Would you trust a stork with your child? How about a dinosaur?
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/36406
Yoshi's New Island takes place immediately after the original Yoshi's Island. While it seems hard to justify a sequel, the story writers absolutely tackled the challenge with an absurd story. After a quick recap of the first game, the final screen, where the baby heroes are held high is shown. But then it scrolls down to show the proud new parents. "These aren't our babies!" they exclaim. "WHAAAAT?" The stork screwed up! Off on a new flight to find the Mario bros. real parents, the bird is ambushed by Kamek, who manages to fly off with Luigi. Mario falls towards the ocean below, landing on Floating Egg Island, which happens to be a second home for the Yoshis. In a carbon copy of the first game, the herd decides to take Mario from level to level in search of his brother, while Bowser wants to turn the island into a resort.
Arzest, which includes key members of Artoon, developers of the previous Yoshi outing, Yoshi's Island DS, tackled this sequel. However, where YIDS deviated somewhat from the SNES formula, Yoshi's New Island hews closer to the original. A completionist game, you'll need to explore every nook and cranny in order to achieve 100%.
Setting off on the new adventure, I had a chance to trial five stages. The first two, Little Eggs, Big Eggs and Chomp Rock 'n' Roll, were pretty easy tutorial levels, the first introducing the basic egg making and throwing mechanics, as well as the new giant egg. The giant egg is the Yoshi's New Island version of the Mega Mushroom, an egg that destroys everything in its path. The first introduction was straight-forward, but later appearances require you to figure out where to launch the egg to maximize its bonus item payout -- aside from opening up areas, the more destruction you cause, the more extra lives you earn. You can also create a giant egg by eating a giant Shy Guy. To do this, you have to rapidly press the tongue button like reeling in a fish.
Both styles of egg targeting return, Patient and Hasty, and they are joined by a new third option, Gyro, which lets you tilt the system to target eggs. It's a cool idea, though it's not really feasible to play the more difficult stages this way. Two types of button configurations are also available.
The gyro is also exclusively used for controlling Yoshi's vehicle morphs, which appear in various timed sub-stages, of which I saw two. The helicopter makes a return, and it's joined by a new mine cart transformation, which is introduced in the second stage. These segments challenge dexterity, and are peppered with time extensions, but if you don't make it to the end, you can try again.
World 1-6, Bouncy Beanstalk Walk, begins to up the platforming ante with beanstalks that grow to reach new places, but include leaves that will hold your weight for only so long. 2-7: Hidey-Hole Hooligans brings back the Wall Lakitus who destroy bits of the levels as they target your head, making it difficult to get to where you want to go.
The final level I played was 4-1, Hop 'n' Pop Till You Drop, which featured lots of aerial platforming and floating balloons to traverse. Additionally, the levels is full of bubbles, many of which contain enemies or bombs, which emerge if you pop them. This level began to stress the tradeoff of collecting versus surviving.
Most frustrating are the F-you moments where you don't find out about hidden collectables until it's too late. Whether it's a Chomp Rock that rolls off a ledge before you know you need it to reach a higher ledge, or a key that falls into a pit never to return, the game almost necessitates playing stages over and over. The original was like that, but that particular "feature" wasn't worth copying.
The bonus ring mechanic has changed, making unlocking each world's bonus level a different experience. For each flower you collect in a stage, you'll get one chance at receiving a medal from the end goal. Once you obtain 30, the bonus level unlocks. This means you could play the same stage over and over to reach that threshold, but it also means that unlocking the bonus level is partially due to luck.
The art seems better than it looked at E3, but the mix of craft-style art and stereoscopic 3D looks a bit strange. In particular, Yoshi seems to float in front of the level. It's colorful, but with the increase in canvas space, it doesn't feel like it pushes the limits of the system like the original. Music is better than YIDS, but also doesn't seem as charming as the SNES progenitor. StreetPass appears to be out, but there's an option to send gameplay data to Nintendo. Hopefully, this means they'll be making improvements to the game over time.
Those looking for a Yoshi's Island sequel should find a competent successor in Yoshi's New Island. It's not groundbreaking, but it does absolutely capture the feeling of the SNES classic.
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