Yoshi’s New Island is certainly not child’s play in terms of difficulty, as it gets tougher as you get through each world. The hand-drawn art style in Yoshi’s New Island is easy on the eyes.
It wouldn’t have been a problem had it been Koji Kondo’s vastly superior and wonderful soundtrack from Yoshi’s Island, but instead I had to listen to kazoos and music that mistakenly tries to paint this as a kid’s game. It got to the point where I was playing the game with the volume off because hearing one song throughout six worlds was driving me nuts. Yoshi’s New Island has essentially two tracks: the main theme of the game mixed into multiple, varying versions of the main theme (but nonetheless the same song over and over), and the theme played inside of boss castles. While on the subject of letdowns, the soundtrack for this game was probably the most upsetting thing I encountered during my playthrough. You only get to use these transformations for a few seconds, once in a random level, which was disappointing and a bit of a letdown. While Jackhammer Yoshi made smashing rocks fun and Submarine Yoshi fires missiles at enemies, Minecart, Hot-Air, Bobsled, and Helicopter Yoshi all only required you to tilt the 3DS in the direction you wanted to move. Yoshi’s transformations in particular stages all take advantage of the 3DS’s gyroscope to move Yoshi through the level while pressing any button to use the functions of his transformation, though some of them felt tacked on and uninspired.
These don’t show up in every level and appear just often enough that they didn’t feel like a gimmick, but weren’t annoyingly required to progress through levels constantly. The giant eggs are quite fun, and utilized in two ways: above ground, Yoshi uses them to smash blocks and barricades to earn coins, 1-ups, and flowers, while underwater giant metal eggs cause you to sink so you can destroy deterrents and gather goodies down below. Moving deeper into the game, you encounter some of the new features Yoshi’s New Island brings to the mix, though not all of them make for a greater experience overall. It took patience to get used to the timing needed to get the jump to work in your favor as opposed to causing you to miss landing on ledges or not reaching the height needed to clear enemies (which happened to me quite a bit when playing for the first time). Lobbing eggs, ground pounding, and swallowing enemies all felt responsive and smooth, but the very first thing that irked me while playing was Yoshi’s flutter jump as opposed to feeling light and airy and propelling Yoshi in a nice arc before coming down, the jump felt heavy and slow. Yoshi’s New Island takes the basic premise and control scheme of its predecessor and applies it to this new game successfully: explore six worlds while keeping Baby Mario safe on Yoshi’s back, and utilize egg throwing as your main form of offense.
Unfortunately, I ran into a mixed bag of positives and negatives with the latest installment of the franchise. So when I heard that Yoshi’s New Island would be coming to 3DS, I was crossing my fingers for an equally memorable experience. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island on SNES is one of my favorite games of all time, particularly because everything from the hand-drawn art style, to the tight controls, to the iconic music and enemies make it an amazing gaming experience.