I already said a lot about Yoshi's New Island and how I feel in general about the title. I mentioned it all in my full-length preview, which I published quite a while back on this very website. The game had the difficult task of winning me over after I played a terrible demo almost nine months ago. Somehow it succeeded at this and actually made me feel that I got something out of it in the end. It might not be the best game the Nintendo 3DS has to offer, but it is a fine platformer and here’s why.

The story in Yoshi's New Island is somewhat unsurprising. Baby Mario and Luigi seem to be arriving at the house of their new parents, but it turns out that the stork has delivered them to the wrong address. Frustrated at trying to find their actual home, the stork gets interrupted by Kamek and his goons. Baby Luigi gets kidnapped once again and Baby Mario falls down to a small island in the middle of the ocean. The place is known as Egg Island and it will form the stage for this brand new adventure. Baby Bowser wants to create an epic vacation home on this very island and now it is up to a bunch of Yoshis to save the day!

Yoshi's New Island takes this group of green dinosaurs to a variety of places, and each is filled with their own set of problems to overcome. In the beginning, these stages are kept quite simple—you will have no issue finding everything in them. The game is not difficult by any stretch, but there is something that really works with Yoshi's destruction of eggs. The pace of the levels is steady and they go by with a nice enough flow to keep your attention. They are not set up in a way that you can really get lost, making the game fairly straightforward.

Does that mean everything is well and good? Not exactly. The bosses of the ride, while fine enough, are not as creative as previous entries in the series. Fighting against a gigantic bean or bat aren't the worst things in the world, but you can only consider them just a slightly bigger hurdle when compared to other obstacles. Three hits and they are toast. They are certainly not as visually impressive as the ones that came before them. Another thing that matters are the extensive usage of motion controls in the transformation sequences. I found myself liking some more than others. I enjoyed the ones with subtle movement the most; a good example is the balloon which made you steer left and right. They’re also a small number that go a bit overboard with the whole thing. I found this mostly to be true with the submarine, which required tons of twitch precision that made it a chore to play.

Other new added things are a bit harder to spot, but they are mostly fun to toy around with. The new Eggdozers create some unique opportunities, though they are only used in very specific puzzle situations. The same goes for the Star Yoshi, which will run against walls and collect items in a more frantic way, though the entire level dedicated to a single mechanic would have been slightly more interesting. That doesn't mean though that there aren't entertaining one off levels though! There is a level where you constantly hop on the back of birds to get further into the stage. Another example is how you to bounce on various beanstalk plants to get to the end of the course.

If you are not going for everything, your time with the game will be less frustrating and you will get through it rather fast. The stages themselves aren't too harsh and it is even welcoming to the most beginning of players. You could go as far as calling the game a bit easy and that’ll certainly be a problem for some. I like to explore levels at my own pace though and Yoshi's New Island allows me to do that. It is enjoyable to try and survive with 30 seconds on the counter and get all the goodies I could possibly snag. This is not for everyone and I completely understand if that isn't something you can put up with. By collecting the Smiley Flowers, you could get a chance at the end of the level to convert these shinnies into coins. If you get 30 of them in a world, you will unlock a special stage that you will use the same transformations for the chance at some extra lives.

Finally, like I mentioned in the preview, Yoshi's New Island offers brand new 2-player minigames. In these, you work together with a friend and try to complete certain tasks. They are all simple enough and it is fun to shout to another for help, but their appeal is somewhat limited. After playing a few rounds of each of the six games, you’ll be lucky if you feel like returning to them at all. I would have loved to see more of these, as they were fun to toy around with, so it is a bit of a shame. Something that is also a bit sad is the music, as the same theme seems to be returning again and again. The majority of levels seem oddly fond of this song and just a handful use a different tune. There are a few versions of the theme I liked, but it seems unneeded to constantly repeat it. The look of the game remains fine though, as it is colorful with some nicely added effects all around.

Yoshi's New Island is quite a fun game, but not one without some faults. The bosses could have been nicer, the music could have been more varied, and the multiplayer games are a bit underdeveloped. That said though, it does provide a rather nice platforming fix. The challenge might not be to the extreme, but it has a rather nice pace to it. There are also some neat elements in place that keep you going and shiny bits make you want to come back for more. It won't be up there with the best, but that doesn't mean you should skip out on these adorable dino friends.