Systems: Nintendo 3DS*
Release Date: January 19, 2017
Publisher: Nintendo
I have another much longer and much more complicated article, which is rather amusing considering the target audience for this game in 2017 would not be looking for a think piece about the history of the Yoshi's Island series and the differences and sameness between the games leading up to this 3DS bonus featured port of the 2015 Wii U game of nearly the same name.
In short, Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World is a 2.5D platformer similar to previous entries in the Yoshi's Island series where levels are designed more like the Ghost House in Super Mario World than older platforming stages in Super Mario Bros. My biggest gripe with the Yoshi's Island series continues with this game, in that the stages can be too long, especially on your first playthrough and if you are trying to collect all of the collectibles. For reference, I replayed Level 1-1, which took me 6m 37s, while playing Level 3-5 for the first time took me 18m 57s (although I did get stuck retrying a section trying to figure out how to get one particular collectible). On average, I am usually done after playing two levels and want to move on to something else. And on top of that, there is the completionist element (thankfully you are not given a letter grade like in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island) to collect everything in each stage (and have full health at the end of the stage because of course that is a thing too) which often means replaying a stage multiple times. It is a fine line between saying, "Hell with it, I'm done with this stage" and "I want to collect all the Smiley Flowers so that I can unlock a super difficult bonus level at the end of this world."
Feeling this way makes me a little sad because the biggest draw for this game is the visual aesthetic. Yes, the graphics are quite a
big downgrade from those on the Wii U, but the trade-off is that the 3D effect when cranked up to 100% is what the 3DS is all about. Characters in the foreground are appropriately blurry while Yoshi in the playable-ground (whatever the word for that is) is crisp and then you have additional background elements quite a ways off which are also blurry (but a different kind of blurry if they are small enough). It is one of those types of comparisons that, on its own, the game looks fine as you can still tell, for the most part, what each of the characters is and what the backgrounds are made out of, but side-by-side, the 3DS version does look a bit like a blurry mess.
Basically, I love the look of the game and the purchasable badges that modify your playthrough for that level using in-game currency (although I never use them on my first run) and I love that there is a "Mellow" mode to be more accessible for younger or less experienced players (or those having a hard time). Had the levels been 50% shorter, I would likely find myself playing the game for longer than 20-30 minute stretches and I probably would have finished the game months ago instead of playing the game 1-2 times per week for the last five months.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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