
Kid Icarus: Uprising
Developer: Project Sora
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): Third-Persona Shooter
Platforms: 3DS
Release Date: March 22, 2012
It makes me wonder what Sakurai’s first step in developing Uprising was because his template to use as a reference was stone-cold stale. The last time Kid Icarus showed its face to the gaming public, it was rendered in black and white, 8-bit pixels on the first iteration of the Gameboy. In the wake of its two-decade absence, Kid Icarus slept through so many vital evolutionary periods that at this point, the series would have to sprint like an Olympic runner in order to catch up with the rest of Nintendo’s properties. Uprising is Kid Icarus's 3D debut, an awkward aspect of development three generations prior that the rest of Nintendo’s early IPs already endured the growing pains of. How could Kid Icarus possibly make that desired impact in the eighth generation of gaming when its lack of experience with modern hardware forces the developers to apply water wings to safely swim in the deep end of the third dimension? After some further consideration, perhaps evaluating Uprising in this manner is looking at it from the wrong perspective. You see, developing every beloved Nintendo property during the early 3D era was especially fretful because the IPs had earned a golden reputation through a series of exceptional, ground-breaking entries in the pixelated generations. Their 3D breakouts still needed to uphold that excellent standard of quality despite the underdeveloped new framework they were sculpting these games with. Fans would’ve been devastated if the third dimension inhibited Link from exploring intricately-designed dungeons or if it stilted Mario’s sprightly acrobatic abilities. The hidden, ironic beauty of developing a Kid Icarus game in a more elaborate graphical plane after two decades is that no one cares about Kid Icarus, everyone except for Sakurai evidently. One most likely can’t have any expectations for something that hasn’t crossed their mind for so long, so Sakurai is given free rein to reimagine Kid Icarus to his liking as long as it retains the same semi-notable protagonist in a realm inspired by Greek mythology. For Uprising, Sakurai didn’t refurbish the rooms of Kid Icarus: he constructed a brand-new house.
Most likely, no one would anticipate Kid Icarus reinventing itself as a third-person shooter. The NES Kid Icarus was staunchly in the 2D platformer genre with the vast majority of its 8-bit ilk, even if its implementation of the genre’s tropes were a scattered mess of ascension levels and weirdly-paced traditional side-scrolling. This lack of cohesiveness and ingenuity is a substantial sum of the reasons why Kid Icarus wasn’t greenlit for greatness like its peers, so it’s for the best that Sakurai practically wiped the slate clean. However, Sakurai still somehow figured that converging two different swirls of genre flavors in the same gameplay cone was a necessary element of Kid Icarus. This time, Kid Icarus tackles two separate methods of blasting enemies away from afar. Each level in Uprising is divided into two distinct shooting sections. The first of the two is a rail shooter where a stream of enemies will engulf the screen as Pit soars through the skies, his contrived trajectory guided by the divine control of Palutena from the heavens. Once Pit survives the ambush above the clouds, the grounded section begins as Pit mows down the armies of the underworld with his full bodily autonomy. The primary goal of the latter half of these levels is to charge toward its boss battle apex point while attempting to endure enough firepower from its cronies on the journey toward it. This halved progression dynamic persists for every single level in Uprising, and only one level deviates from the formula for the sake of plot point relevancy.
One might be concerned that Uprising’s dedicated pension for this predictable level arrangement for a whopping 25 total chapters would cause the player to become numbed by the repetition. Fortunately, Uprising’s gameplay for both the sky and the soil is consistently enthralling. Ripping through the legions of mythical demon creatures with a blazing stream of energy bullets never grows old because of how consistently energetic the action is, with a triumphantly bombastic tone fit for an epic Greek tale to bolster the scope of the scene. Plus, Pit isn’t limited to his piddly, Cupid-esque bow and arrow combination typical of his fairy/angel status. In Uprising, Pit’s arsenal is more stacked than a Texan watering hole. From the long-ranged rapid-fire staffs to the razor-sharp claws and blunt clubs for getting up close and personal, to the balanced blades in between, the sheer variety of deadly toys to play with along with their varied range of practicalities on the field should retain that thrill of combat for the player.
Also, the underworld must be like the United States of afterlife realms because their forces are a melting pot of creatures. We amusingly get to see all of the 8-bit enemies from the NES Kid Icarus rendered in the third dimension, ranging from the one-eyed Monoeyes, the Groucho Marx masked Specknoses, to the more harrowing enemies of the Reapers and notorious Eggplant Wizards. Don’t worry, the eggplant effect is only a temporary curse in Uprising. The developers obviously streamlined dealing with these baddies a bit from their stiff NES origins. Fighting these foes and gaining a profit of hearts from their defeat never makes for a tense encounter. Coupled with all of the new enemies that Uprising introduces like the whale enemy vessel Belunka, cyclops juggernaut Clubberskull, and deceitful, oddly sexy treasure chest Mimicutie enemy most likely stolen from Dark Souls, conquering the underworld’s eclectic army adds another layer of prolonged investment into playing Uprising. The variation also extends to the bosses, of which Pit fights at least one per level. It’s a Clash of the Titans roulette in Uprising as several of the bosses are depictions of notable creatures in classic Greek texts like Pandora and Thanatos or at least alluded to the mythos with the hellhound Twinbellows and giant squid Kraken. While these bosses are as enjoyable, none of their fights are as challenging as dealing with hordes of regular enemies.
The player also has the freedom to make Uprising as enveloping as they please by altering the challenge meter. Uprising’s approach to difficulty is to implement a scale that indicates how overwhelming the level will be on an ascending scale from one to ten with a single-word description coinciding with the specific metric placing. I’d call it the game’s “spice level” if the scale’s visual wasn’t represented by a boiling pot of liquid, ruining my clever food analogy as a result. Still, betting hearts that mix into the soupy, bubbling concoction that represents the difficulty is like sprinkling chili pepper flakes over any dish; your time consuming it will prove to be more memorable, but be careful not to inadvertently punish yourself. The minimalist cartoon drawings above the scale depicting a stick figure Pit being shrouded by more demons should give the player enough of an indication of what to expect, including the richer rewards as compensation for the gamble. When the player becomes aware of their actual skill threshold the hard way and dies as a result, the cauldron will spill all of the wagered hearts and demote them to a marginally decreased difficulty for the remaining duration of the level. This penalty is the game’s not-so-subtle way of signaling to the player that they can’t handle the heat, adjusting more appropriately if need be. While compartmentalizing the levels per decimal makes the range of difficulty superfluous in most spots, the demerit for failure is a brilliant motivator for the player to amplify their abilities. Luckily, at the player’s sweet spot, the game heartily obliges the player with plenty of food and hot spring locations to heal the player, hampering death as much as humanly possible.
Bless all that is holy for all of the game’s accommodations because the player will constantly have to grapple with Uprising’s austere control scheme in the meantime. Handheld systems aren’t designed for games involving intricate, multifaceted button schematics, and not even the 3DS with its innovative, flexible analog control can elevate a handheld to the titanic stature of its home console counterparts. The player aims Pit’s shots by directing the reticle with the stylus and fires with the back L button. This button prompt functions adequately during the opening flight sections when Palutena is manning Pit’s forward velocity. Once Pit regains the use of his legs, however, the wider range of movement greatly exposes the glaring issues with the game’s controls. I thought carpal tunnel syndrome was an urban legend before I played this game, and now my left wrist is screaming bloody murder at me to put it out of its misery. It feels like I’ve been choking the chicken for a week straight. Working the stylus constantly to aim and man the camera with your right hand while holding the system and pressing the back L button with your left hand unbalances the standard equilibrium of holding a controller. Having my non-dominant hand perform the bulk of supporting my kinetic involvement in the game makes every growing moment tense in the worst way possible, only because the cramping was making my hand slip. I never humor Nintendo’s message to take a break from their games as part of their health-conscious initiative but in this case, everyone should heed to the suggestion. I speak with the utmost objectivity when I say that Uprising’s control schematic is probably the worst I’ve experienced across all the games I’ve ever played. They are the sole reason why Uprising is a divisive title, with some people feeling confident in discarding the game completely because of them. The player can change the control scheme in the menu, but no amount of modifications can feasibly make them comfortable. The actual solution would’ve been to develop this game for the Wii, as the dual components of the motion-control Wiimote for aiming and the analog nunchuck to swiftly dodge enemy fire would’ve rectified the issues COMPLETELY. However, Nintendo seemed to have premeditatively given the Wii a premature death after 2011 to starve their consumers for the launch of their next console at the end of 2012, so development time for Uprising inconveniently settled it to the 3DS during the Wii’s purgatorial twilight year that Nintendo mandated.
The controls are a damn shame considering the caliber of Uprising’s gameplay they are tarnishing. Not only that, but the fact that gamers will be deterred away from witnessing the presentational aspects of Uprising that are of equally high quality is a larger tragedy. If your wrists are on their last limbs and are liable to burst from the pressure, I grant you sanction to play this game on a lower difficulty just to hone your focus on the game’s story and characters. It’s these specific facets of Uprising that make me grateful for Sakurai revitalizing the Kid Icarus franchise most of all.
Surprisingly, Uprising is genuinely funny. The first Kid Icarus game featured a few subtle hints of humor, but Uprising revels in being glib. The game is cheekier than Jennifer Lopez wearing a pair of jean shorts. Uprising is as aware of its quarter-century slumber as Laura Palmer and jabs at that fact quite often. Palutena discusses facing off against foes of yore like the Hewdra and Pandora by displaying screenshots of their previous 8-bit encounters. Pandora is even rendered as her primitive ghostly blue flame again in the third dimension to punch this joke to the extra mile. The three heads of the Hewdra are always interrupting each other in a battle for dominant attention, and a rotund, jubilant Thanatos is the antithesis of his usual draconian depiction as the lord of death. Because the game is self-aware, the characters naturally use their advanced perception to break the fourth wall. This tried and true postmodern practice isn’t only used to poke and prod at Kid Icarus but to reference other Nintendo franchises. Let’s say that you made the observation that the Komayto creatures shared a strong resemblance to a Metroid, Uprising affirms that connection for you. While the humorous direction can verge into being too quippy at times, it’s refreshing to see a Nintendo franchise that doesn’t take itself so seriously. It’s Nintendo’s quaint rendition of subverting the ancient Greek lore in a way that fits the company’s accessibility, as opposed to Sony massacring them in God of War.
Uprising’s jaunty tone benefits the characters most of all. It’s ironic that even though we’ve seen Mario and Link’s illustrious history every step of the way that even almost four decades later, all these characters can muster up are still only emotive grunts and one-liners emitted through cartoony vocalization. This lack of substantive characterization extends across almost all of Nintendo’s mascots, for narrative simplicity seems to be an idiosyncratic element of their brand. Pit being untethered by Nintendo tradition gives Sakurai the freedom to make the supernatural angel feel as human as possible. All we could infer from Pit’s personality from his 8-bit incarnation is his commitment to Palutena, as the length he was willing to go to rescue her was rewarded with a promotion at the end of the game. Sakurai extrapolated on this one trait to formulate a character that is a lot like Spongebob Squarepants. No really, Pits shares a lot in common with Nickelodeon’s yellow, undersea icon. They are both overly positive, have a strong sense of duty to the point of being sycophantic to their superiors, and both desire the means to travel faster of their own volition (a boat and the capacity to fly, respectively). They’re also both a pair of squeaky-clean, goody-two-shoes, but I suppose Pit can’t help himself as an angelic entity. Pit’s endearingly dorky disposition is expressed through the background conversations with Palutena, commenting on every bit of action that takes place during a level. While Palutena is essentially a glorified guide to aid the player, her lighthearted banter with Pit gives her enough personality to supersede her role as an advisor. At least this position gives her more character presence than the damsel in distress figure she was before, the fate commonplace for every other female with royal eminence at Nintendo.
The characters that banter with Pit the most are the other supporting characters. Pit’s diminutive role in both status and physical stature seems to be heavily contrasted with the rest of Uprising’s cast. Magnus is a human character that aids Pit in fighting the Dark Lord Gaol in chapter two. His dark features and apparent strength to wield his mighty greatsword make him the masculinity incarnate ying to Pit’s soft, inoffensive yang. Viridi, the petite and bratty goddess of nature of Sakurai’s own creation, uses her godly distinction to undermine Pit. She dishes out more insults than Kazooie, and Pit is too determined and proud to let her penetrate his confidence. Her temporary role in guiding Pit highlights her foil role to Palutena, as she certainly isn’t as pragmatic or patient with Pit as she is. Speaking of confidence, the flaming, self-proclaimed sun god Pyrrhon exudes a sense of quasi-heroic cockiness that Pit is too humble to share. Really, the most on-the-nose contrast with Pit is Dark Pit, a more dour-looking version of Pit with a black tunic formed by our hero staring at his own reflection for one moment too many in the Mirror of Truth. While Dark Pit is obviously equal to Pit in size and relative repute, Dark Pit defies the character traits of his originator with his rogue attitude and edgier demeanor. Well, it depicts a better character contrast than Sonic and Shadow, at least. Pit’s interactions with all of these character foils are thoroughly entertaining and had me smirking throughout. I just wish that these conversations didn’t take place during battle, as they tended to be quite distracting.
To everyone’s further surprise, the bounciness of Uprising’s characters even extends to its main antagonist. No, not Medusa, as she’s manically determined as any typical villain would be to conquer the world and crush her adversaries. I’m referring to the game’s TRUE main antagonist. In the ninth chapter, the game intentionally misleads the player into thinking that the fight against Medusa is the climactic point of the game with her being the main villain of the first game along with Pit decked out with the three sacred treasures. In a turn of events, Medusa is merely a red herring for Hades, the king of the underworld and the primary cause of this holy attrition. This twist was not surprising because I still remember my Greek mythology education from middle school. What was a shock was that the game was barely half over at this point.
Unlike Medusa, Hades is a vibrant, charismatic antagonist. You know the phenomenon that occurs when people have morbid lines of work like being a doctor or mortician and form a callous to cope with the hardships? Well, bearing the brunt of the world’s deceased has turned the lord of the underworld into a flamboyant clown that is at least three degrees related to Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show. His growing indifference to death and destruction due to his godly vocation has turned him into a raving sociopath, toying with mankind like a kid does to an ant hill with a magnifying glass. Despite his flippant manner, Hades still retains his eminence. The newest idea Hades has conjured up is fabricating the existence of a wish seed, something the humans wage war over out of gullible desperation. In the event of the humans being distracted, an alien race called the Aurum takes advantage of the earth’s resources. All of this culminates in Pit spiraling into utter defeat after the seventeenth chapter. Three years after his defeat, Pit has to clean up the mess in the wake of his failures and train himself to finally vanquish Hades harder than Rocky did eating all of those raw eggs. While Hades' titanic status as the main antagonist is effectively portrayed when our hero succumbs to his might, the way it is executed is rather clumsy. The Aurum is an asinine plot device whose middling relevance only seems to be tied to causing Pit’s downfall. I’m not entirely sure the parasitic Chaos Kin is really relevant to the grand overarching plot either. The goal of the story should’ve focused entirely on Hades, who is formidable enough to carry the weight of the main antagonist role. Also, Hades' time in the spotlight delves into some insightful musings on the human condition from divine outsiders looking in. While Hades and the other gods to a lesser extent have contempt for humans because of their pathetically selfish propensities, Pit eloquently states that the gods only exist because humans are the only mortal beings with the intellectual capacity for spirituality, conveying a symbiotic relationship between the heavens and the earth. After all, what is a God to a non-believer? Is Uprising actually delving into complex philosophies relating to faith and human nature? Isn’t this game from the same company where an Italian guy saves the same woman again and again and a pink marshmallow eats everything in sight?
When all is seemingly done, Uprising elongates its playtime even more with a bevy of content outside of the main story. All of the additions surrounding Uprising starts to remind everyone that Sakurai is the driving force behind Super Smash Bros. A checklist prescribed by Palutena offers over 120 boxes that reveal an extravagant painting per box checked off. These tasks range from using a specific weapon type to defeat a boss, clearing a chapter under a certain time, to being transformed into an eggplant. Real funny, Sakurai. After a certain point, the player unlocks TWO MORE checklists commissioned by Viridi and Hades with the same amount of objectives. Little figures of the game’s characters and settings similar to the trophies in Smash Bros. are unlocked via a chance mechanic like the aforementioned series and are displayed in a gallery with descriptive blurbs. The player can also engage in an online multiplayer mode that models a capture-the-flag game with skins of Pit divided by white and black factions. The game offers as much content to sink as Sakurai’s more involved IP, and that one has an incredible amount of star power.
Sakurai profoundly loves Kid Icarus. How else do you explain the finished product of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Sakurai wasn’t even involved with Nintendo, much less with the creation of the first Kid Icarus on the NES, yet he raised the franchise like it was his own child. His unconditional passion for the forgotten Kid Icarus IP has enabled the prolific Nintendo developer to convey his strong feelings with an impressive amount of hard work attached. His efforts have done more than convince me of Kid Icarus's full potential: he’s convinced me that Pit should headline the next Smash Bros. game. His one comeback arguably features more content, pizzazz, and personality than all of Nintendo’s more celebrated series, which is just absolutely astonishing. Unfortunately, the compromise with the controls that Sakurai has to make in adhering to the technically inferior 3DS handheld is the game’s Achilles heel. Actually, it’s Uprising’s bulbous, salient zit on its beautiful face. It's enough to keep Pit out of being the beau of the ball for Nintendo's 2012 prom. For those who appreciated everything else in the game regardless of its controls, Sakurai made a miracle in making us all clamor for more Kid Icarus after several years of total indifference. Bravo!
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