Kororinpa is a great ball rolling game but hasn't met its full potential
User Rating: 6.5 | Kororinpa WII
Kororinpa is a ball rolling game. Using the remote to tilt the level, you roll your ball around the course floating high in the sky to the specified goal. Along the way, you must collect the orange gems and optionally the one green gem which is usually either placed in a precarious position or slightly obscured. Although its encouraged to complete the course as quickly as possible, it isn't deemed necessary as in games like Super Monkey Ball. Personally, I prefer this way of playing because Super Monkey Ball sometimes had ridiculous time limits. In Kororinpa, you can take your time and complete the course, then will go back to beat your times and achieve a better medal (bronze,silver, gold). As you complete the stages, more become unlocked as well as additional balls. The strange thing in this game is the choice of balls. You start out with a marble but then unlock a variety of cute animal heads (such as dog, pig, and panda), sports balls (football, rugby, basketball) and some other weird objects (planet Saturn, a crushed car ball, UFO). Each of these balls handles differently in terms of speed, response, bounce, and slip. Some balls aren't fully round and have more of a irregular movement pattern, the obvious example being the rugby ball. These differences also encourage the levels to be replayed because it offers a different aspect to the difficulty. Sadly, there are only 45 main stages which can be completed fairly quickly. In addition there are 15 secret stages which are unlocked by collecting the green gem. Although it's a bit of a cheap way to lengthen the game, once you complete the main stages; you unlock mirror mode which doubles the stages so there are a total of 120. The early courses are very straight forward and have many walls, but the more difficult stages will have smaller paths with no walls and bumpy paths. Also, there are many stages where you need to turn your remote to the side so walls then become paths which can be quite hard to get used to. If you do fall off the stage you will respawn back to the start, but you don't need to recollect any gems you have collected. You can also force a reset by pressing the A button which is helpful when you drop down a floor and realise you missed one of the mandatory orange gems. Reaching the end without all the gems also sends you back to the start. The presentation in Kororinpa is very poor and very much reminds me of Mario Party 8 which surprise, surprise; is also developed by Hudson Soft. The graphics are very dull and wide-screen is not supported never mind HD support. Overall, Kororinpa is a good game but the potential hasn't been realised. With brighter, cuter graphics, and more levels and themes it could have been brilliant, but as it is; it does feel a bit incomplete.
