Kirby Canvas Curse…one of the first ACTUAL games to come out for the DS, and one of the best. Kirby Canvas Curse is an amazing game that fully implements the touch screen in awesome ways. You can make a road for Kirby, block attacks, stun enemies, move Kirby and lots of other tricks.

When you first turn on the game, you get a little story, with use of stills and some floating words. Basically, this witch comes and turns everything into a painting and Kirby follows her and gets turned into a ball. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. It looks good though, nice visuals.

Then you can opt to go into Options and select the training mode. This will teach you the basics of the game, from moving, to killing enemies and stealing their abilites, blocking, and so forth. It is very helpful and useful and you should probably check it out just to be sure you know how to do everything. It doesn’t last TOO long, so no worries.

EVERYTHING is done on the touch screen. You do not use the buttons at all. The top screen has a map on it, which I never look at because I’m focused on the gameplay, as well as your health or vitallity meter, star points, lives, and ink meter. You’re ink is what you use to make paths that Kirby can “roll” over to avoid gaps and to get to higher places and what not, and also, the ink can block most enemies and projectiles, like flames or cannon fire.

However, you have a certain amount of ink you can use at one time, so you can’t go crazy putting it everywhere. Don’t get worried though, your ink meter automatically fills up when you aren’t using it, and fills up quickly if you are on the ground. Another thing is that you can only have one line of ink at a time, because as soon as you draw your second line, the first dissapears, so be strategic in how you draw your lines.

There are eight levels, with three stages in each, and each stage has multiple parts to play through. The stages are very nice looking and varied. There are lava stages and futuristic-type stages and underwater stages and much more. The levels get longer and harder as you progress through the game, so don’t think that all the levels will be as short as the first couple. Your goal is to make it to the rainbow door…You’ll find it.

At the end of the first two stages, you get to do this Dash Jump little mini-game. In this game, you tap Kirby as many times as possible to make him dash, and then when he reaches the end of the platform, you draw a ramp for him and try to make him “jump” the farthest. You do this after the first two stages in each level, and try to beat your record. By getting a high jump, you get star points. If you collect 100 star points in the stage itself or the jump, you get an extra life.

At the end of the third stage, you have a boss stage. There are three bosses, with two levels each, and you get to choose who you want to “fight”. The bosses’ stages differ completely.In one, you are playing a breakout-type game, where you have to defeat the boss at the end; in another, you are in a mine cart and trying to win the race; and the last one is where you basically have to connect the dots. They are all pretty fun though, and once you beat the level 2 version, you can play them whenver you like, but more on that later.

Another cool mode is the Rainbow Run. Once you beat a level, you can play the Rainbow Run version of it. What it is is a time trial and an ink limit; two seperate things. So you play the levels with one of these goals, and you get medals based on your performance. You can earn up to three medals per type.

Medals are a huge part of the game. Each level has nine medals in it, so I’m guessing they split it up to three medals per stage. You can also get medals in the Rainbow Runs, six per level, and you can get medals in the subgames. There are 250, yes 250 medals that you can earn or find in this game, so there’s definite replay value and striving to get all the medals to keep you coming back because it is no easy task.

Why find the medals you ask? Well, because you can purchase stuff in the Medal Swap “store”. Here, you can purchase “mystery items” since you can’t see what they are until you buy them. You can unlock songs, levels to be played in the Rainbow Run, upgrade your vitallity meter, different style ink lines, and much more.

The Subgames are cool. Once you have beaten a boss twice, you can play it whenever you like in the Subgames menu. I would like to think that there are a few more of these games that you can unlock, but we shall see. Anyways, each subgame has three levels of difficulty, and your high scores are recorded, so you can always come back and try to beat your high score. Also, there is a ranking system, with A-F probably, and you also get a little title. Of course, you can earn medals in the subgames as well.

I thought the game would be a bit difficult, you know, drawing lines all over the place to get through the level and protect yourself from enemies, and tap the enemies and dash and do all these things, but they are pretty easy to pick up, although they will take a little more work to master, so the game is no cake walk, by any means, but the controls are pretty intuitive and easy to learn. You just tap an enemy to stun it so you can kill him, or tap Kirby to dash and kill things and go faster; pretty simple stuff.

One thing that is hard to do is maneuver underwater. I have trouble with that, since Kirby floats up to the top, but you want to go down, so you have to draw the lines in a certain way, which is difficult to do….so that gives me a lot of problems and is a bit frustrating.

Of course, it’s Kirby, so you can steal enemies abilities, and there are a ton to get, from flame attacks, to electric attacks, to turning into a stone or missle, just a bunch of things you can get.

There are a lot of cool options as well. Surprisingly, you start out with the Sound Room, so you can listen to most of the cool songs and sound effects that are in the game, so that’s always nice.

And the awesomest feature ever, that should’ve been implanted with the DS, is the ability to search for Pictochatters while you play. Weird thing is though, is that you have to select that you want to do this everytime you play…I don’t know why that is, but I’m thinking it might drain your battery a little more, but that wasn’t said anywhere, so I don’t know….But yeah, it’s sweet. If a Pictochat room is active, a little icon will appear on your screen to alert you, and you can click on the icon.

HOWEVER, it does not automatically take you to Pictochat. You have to turn off the DS, and then go there normally, so that is pretty lame, but it’s still an awesome feature nonetheless.

* The credits are also pretty cool. It shows all the enemies and everything, which is neat, and the last two stages are awesome.

Kirby Canvas Curse is an amazing game, with lots to do. The replay value of the Subgames and trying to collect all the medals will have you coming back for more and more. The Pictochat feature is nice, and it is just a great game. The graphics and music are excellant, with the graphics being very vibrant and smooth. The game is great and the first or second MUST HAVE for the DS, which it desperately needed. Everyone should go out and pick up this game, you won’t be dissapointed. It’s fun, and you can pick it up and play it whenever you have a few minutes, or sit down with it for hours.

*MAJOR REPLAY VALUE DISCOVERED!!!

(Minor Spoiler)

After beating level 8, the last boss, you get the Waddle Dee ball, so bacially you can choose to play as a Waddle Dee, instead of Kirby. Not only is it cool looking, this ball has different characteristics. For one, you cannot gain enemy abilities with it, and you also bounce more, and you bounce on the rainbow line more, so its harder to keep your path. So, now you can clear all the levels using this Waddle Dee ball, and beating it with this ball is recorded, and adds to your percentage.

And it looks like you can get other character balls as well. In fact, I’ve heard many times that if you put in Nightmare in Dreamland or Amazing Mirror, you get another character…..I need to find somebody with those games.