LTTP Yoshi's Island DS: A masterclass in level design
October 2014
Several years ago, I played part of this game and found it frustrating and confusing to play through. It was a period of time where I wasn't as into video games (hard to believe if you see my posts these days!). It's that odd period I think a lot of us went through in our late teens or early twenties where you were really into gaming previously but other things have garnered your interest for the time being, and you'd end up coming back to gaming with a renewed interest. I think I'm not alone in that experience.
Anyway, I think I gave up on that playthrough partway through World 3. I remember being really befuddled and perturbed with some levels that took place on various small islands and I kept getting lost; the game just was not working for me. I kind of trudged through that one and played part of the next level, and then just gave up on the game for several years.
I'd never played the original Yoshi's Island until early this year. It's agreed-upon as an incredible masterpiece of a game, from its music to its level design and general charm. I also played Yoshi's New Island when it came out at the end of March, and while it did feel often like a remake of the original game, I still enjoyed it quite a bit and thought it had a lot to offer.
Yoshi's Island DS, on the other hand, I was really impressed with. If you find the sound of Baby Mario crying in the original Yoshi's Island to be grating and stressful, this is not a game I would recommend because it offers five additional variations on infant cries for your terror. With that said, if you can get past that--and I have to say I find the crying stressful but not grating, personally--you've got an amazing array of playable characters, each with their own drastically different approaches to playing the levels.
Playing as each of these characters offers up a delightful variation on the standard YI gameplay. In the original game, playing as Baby Mario meant you could run (which was standard, and understandably taken for granted), and use an invincibility star. In this game, Baby Mario is the only playable character who can run, forcing you to get creative when using other characters. Baby Peach can use her trademark pink umbrella in conjunction with the wind to reach new heights. Baby DK can climb on vines and do a charge attack. Awesomely, Baby Wario has a magnet to attract gold (which makes for some neat levels with magnetized platforms) and Baby Bowser's fire attack supersedes Yoshi's normal egg attack, forcing you to think about how to play differently. Effectively, the game is a Yoshi, Peach, Wario, Bowser, and DK game all in one, and you can choose from at least three of these characters in most levels, affording many different ways to tackle a level.
All of this would be for naught if the game didn't have terrific and well-conceived level design to support it. The game has fewer transformations than the others in the series (think mole tank, copter, et al.) but has some very clever level types to make up for it, including transportation modes such as stilts, to become a veritable Stilt Guy and infiltrate a Shy Guy fortress where they hang their Shy Guy suits on clotheslines in the background. You can also take to the skies in an inflatable Kangaroo.
Blast off into space in some brief top-down shooter-style segments.
And in my all-time favorite Yoshi's Island game device, hit the slopes.
All of these vehicles help to change up the gameplay and keep things interesting. The locales themselves are unusual, too. You've got the above-mentioned Shy Guy fortress, a desert area riddled with caverns, a Battleship, and more. It's just a neat game world and feels sufficiently different than the other games in the series. The game wisely throws new ideas at you at a fairly rapid pace, so you never feel like anything's overstaying its welcome, nor do you feel introduced to too many playable characters at once. It's a great balance.
One of the main complaints I've heard about the game is the soundtrack. I thought it was charming and worked well. Then again, I purposefully listen to the Yoshi's New Island OST in my free time, so I understand I have some minority opinions on this subject. I've also heard the empty space between the top and bottom screens was an issue for some people. It didn't bother me at all, and I was actually concerned about it going in. I found you get used to it pretty quickly and are almost always playing on the bottom screen only, for the most part at least. As for the concern that levels are overly designed around switching Babies and using one specific Baby, I'd say I didn't generally find that to be the case. When the game wants you to use a specific Baby for a level or part of a level, it usually telegraphs this pretty well or at least lets you backtrack. As for the conceit that you have to use different Babies in certain levels, well, it's just part of the concept of the game, and for me, it was a lot of fun and prepared me...decently...for the extremely tough individual Baby-centric rooms in the final level. (I only say decently because they did try to prepare me, but these were, for me, extraordinarily hard portions of that level.)
(FWIW, these are extremely hard games to 100% and I plan to take on this task eventually but haven't yet made the time to do so. I haven't played any bonus levels in any of these games yet, either. With that said, I can still appreciate how masterfully designed the levels are in these games to be able to support a playstyle of going through a level to beat it or going through a level to 100% it.)
Anyway, I heartily recommend the game. I think it's a superb entry in the series. Everything Yoshi's Island does, this game does just as well in its own way, and better in some ways.
