On Friday March 14, 2014, I acquired Yoshi’s New Island for the Nintendo 3DS; the third installment in the Yoshi’s Island series. The title starts off with a stork delivering baby Mario and Luigi to their parents. During their travel, Kamek tries to steal the baby duo one final time. During the brawl between the stork and Kamek, the bag containing the twins lands on an egg shaped island floating in midair. The island is home to the “Yoshi Clan”. They discover baby Mario but not baby Luigi, so the Yoshi clan and baby Mario set off to find him.
The game plays the same as the first Yoshi’s Island game for the Super Nintendo with nice, fluent controls and a nothing short of beautiful art style. It has a storybook design that Nintendo has given a gloss over. The 3D is very convincing and fits well with the art style, having eye-popping scenes. It’s great eye candy. The soundtrack is suiting depending on the level but overall has a calm and happy feel to it. There’s a nice feeling to the Overworld and the music adds to the immersion, for example, in the cave you can feel the erosion with dungeons filled with lava and the music for the dungeons gives you that sense of danger. Nothing too sinister or scary, though. It is still the same happy Yoshi’s Island as before.
The boss battles at the end of the castle levels are interesting and require some thinking. The first boss you must throw eggs at it to defeat it, just like in the original Yoshi’s Island. There are barriers you must hit with your eggs to get rid of. Although the boss is the same as before and is a 3-hit kill, it was still a good first boss that helped me learned the controls. The platforming is good and doesn’t require any ridiculous jumps or “Leap of Faiths”. The Power-Ups I have encountered were pretty good and the designers have put them to good use. So far I’ve encountered the Giant Egg Power-Up which destroys all enemies on screen and specific platforms. The more you wreck, the more lives you can earn. The Giant Metal Egg Power-Up destroys rock platforms can be used to earn lives just the same as the normal giant egg. The Power Star can allow Yoshi to run at high speeds, up walls, and fly around but if you’re running on the ceiling and stop, you’ll fall, giving you the feel of actually controlling him. Nintendo made it so that you have to use the Power-Up but if you’re tactical, you can use it to your advantage and gain more lives and other bonuses. None too challenging so far, the amount I have played but so far I’d say this game would be worth a pick up.