Back to Yoshi's Island DS. Once upon a time, I thought I liked this game, like a lot. I know there were some bad reviews, and a lot of people claimed it was bad, but I'd played a little bit of it, and I thought it was alright. I should've believed the people who said it was bad.
The first world of Yoshi's Island DS isn't bad at all. The levels are actually fun to traverse, the boss fights are well designed, and the weird non-Yoshi characters are at a minimum. It makes me suspect that parts of this game were developed by one of Nintendo's in-house studios before it was handed off to Artoon. After that first world, the game goes from "good" to "okaaay", and on a steady decline until around the third or fourth stage it's "I'm only playing this so I can reassure myself it's as awful as I think it is."And it is. The levels have the boring aimless feel of a lot of C-tier Super NES platformers. Most of them are meandering misery and they never seem to end. At some points, the game requires you to switch characters. There might be a vine which only Bonkey Kong (it's Bonkey Kong, we checked) can climb, or maybe a gust of wind only Peach can ride, or maybe a thing that only Mario can outrun. This could've been a cool element, but it's handled clumsily, requiring the player to find a sign and guess which baby will be appropriate for the upcoming section. Some of the levels have different paths for different babies, but by that point I didn't care. I really just wanted to get it over with. To add to the annoyance, any difficulty comes from obnoxiously placed enemies and the tendency for the babies to get stuck behind a platform that you'll never free them from. The best way to stop the AWFUL ENDLESS CRYING is to have Yoshi butt stomp into a bottomless pit. Half of the levels are just that, bottomless pits with some boring floating platforms. Occasionally you think something's down that hole, because it goes on way too far for there not to be a secret. NO. NOTHING'S DOWN THERE EXCEPT YOUR OWN SADNESS. Ugh. I'll give it a little more credit than a fan game, but the terrible level design and a few out of place enemies that look like amateur designs from another 3rd rate GBA developer make it feel like a fan game that's competently made, but only for a quick buck. I'd be much more forgiving if it was actually a terrible fan game, because then it would be someone working hard out of their own love for something rather than a sad game made for a quick buck. Tose isn't (wasn't?) the greatest game studio ever, but after playing through Yoshi's Island DS and few Tose games, including Super Princess Peach, I have a little more respect for them. For a company whose goal is not to have a vision, Tose is adequately creative, and at least they seem to know what they're doing. Artoon ,on the other hand, just stumbled through the goalposts, not really caring as long as they made it to the end.
I hate Yoshi's Island DS more than I've ever hated a game in my life. I hate that I bought it once, I hate that I bought it again after selling it long ago, I hate that I wasted any amount of time with this horrible, joyless game. There are a handful of surprisingly clever boss fights, A HANDFUL, but that doesn't help when the rest of the game stinks like a baby who needs a change. I've changed a diaper or two, and it's more satisfying than anything in this game, because at least the baby won't get stuck in a corner where your only hope of reprieve from the constant "WAH WAH WAH" is jumping into a canyon. This game isn't just a dirty diaper, it's a dumpster full of dirty diapers on the hottest day. There are some bonus levels if you get all the stupid collectibles in every level, but it would be much less painful sticking a paper clip into an electrical socket, or smashing your face into a mirror.
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