Yoshi's Island DS: Review

[mrmolecule]

I bought YI DS. It's relatively fun, although I don't have a journalist touch to write a full review.

The stages are long, almost irritating to a certain extent.
Less levels than YI 1.
It's just not as fascinating as YI 1.
Some of the graphics and SFX have changed, for the worse.
No more watermelons.
Stupid level names. ("Ba-dum DUM!")
No clever touch screen use! Virtually! At all!
Slightly difficult control scheme...changing it doesn't help.
Yoshi's tongue still goes in 3 directions.

That's all I could think of, but it's still relatively fun. Should I trade it in for WarioWare Touched?

[kirbychu]

mrmolecule said:

No clever touch screen use! Virtually! At all!

That really made me laugh.

Anyway, from what I've heard, YIDS isn't that good. While I know from experience that WarioWare is awesome. So if I were you, I'd definately trade.

[Fryguy64]

WarioWare Touched is without a doubt the better game, but it's also a much shorter game - you'll have probably seen everything it has to show you in a weekend. But it's great fun!

Yoshi's Island DS was, to me, a great disappointment. Not because it didn't live up to Yoshi's Island's lofty heights, but because it shot for those heights, missed, and then screamed out of control, smoke pouring from its backside, as it blasted around the dusky, pre-dawn sky causing a hell of a racket.

The controls, for starters, have been heavily bastardised, and the elements that compose Yoshi's World, especially the weight-led merry-go-round-style moving platforms, have been made twitchy and unwieldy.

All enemies based on existing enemies are generally okay (although lacking the wonderful animation that made the original game so endearing), while all-new enemies look like poor sketchbook scribbles (rather than the stylish wax crayon doodles that give the game its flair).

It's hard, yes. But a hard game with no substance is not very fun to play. I WANTED to explore Yoshi's Island the first time round, I WANTED to make sure I had seen every nook and cranny, found every red coin and flower, and opened every new level. I wanted more. YIDS doesn't supply more. It is a crippled sequel, not only poor in and of itself, but also making me question my love of the original.

Could it only be done once? Is the search for a worthy sequel ever going to happen? Is Nintendo ever going to stop hiring the crackpots at Artoon to make games based on one of its finest franchises?

Oh, your journalistic touch might be lacking, but so too is your ability to put topics in the right forum!! *cough*

[mrmolecule]

YI DS would be better if:

If they had a better control scheme. A would be jump, Y would be tongue, and X and B would dash. L and R would remain the same.
If only aiming the egg would use the touch screen in some cool way.
If they had left the cool graphics and sound effects back in.
If they left the watermelons in.
If they shortened some levels while adding in about 24 new ones
If Yoshi's tongue went in 8 directions.
If they got in a real person to name all the levels.
-------------
Fryguy: Think of it this way...I could've put it in the "FanFic/Art" section.

[Smashchu]

Fry, why you gatta be hatin' on YIDS. Sure, it's not the original, but still ramains fun. Artoon definatly ****ed up on the presentation, but the overall gameplay works out quite well.

I definatly think some set the bar TOO high and because of that, thought the game was crap(I've heard others say it too). But, if you look at raw gameplay it remains great. The babies add some different play styles and the challenges were great, making the most difficult DS platformer yet.

[Manspeed]

Setting the bar too high? My arse.

The way the game was pulled off was unacceptable. They tried, yet somehow managed to fall short. Fry is right on all those levels.

In fact., the soundtrack and graphics are probably the things that pissed me off the most. Why? Because:

-They left out the iconic title screen song.
-The songs aren't fitting. Everything is played on a xylophone, and it kills the mood completely. The castle theme is especially guilty of this.
-The new enemies, as Fry said, are utter crap. It's like they made a random doodle and decided to call it a new boss.
-Fancy visual effects have been lost. Remember the colored explosion when you destroy a boss, and then the big key comes up and you open the portal to the next world? Instead, the boss just fades out and a badly-animated door appears. Not cool.

[Smashchu]

robert said:

Setting the bar too high? My arse.

The way the game was pulled off was unacceptable. They tried, yet somehow managed to fall short. Fry is right on all those levels.

In fact., the soundtrack and graphics are probably the things that pissed me off the most. Why? Because:

-They left out the iconic title screen song.
-The songs aren't fitting. Everything is played on a xylophone, and it kills the mood completely. The castle theme is especially guilty of this.
-The new enemies, as Fry said, are utter crap. It's like they made a random doodle and decided to call it a new boss.
-Fancy visual effects have been lost. Remember the colored explosion when you destroy a boss, and then the big key comes up and you open the portal to the next world? Instead, the boss just fades out and a badly-animated door appears. Not cool.

You doo set it too high. Most of the complaints are that it's not the old game. 80% is gameplay, and if it works then it's a 4/5, which YIDS is. With the exception of the music, it's compaing it to the origanal. I know it's a sequal but 1)It's a sequal to a masterpeice(they never live up, accept it) and 2)it wasn't made by Miyamoto.

I think this is a case of Confermation bias and Beleif Bias. I think before this game came out, you guys thought it would suck, so now you think it sucks. And also, you look for things that are bad about it, instead of looking at anything good. You guys do it so much that you block all the good things. What about the still fun gameplay. What about the functioning baby system. What about the fact we actually have a difficult platforming game.

[Dances in Undergarments]

mrmolecule said:

If only aiming the egg would use the touch screen in some cool way.

Yoshi Touch & Go?


I don't mind YIDS, but I feel that almost every single element in it is lacking something. I've written up a long boring thing on it before, comparing it to NSMB and the like, and I really can't be f***ed doing it again. So I wont.

I'll just say no Fuzzy = fail.

[kirbychu]

smashchu2 said:

I think before this game came out, you guys thought it would suck, so now you think it sucks.

Actually, most people here were really excited about it before it came out.

[Fryguy64]

I was excited about it before I found out Artoon were making it. Artoon are in that category of small developers who often work with the properties and ideas of other companies (Flagship and Fuse Games also immediately spring to mind).

Each of these companies has its own way of handling those properties. Fuse makes pinball games - not necessarily playable ones, but you can't fault them for their ambition and attention to detail. Flagship? Well, what haven't they done right? Every Zelda game they've worked on feels as excellent as a first party title, and Kirby & The Amazing Mirror had some amazing new ideas that didn't betray the Kirby game style.

Artoon? Well, they have new ideas, often good and innovative ideas, but seem incapable of producing games from them.

I didn't set the bar high - the original game set the bar high. I'm not fooling myself into thinking that the original was better than it was, and the new game doesn't live up to it. The original really was as great as I remember it - because I continue to play it, and enjoyed it just as much when it was rereleased on GBA. It's a fantastic game.

YIDS is not a fantastic game. It is a pale imitation. It has new ideas, some of them are even good ideas, but Artoon, as usual, has failed to make these good ideas into playable or enjoyable ideas. The graphics are worse, the music is worse, the controls are worse, the handling is worse, the level design is worse, the game is - in every possible way - worse than the original game.

It's a shameless con, and we all know it. Nintendo knows the original is held in such high regards - and they announced the sequel without immediately announcing the developer. Everyone cheered. Then they announced the developer. Silence. It was like a thousand dreams of playing a true sequel had been crushed.

Yes, it's better than I expected after the abysmal YUG - it's better than I expected from Artoon. It's not even close to what I expected when it was announced.

[kirbychu]

admin said:

It's a shameless con, and we all know it. Nintendo knows the original is held in such high regards - and they announced the sequel without immediately announcing the developer. Everyone cheered. Then they announced the developer. Silence. It was like a thousand dreams of playing a true sequel had been crushed.

I personally think this is the reason the name was changed from Yoshi's Island 2 to Yoshi's Island DS. This way it's not exactly a "true" sequel.

I might actually pick the game up so I can actually form my own opinion. But I'd be playing it more to see Baby Wario than anything else. Wario is chock full of win.

[Smashchu]

admin said:

YIDS is not a fantastic game. It is a pale imitation. It has new ideas, some of them are even good ideas, but Artoon, as usual, has failed to make these good ideas into playable or enjoyable ideas. The graphics are worse, the music is worse, the controls are worse, the handling is worse, the level design is worse, the game is - in every possible way - worse than the original game.

You see. Worse then the original. Let's halt for a minute and forget Yoshi's Island ever existed. Now, lets view the pros and cons

Pros
+Game play works well
+Large anout of Challange
+Baby system add a bit more style to gameplay

Cons
+Lame music
+A worl shorter

Thats about it. Everything else seem to fall in the middle. If you just looks at that, you'd see the game isn't bad.

Another thing is a lot of the complaint are design, not technical. No glitches, gameplay works, and it's enjoyable. Also remember, Miyamoto is a designer(by what class I forget) so design of anything is his firte. Artoon doesn't have a Miyamoto. So, it's hard for them to compete. Graphics technically speeking are fine, and are very well rendered 2D sprites.

I won't deni(spelling?) that Artoon sucks. However, YIDS came out quite good. Amazing, no. But Suck, No my friend, no. If you take YI out of the equation, then you can see where I'm coming from. besides, sometimes you have to move on. While I'm not saying YI wasn't great, it may be a bit overglamerfied in the mind due to nostalgia.

[kirbychu]

smashchu2 said:

You see. Worse then the original. Let's halt for a minute and forget Yoshi's Island ever existed.

YIDS is a sequel to YI. So it doesn't have that excuse. Artoon compared it to the original themselves when they chose to make a sequel to Yoshi's Island.

[Smashchu]

kirbychu said:

smashchu2 said:

You see. Worse then the original. Let's halt for a minute and forget Yoshi's Island ever existed.

YIDS is a sequel to YI. So it doesn't have that excuse. Artoon compared it to the original themselves when they chose to make a sequel to Yoshi's Island.

Were also talking about one from 10 freaking years ago.

[Fryguy64]

I absolutely disagree - partly because of the points I made above about NOT being nostalgic about Yoshi's Island, and partly because you are ignoring some quite major things.

I shall take you up on each of your points, trying my hardest to avoid mentioning the original game.

smashchu2 said:

Pros
+Game play works well

Yoshi controls fairly well, yes. And you can choose to either walk straight through the levels or to investigate every nook and cranny in search of all 100 points (and Baby Coin) in order to finish the level. You can't deny that the basics are there for a good game. But having a good structure is not good gameplay. Good gameplay comes from the execution, and this is something that the game fails at - I will come to that over the next few points (or you could just read my earlier posts!)

smashchu2 said:

+Large anout of Challange

The challenge only exists if you stick around and search for every red coin, every flower, and get to the end in one piece. If you just waltz through the levels (as I have been doing for the later stages) then it's surprisingly easy.

A good challenge is fun. It's a way to test the skills that you have learned in the game so far. YIDS isn't challenging in this way. It's challenging in the same way that many bog-standard NES and SNES (and more recent Mega Man) games were challenging - by providing cruel obstacles rather than tests of skill/wit.

smashchu2 said:

Baby system add a bit more style to gameplay

OBJECTION! It does not - it just adds four new babies (and four new screams). Look at the game objectively - the babies are cute (when not crying) but do they really offer much at all? Why can Yoshi only run when carrying Mario? Why do you have to switch to using the shoulder buttons for egg shooting when carrying Bowser? All the babies do is remove any chance of having a consistent main character.

Aside from immediately after each baby is introduced, you could quite safely run around with just Mario until a large obstacle got in the way. Then switch to Peach/DK and blow/climb over it. Then switch back to Mario and run the rest of the way. That's not gameplay style - that's a temporary power-up.

smashchu2 said:

Everything else seem to fall in the middle.

I have already stated my issues with the game. I can tell you they do not fall in the middle. They push it below the middle. It is sub-par as a game. If I had NEVER played a platform game before, then it would be too bizarre and messy to grasp. If I had played any good platformer before (eg. any Mario game, including the two much better 2D Mario platformers on DS - NSMB and SPP) then it absolutely pales in comparison to their clean, considered gameplay.

The only way it could be considered good, is if you'd only ever played really crappy movie-license platformers up until that point. Or only ever played Artoon's OTHER games. This would then definitely be an improvement.

smashchu2 said:

No glitches, gameplay works, and it's enjoyable.

First off, I do not enjoy it, and not just because of my crippling disappointment when comparing it to its namesake.

Secondly... no glitches? Let's back up there a little. A glitch is when the game hasn't been programmed to handle a particular situation, and it causes a conflict, often with undesirable effects. In many games I've played, a glitch may be caused when performing something that you weren't ever supposed to do - like jumping at a particular angle into a corner of a wall and accessing the not-fully-loaded Warp Zone (leading to world -1 in SMB), or spinning diagonally through yellow blocks in SMW (causing Mario to fly through the solid wall on occasion).

I got a particularly nasty glitch on YIDS the very first day that I got it. Basically, the game crashed, the sky turned into a rainbow of flickering bands of colour, the music turned into a terrible howl, and it erased my progress right there and then.

Now how do you think I accessed this glitch? Remember, this is a platform game - a Mario-based platform game no less - and it has to be something unexpected. It has to be something you weren't supposed to do. Have you guess it yet?

That's right!

I jumped on a Shy Guy.

Nothing special. He was stood there. I jumped on him. Game dies. Now, perhaps this was just bad luck on my part, right? Then how come I've received two emails describing the exact same glitch to me? Jumping on Shy Guys causes this game to break.

Yoshi's Island DS is retarded. The best it will ever hope for is completely average. Yes, it's better than Universal Gravitation, but it's worse than every other Mario, Wario, Kirby and Donkey Kong platformer. Well... okay... maybe not Donkey Kong Land.