Driver: Renegade

You play as series mainstay John Tanner, an ex-cop who's hired by one of New York's big political figures to rid the city's streets of crime. Doing so requires you to mercilessly drive your car around like a lunatic and bash into any enemy vehicles that try to stop you--and that's pretty much the extent of what Driver: Renegade 3DS has to offer. For the most part, the driving is solid but completely unremarkable. Individual cars (which are unlocked after completing missions) handle according to their relative stats, and also make use of a "rage bar." The bar recharges during drifts and stunts, giving you access to a temporary speed boost and the ability to destroy assailants using shunts.

Not only do the game's run-of-the-mill racing objectives fail to capitalize on the solid driving mechanics, but it also makes it easy to cheat the system and truncate the running time of an otherwise prolonged mission to much shorter periods. For instance, instead of becoming embroiled in a captivating car chase through the city streets, merely trapping an opposing car against a nearby wall and then ramming into it a few times is more than enough to meet the requirements of your objective. Boxing in an opponent may sound like a valid tactic to some, but in reality, it's just not fun; and you may even find yourself causing such incidents to happen without even trying. Even worse, similar frustrations can also befall you. Spinning out and knocking against other cars or parts of the environment rapidly drains the stability of your car, meaning that deaths are often unfair and unpredictable.

The Story mode is light on interesting exposition, and the incredibly hammy dialogue and voice acting are executed with absolutely no subtlety whatsoever. Brief motion comics highlight the paper-thin narrative, and its justifications for throwing you into missions are poorly conceived. Tanner himself, who has been relatively stoic in the past, is inexplicably transformed into an archetypal tough guy who shamefully spouts a small selection of bad one-liners and puns ad nauseam. The game desperately tries to appear edgy with gratuitous swearing; and there are embarrassing attempts at titillation via the introduction of a sultry female character, but all of its efforts are awkwardly juvenile. It also takes no more than three hours to get through the story's 20 missions, although the game actually runs out of tricks by about half that length. There's a separate Career mode as well, which allows you to compete in specific events pulled from the main game, including time trials and eliminator races. However, it's essentially the same content without the shoddy narrative in between, so you won't feel much desire to carry on playing past the fleeting Story mode. While you can use StreetPass to exchange scores and records, multiplayer of any kind is a no-show--not even local play is included.


While they're nice to look at, the motion comics illustrate a poorly conceived story.
The polygonal city you ride and smash around in is a hollow and vaguely open-world map with a noticeable lack of life on the surrounding streets. Every inch of the city feels empty on a drastic scale: Traffic is extremely light and the absence of everyday citizens galloping from the path of your speeding car seems strangely at odds with the conventions of the series. It also doesn't help that everything looks so washed out and jagged. Plus, the shoddy use of stereoscopic 3D adds nothing to the visuals--it's much more comfortable to play with the slider turned all the way down. On the plus side, the soundtrack is tolerable and the menus are generally well produced; in fact, they are arguably the most impressive aspect of the entire game.

From its overwhelming repetition to its tepid attempts to be cool and irreverent, Driver: Renegade 3D is a game that fails to create an action-driving hybrid that is even remotely engaging. Its solid driving mechanics have been squandered on a game that is far too boring, and the end result is a product that feels consistently rough and flawed in every way.

Kirby Mass Attack

The game's effervescent plot thickens when Kirby's latest nemesis, the evil skull-lord Necrodeus, blasts the poor fellow into 10 tiny versions of himself in hopes of eradicating the pink hero once and for all. His plan almost works, but one remaining wayward Kirby manages to escape. Setting out to rally the troops and defeat Necrodeus by piecing himself back together, the last Kirby must rely on his mini-pals for support. This cute story gimmick translates into some excellent strategic platforming and puzzle-solving. Beefing up and maintaining your small pink army is integral to the gameplay, and the unique ways that you have to put the little guys to use from one level to the next keep the adventure from stagnating. The numerous stages across Mass Attack's five worlds also require you to have a certain number of Kirbys in your group to proceed--secret areas within every stage are accessed in much the same way. You gain more of your comrades as you go by collecting fruit to fill a score meter, but your herd can be whittled down if any perish permanently within a given stage. It's a cool dynamic that encourages backtracking and exploring because any Kirbys you collect will stay with you within a given world as long as you don't let them die off.

Mass Attack's intuitive touch-centric controls are fun to use and make the challenging task of micromanaging a herd of energetic little blobs easier than you might expect. You can move your group by tapping and dragging it around the screen; it's also possible to grab them all and float them along a drawn path in short bursts as in Kirby: Canvas Curse. Double-tapping foes sends your mob charging forward to dog pile onto them, or you can fling individual Kirbys around to grab items, latch onto foes, and hit switches. It's a comfortable system that works surprisingly well once you've had a little practice, and you won't find yourself missing traditional button controls much. That's not to say things don't go awry at times. Some Kirbys occasionally wander away from the pack and get into trouble, but this can be overcome with a touch of vigilance. If one of your pals perishes, there's still some hope. Members of your gang can be hit once, which turns them blue. If they're hit again, they turn into fluttering ghosts that can be recollected and saved if you grab them with another living Kirby before they get away.

Though Kirby's ability-copying powers are absent in this adventure, there's a still a ton of variety in the gameplay and puzzles. Mob mechanics are put to good use: You have to split up your Kirbys at times to take branching paths, use them to weigh down platforms, divert them to multiple foes, and put them through obstacles that require some elbow grease. Charming stage designs change up the pace at regular intervals. At various points, you may pile into a thundering tank and shoot your pals as ammo, use your collective weight to steer a hot-air balloon through dangerous obstacles, and climb through a tipsy tree trunk perched precariously by your shifting weight. That's not even considering the crazy boss battles scattered through the bubbly landscape. Each fresh encounter is wildly different from the last. Mass Attack rarely settles on a single routine for long, yet it never feels disjointed. That's a big part of what keeps the fun flowing.


Teetering trees: one of many cool new stage designs.
Collecting items and unlocking goodies have always been a staple in the Kirby series, and Mass Attack is bursting at the seams with these extras. Progressing through the main game offers a reasonable difficulty level, but completionists will relish the added challenge and replay value of going back to earn neat in-game achievements and tracking down all of the coins. A few of the many unlockable Kirby-themed minigames also offer nice surprises because they are so complete. Strato Patrol EOS is a fun, competent shooter; the pinball game is solid; and the role-playing game battler yields a pleasant diversion.

Mass Attack doesn't stray from the colorful, kid-friendly presentation and syrupy sweet platforming that the Kirby franchise is known for, but substantial innovation in the way you play it sets the game apart from its predecessors. The stylus-only controls are a welcome addition, and a terrific balance of familiarity and freshness is what makes this buoyant experience so addictive.