Kairyu
11-19-2006, 11:56 PM
GASP SHOCK HORROR, something not Wii-related.
In lieu of a Wii, I purchased Yoshi's Island DS today after hearing many good things about it. After playing through the first world, I'm extremely disappointed. The entire game keeps giving me this overwhelming feeling of a second-rate sequel made by a group of unaffiliated fanboys.
The graphical style is different, and not bad for a DS game, but I really really really preferred the original YI's graphical style and I'm having a hard time figuring out why they changed it instead of trying to update what they already had. Also, the cutscenes and text boxes seem really cheap and thrown-together. None of those fancy hand-drawn scenes from the first game. And Kamek's magical dust cloud has been reduced to a magical dust sprinkling. Lame.
It also seems like all the animations use only half as many frames as the original. At the end of each stage, you can visibly see the next Yoshi teleport/fall a full character width in a single frame while trying to catch the baby.
The music sucks. Whereas the original had strong, bright, happy music that really drew you into the game, YIDS has some soft, light tunes in the background that feel like they're missing half the instrument tracks. I seriously want to turn down the volume in nearly every area I've been to so far. On the plus side (but certainly not to the game's credit), most of the menus don't even HAVE music.
The stages seem okay. I've only gone through the first world, but so far it seems like they emulate the spirit of the original well... except for the segments which require Peach's umbrella. Those seem really out of place.
It also bears mention that Poochy has apparently been removed, in favor of a bizarre nameless kangaroo-thing. Not cool. Those happy sunflowers that grew in certain places to act as platforms have also gotten creepy new faces that kind of squint at you in an evil psychopathic way.
The play control... it's left me feeling like the new babies don't give the player 'new' abilities- it just divided Yoshi's old abilities so you couldn't use them all at once. You can only run with Mario, and Yoshi walks painfully slowly with Peach. Your flutter jump also seems much shorter than I remember, unless you're using Peach, and even then it seems to be not much better than it was in the first game. I don't know about the other babies, as I haven't seen them yet.
Also, there are four control schemes, but only two different button setups. The thing is, the different button setups just switch the L and R buttons for the X and Y Buttons, so you're always left with two buttons that don't do anything. Why not just make both pairs do the same thing?
The items you could collect also seem to have been removed, which is rather annoying. They really helped with getting all the stars in certain stages. It's still mind-numbingly easy to get 1-ups, though.
In summary, I don't like it all that much. It just doesn't come close to the original in the polish category, and that was one of the best things about Yoshi's Island.
In lieu of a Wii, I purchased Yoshi's Island DS today after hearing many good things about it. After playing through the first world, I'm extremely disappointed. The entire game keeps giving me this overwhelming feeling of a second-rate sequel made by a group of unaffiliated fanboys.
The graphical style is different, and not bad for a DS game, but I really really really preferred the original YI's graphical style and I'm having a hard time figuring out why they changed it instead of trying to update what they already had. Also, the cutscenes and text boxes seem really cheap and thrown-together. None of those fancy hand-drawn scenes from the first game. And Kamek's magical dust cloud has been reduced to a magical dust sprinkling. Lame.
It also seems like all the animations use only half as many frames as the original. At the end of each stage, you can visibly see the next Yoshi teleport/fall a full character width in a single frame while trying to catch the baby.
The music sucks. Whereas the original had strong, bright, happy music that really drew you into the game, YIDS has some soft, light tunes in the background that feel like they're missing half the instrument tracks. I seriously want to turn down the volume in nearly every area I've been to so far. On the plus side (but certainly not to the game's credit), most of the menus don't even HAVE music.
The stages seem okay. I've only gone through the first world, but so far it seems like they emulate the spirit of the original well... except for the segments which require Peach's umbrella. Those seem really out of place.
It also bears mention that Poochy has apparently been removed, in favor of a bizarre nameless kangaroo-thing. Not cool. Those happy sunflowers that grew in certain places to act as platforms have also gotten creepy new faces that kind of squint at you in an evil psychopathic way.
The play control... it's left me feeling like the new babies don't give the player 'new' abilities- it just divided Yoshi's old abilities so you couldn't use them all at once. You can only run with Mario, and Yoshi walks painfully slowly with Peach. Your flutter jump also seems much shorter than I remember, unless you're using Peach, and even then it seems to be not much better than it was in the first game. I don't know about the other babies, as I haven't seen them yet.
Also, there are four control schemes, but only two different button setups. The thing is, the different button setups just switch the L and R buttons for the X and Y Buttons, so you're always left with two buttons that don't do anything. Why not just make both pairs do the same thing?
The items you could collect also seem to have been removed, which is rather annoying. They really helped with getting all the stars in certain stages. It's still mind-numbingly easy to get 1-ups, though.
In summary, I don't like it all that much. It just doesn't come close to the original in the polish category, and that was one of the best things about Yoshi's Island.