Yum! (Yoshi's Island (DS))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Yoshi's Island (DS)
Date:	05/08/07 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bright, colourful, packed with imagination

Disadvantages: Short attention span, overly childish

For those of you who aren’t fully conversant with the stars of classic video games, Yoshi is a little green dinosaur who eats things. Lots of things. Pretty much anything that gets in his way really. It's a fairly useful skill, given only that as you guide him around one of his various adventures, lots of things get in his way that need eating. And that, in a nutshell, is the basis of pretty much every Yoshi game.

Yoshi's Island for the DS is no exception. This time round, a strange floating castle has appeared in the sky above Yoshi's otherwise peaceful little island and shortly after it appears, a number of children from the island's school are kidnapped. It's up to the Yoshis (yes, there are more than one) to explore the island, complete various challenges and rescue the kidnapped kiddies. But the good news is, they don' have to do it alone. Baby Mario, Baby Peach, Baby Donkey Kong, Baby Bowser and Baby Wario appear at various intervals in the game, each of them equipping Yoshi with some unique skills to help him out.

Genre-wise, the platform concept works well for Yoshi, given only that in any other medium (e.g. fighting or racing) I'm not sure that the character would be anywhere near as appealing. For loyal fans of the Yoshi franchise, the news is good. Yoshi's Island is pretty much as good as any of the other games, and the shift to the DS format works surprisingly well. For game players with a slightly wider perspective, Yoshi's Island will still please, but will almost certainly draw more criticism.

Yoshi games have always been set apart from the main Mario games by having a different tone and artistic style. Mario's world is bright and colourful, but also fundamentally very bold. The graphics always comprise simple, clear lines, filled with distinct colours and patterns. Water is always blue. Land is pretty much always green. Although they aren't short on imaginative, Mario's worlds are arguably quite conventional, in game playing terms. Yoshi's world is very different. Yoshi's Island feels more like a sketch book, with a host of different methods of colour, shading and tone to set one part out from another. The artwork is often crayon-like and nearly always more childlike, as though the game has been plucked from a toddler's most vivid imagination. Even the bad guys seem to beam with warm smiles and friendly faces. The range of settings is very diverse; land, air, water, mountains, trees and so on all crop up in various colours, shapes and terrains with much more variety than a comparable Mario game. For a 2D platform game, the game play is often quite unconventional too. Yoshi and friends don't just move left to right. The screen often scrolls right to left, up and down or a combination of both and the game makes use of both of the DS console's screens. At times, this works really well and can help expand the scope of the game enormously. At other times, it is less effective, with the speed of scroll causing unwanted delays in the game and often making navigation rather more difficult.

The historical appeal of Yoshi and his friends remains the case because he is undeniably cute. He still makes his cute noises (although when he's trying to hover he sounds a bit constipated to me) and the whole upbeat silliness of the thing is quite contagious. I always think Yoshi games are good for younger kids interested in playing computer games because they’re tame and playful but still quite challenging. More importantly there's no scary or unsuitable content for even the youngest of players. The very light hearted music employed throughout is also very appealing.

The Yoshi character moves identically to his previous outings and the player's experience varies accordingly. He's easily moved around the screen when on land, but when he falls into water or has to do a hover jump he can become far less easily controlled, often resulting in an untimely death. Different enemies require different methods of attack, each with varying ease. Swallowing them is perhaps the easiest, but it takes ages to get into the habit of eating and then swallowing as a separate move and if you want to store the baddie as an egg missile, it's really irritating if you then accidentally spit him back out. Similarly, there are two player settings for throwing eggs as missiles, one of which is quick but rather random, the other of which is slower but precise. With only a limited supply of eggs, even a fairly experienced player will quickly find him/herself in hot water as he/she struggles with the controls. I've always hated Yoshi's hover jump and here it's just as difficult to control as ever.

As a framework for gaming, each level has a set number of yellow coins, red coins, jumping stars, gold coins and flowers to collect, with a fixed points total against each. This is a good move to promote replay because you can complete a level once to unlock the next one and then come back to explore and earn more points according to what mood you're in. Like other Yoshi games, there are a number of different routes to be taken in each level, and replaying is generally more interesting than other platform games because there is more to be discovered. It can also be quite frustrating, as you spot things in a part of the screen that you just can't get to. This is further compounded by the complication of the baby helpers. Certain parts of the screen can only be navigated when you have Baby Peach in tow, for example. There are check points throughout the game when you can ask a stork to fly along and swap the babies for you but if you don't do it at the right time, you might have to go back and retread your steps until you find a checkpoint.

Fortunately, there is no time limit on each level and there are also save points so that if you come unstuck you don’t always need to go right back to the beginning. At a glance, however, it's not easy to work out how many lives you have left and sometimes this will catch you out. This is, however, not the most irritating facet within the game. No, this honour is reserved for the life counter which ticks up or down if your babies get into trouble. Essentially, the baby characters hover around with you until you get hit by a bad guy or fall into a hole. They then float off in a bubble and have to be re-captured by you before a countdown expires. If you don’t get there in time, a group of flying shy guys come down and steal the baby, effectively ending your game. This isn't a problem until you are in a scrolling level, where the screen is moving and baby moves off the screen such that you can't reach them to rescue them anyway. Furthermore, all the time they are out of your control, they each have a distinctive wail to alert you to their fate. Mario, DK and Wario aren't too bad, but Peach's high-pitched scream is absolutely insufferable and guaranteed to drive you up the wall before you get her back.

Various bonus levels and mini-games crop up, which can only be played once you've reached a certain level but these are not terribly interesting and despite being a fairly intelligent adult, I can't work some of them out for toffee. It's a good job, therefore that the capacity of the main game is enormous – there are something like 50 mini-levels, some with boss fights and plenty of hidden areas to find. There are, however, no multiplayer or advanced wireless options to the game.

Compared to other platform games, however, I can only really bear Yoshi's Island in small to medium doses. It's certainly good fun and it's fairly easy to play but it doesn't hold my attention the same as other platform games. Sometimes, the childishness of it all wears a bit thin and you long for someone to come along and rip his head off. But kids will almost certainly love it and given its lovely colourful, childish nature I'd certainly recommend it. You can pick up a copy for around £20 on a number of web sites. However, fans of Resident Evil, Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto should probably look elsewhere.

Summary: Yoshi on the DS