Kirby's Epic Yarn

My wife and I used to play games together quite often, but now that we've got a little one in the house, finding time to do so has been a bit more difficult. There's always things to be done. And when we have time to crash and relax, I tend to play games while she tends to read or watch things. She also tends to go to be earlier than me. (Because she's smarter than me). But we're trying to squeeze in a single hour GAME NIGHT once a week now. And so we decided to start with Kirby's Epic Yarn - a critically lauded game that I think I picked up super cheap two or three years ago and haven't touched since.

Kirby's Epic Yarn has a completely co-op mode, and while we worried we'd get in each other's way a la New Super Mario Bros Wii, that hasn't really been the case so far. Yes, there's been some accidental picking each other up, but for the most part, it feels more cooperative. Like, I can pick her up and throw her to a higher platform to reach a collectible or something.

It's a super cute game. Which is another way of saying it's a Kirby game, I guess. But the yarn style is great. And man, the Wii still looks impressive over composite. Or component cables? What's the one with the five plugs instead of three? I'm blanking here.

Our only real complaint thus far is all the BS in between levels. There's a dude that wants us to decorate an apartment with furniture, but we don't care. Also, between every level it feels like the game has to LOAD and SAVE multiple times which kills the momentum. But the actual meat of the game is pretty fun. Not overly hard, though sometimes slightly frustrating. The riding balloons to the top of a stage was annoying. And the lava rising level got frantic toward the end - which may have been easier in a single player game.

But overall, it seems fun so far. At least an hour in.

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Our second hour into Epic Yarn was a bit less fun. There's a lot of parts with precise platforming that would be fun and challenging with one player, but a total annoyance with two players because if one of us misses a jump, we'll both have to go back and start the section over. At some points, we'd just pick each other up and carry the other person through a section, which kind of kills the point of co-op.

Then - THEN - there was a section where we turned into a train and you have to use the Wii remote to "paint" train tracks which was a total mess. We got pretty frustrated with that part and I don't know. I think our opinion has gone way down on this game. Which is a shame because the fun parts really are fun, but the annoying parts are REALLY annoying.