Select Gaming Platform and game

Yoshi's Island DS (NDS)

Yoshi Island DS
Genre: Action
Perspective: Side view
Gameplay: Platform, Puzzle elements
Published by: Nintendo of America Inc.
Developed by: Artoon Co.
Released: 2006
Platforms: Nintendo DS (NDS), Super Nintendo (SNES)

If this game was the first with the words of Yoshi's Island in the title, and came out about ten years ago, its review would begin here like this:

"On a distant island lived a tribe of dinosaurs-yoshes. They lived, did not grieve, until a couple of children of pre-war age fell to them from the clear sky - Mario (from a pot with two tops with a cap) and Peach (a princess, not to be confused with PI Tchaikovsky). It turned out that the servants of the sorcerer Kamek had kidnapped all the children from the nearby village, and they had lost some on the way. Glorious yoshes decided to help the carp to save the drinking buddies. One of the dinosaurs picked up Mario on his back and set off ... "

The yoshi's tongue is long and sticky, like a chameleon - almost any enemy can dig and turn into an egg at once. And those who can not - by the same egg warmed between the eyes. And eyes (and feet!) There is even a flower. In extreme cases - eye holes. I'm hinting at the "shay-gay", multi-colored such men in masks. They here also walk on foot, and on stilts, and on spaskrugah float, and fly, aki karlsons Swedish. But with them, the conversation is short - "am!", And no. But hedgehogs can not be taken to the tongue. They are not killed by eggs - they only roll. The main thing, however, is not to climb into the fight yourself, but to defend the child on the back of the person sitting. Because the servants do not do the camels, just a little turtle will throw Mario off the back of the yosh, he starts flying back and forth in a bubble and screams. And the countdown on the nerves is working. If the yoshi of his rider can not catch - a straight road kepkastomu in the castle of the villain, and there with him such a terrible will do that they will not even show us.

Camek will himself periodically appear on stage to turn a simple animal into another level boss. The battles with them are built very correctly - you do not need to smash the enemy a thousand times. If you have already mastered the victory algorithm, it is enough to repeat the key actions three or four times, and the monster is over! And one of the battles - an interesting "remix" of the battle with Boo from the first Yoshi's Island - also uses the second screen in a very original way.

In battles with bosses, there are far fewer lives spent than on the way to them. So save coins - for a hundred pieces give a new horse. You can still search for secret doors, and the keys to them - separately. Push the door - and then there is some competition, like "eat as many enemies as possible" or "jump through the bubbles for a while", or "fly as far as possible" (yoshi and fly are able to do it a little). If you win, you will get a life. Yes, you can replenish the mini-games in the main menu.

The search for secrets is also becoming more complicated by the fact that many of them are accessed only when the "right" rider is on the back of the dinosaur. Following Mario and Peach, Danki Kong, baby Bowser and mini-Vario fall on the head of the yosh. Danki climbs the lianas, Bowser melts the fire with the breath of ice, and the greedy Vario, armed with a magnet, attracts coins and special magnetic cubes ...

In general, it was possible to continue this review in such a caramel spirit, but in the courtyard for a long time the XXI century, and the island of yoshi emerges on the screens of consoles from Nintendo for the third time. On DS, of course, I got not that exact copy of Yoshi's Island for SNES, which was Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 for GBA. The pieces of the gameplay have been carefully mixed, the level design has been completely changed - in part because now, under our control, there are actually five different characters. Their diverse abilities add to the game of depth and puzzlement. Only this system of switching jerk-jockeys tries to twist this puzzlement back. Change Mario to Vario, and the princess on the dragon can only be on special "storyh parking", located by designers in key locations. These signs seem to suggest that there is a fragment of the level ahead, which is passed only with the use of the skills of a certain character. Correlate hanging lianas with Kong, ice blocks - with Bowser, and air flows - with the princess (do not forget about the umbrella?) Is simple. But if you find a secret, but not that hero, but a "changer" behind the mountains, behind the forests - it turns out, on the contrary, unnecessary complication. The solution, it would seem, is trivial - let the stork call at any moment! But this joy, apparently, is reserved for continuation.

Special rider techniques replace some of the default actions, and if some of the replacements are logical, then others turn out to be inappropriate - so, with Bowser on the back of the yosha, it loses the ability to swallow opponents (instead, the evil tortoosaurus puffs with fire), and in the presence of Mario the clamped "tongue button" means … fast run. Let me remind you, by the way, that in the version for Super Nintendo, the Yoshi moved from step to run and back automatically.

It's also bad that the increase in the number of kids violated the internal logic of the game. In the old Yoshi's Island it was mentioned that Mario felt where Kamek's servants had carried his brother, so the yoshi took him with him, as a sort of living compass. Now that we have 5 playable characters, do we understand that they all know where to look for Luigi? However, this can still be tolerated. But that's why with the loss of any of the guys-beasts, we take away life? In the end, there are at least two more left in the reserve. The stupidity of what is happening is exacerbated when the rider's loss occurs near the parking lot: yoshi comes to the parking lot with Mario on his back, the stork arrives with Peach, and after that the enemies knock Mario off the dinosaur. Mario, I will remind you, begins to roar and fly across the screen in some kind of bubble. What does a stork, a stupid bird? Instead of giving the princess to the care of the yoshi and catching Mario, he - flies away! Stork stork, who is your "roof"?

Seriously, if the authors expected to attract the attention of the same people who played Yoshi's Island on the SNES 10 years ago, they had to figure out that the former schoolchildren are now 20-25 years old, and they pay attention to such absurdities. But even without them, the game lacks the technical drawbacks associated with transferring it to a two-screen portable console.

Waving a stylus and yelling at the microphone does not ask us - thank you and on this. However, unlike, for example, New Super Mario Bros., the action develops on both screens - there are no status panels in sight, just like in the original game. Sometimes it works - for example, when the yoshi runs on the top screen, while the bottom in the meantime shows a secret dungeon with a bunch of coins. It intrigues - "it seems to be very close, but how do you get there?"

However, the trick is that between the pictures on the screens there is a gap containing a rather wide horizontal fragment of the level. Most of the time we are allowed to run freely around the current scene back and forth, but there are occasional situations when the level scrolls automatically, and returning to the part that disappeared from the screen is tantamount to death. And imagine - the yoshes climb the tower, the picture slowly creeps from the top down, the yoshi jumps and finds itself in the "dead zone". Yes, yes, it disappears from both screens. Let for a moment, but still unpleasant. After all, wherever it falls, there may be a saving platform, and an evil enemy. Or nothing at all - and then there will be a "giant lizard" (look at yourself, Bowser!) To fall into the bottomless inexorably coming from below.