Kid Icarus: Uprising
Winging it.
What with all the fantasy enemies, classical environments and big bad bosses, there's plenty here to please those who remember playing Kid Icarus when they were kids themselves. However, the brief demo we played suggests there's been a big shift in emphasis from platforming to shooting when it comes to gameplay, and this might not appeal to everyone.
The even bigger question is whether this fondly remembered olden-days platformer will benefit from getting the 3D treatment. After all, it hasn't always worked so well for Sonic over the years.
But with Uprising we're talking the 3DS treatment, of course. This means your brain has to cope with seeing and controlling Icarus in the foreground, while simultaneously observing, targeting and attacking enemies in the background. Meanwhile your hands have to cope with using three implements simultaneously - the Circle Pad, stylus and shoulder button.
On first picking up the game, it all feels a bit tricky and awkward. Things get easier with only a little practice, however, and shooting enemies soon becomes quite satisfying. When I was playing, it helped that the baddies seemed a bit thick in terms of dodging missiles. They were also rubbish at coming up with original attack patterns, many of which seemed to be based on the not very effective strategic technique of standing still.
The game felt easier to play with the 3D effect turned off, it has to be said. Without depth of field to consider my brain seemed to be better at judging distances and aiming attacks. The obvious disadvantage, of course, is that you feel like you're playing just another fantasy action game - there's nothing about Uprising which seems particularly innovative once you take away that fancy 3D effect.
In the end I found a sweet spot by pushing the 3D switch about three quarters of the way up. This made it possible to get a sense of foreground and background, without having to concentrate too hard on the moving elements of the image. Even so, I still found myself seeing double occasionally and having to refocus my vision mid-fight.
But perhaps that's just because I'm an ancient old buffer with wonky eyes. Unlike me, The Kids of Today have been looking at pixels since the day they were born, and have brains which can cope with watching 16 and Pregnant and listening to Justin Bieber while happy-slapping each other on Facebook and live-blogging their own Twitter account.
So perhaps they'll love Kid Icarus: Uprising. And perhaps, in 20-odd years' time, they'll be complaining about the fact he's still called Kid. Probably as they sit down to play the latest instalment in the series, which is so technologically advanced it's made of holograms and beamed directly into their eyes by a laser in space. We can only hope.