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The cynical view of Planet Robobot is that it's a stopgap. A schedule-filler. It's Nintendo calling a favour from one of its most reliable development partners while most of its internal studios busy themselves preparing games for a new hardware debut. This is, in many ways, the ideal game to buoy the 3DS in its twilight. No one's going to be too heartbroken if Kirby misses NX's launch, and why not take one more opportunity to sell some more of those figures everyone seems to be buying? Necessity is the mother of amiibo, as they say. It's a view this follow-up to the entertaining Triple Deluxe sometimes struggles to entirely dispel. This is a game that uses its predecessor's engine and many of its assets. Ideas and puzzles are recycled. In Triple Deluxe you ferried balls of snow past flaming hazards to create a giant snowman; here you do the same to prevent an ice cream from being melted. World 2's boss, meanwhile, conjures holograms of a selection of guardians from Triple Deluxe and earlier Kirby games. In these moments, Planet Robobot betrays a shorter-than-usual development cycle.
Happily, HAL Laboratory seems consistently incapable of making a bad game, and beyond these obvious (and thankfully occasional) cut-and-paste jobs, this is every bit as bright and entertaining as Kirby's last outing.
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