Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is another excellent Nintendo remaster

videogameschronicle.com:

Kirby has never been more popular than right now.

Last year’s Kirby and the Forgotten Land is already the pink blob’s best-selling game ever, but as enjoyable as that 3D adventure was, Kirby fans knew in their heart that Kirby’s true home is side-scrolling 2D platforming, and this ‘latest’ offering is further evidence why that’s the case.

We say ‘latest’ in inverted commas because Return to Dream Land Deluxe isn’t a completely new game – it’s a significant remaster of a somewhat underrated Wii title released back in 2011.

More than a decade may have passed since the game was originally released, but solid gameplay is timeless, and it turns out a fresh lick of paint is all that’s needed for what’s still an entertaining adventure.

If you missed out the first time around, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland tells the story of Magolor, an alien whose starship, the Lor Starcutter, crashes on Kirby’s planet, Popstar.

Magolor says he’ll take Kirby and his pals on a trip to his home planet Halcandra if they can help him recover the scattered broken pieces of his ship. There may be more to it than that, but that would be telling.

Cue your typical Kirby platforming shenanigans, then, as players make their way through seven worlds floating around, inhaling enemies and stealing their powers.

The most obvious difference to those who played the Wii version is the jump in visual detail. At first glance, it may appear to be a straight remaster, but put the game side-by-side with the original and it’s clearly something far more substantial than a basic upscale job. The scenery has been recreated in more detail, for starters.

There are also a few new additions to the game that weren’t in the Wii version, including a couple of new abilities. One of these,