Shaun Munro reviews Yoshi’s Crafted World…
If Yoshi’s Crafted World doesn’t break Nintendo’s streak of releasing solid if fairly routine offerings for its sub-Mario mascots on the Switch, it still delivers a reliably breezy weekend’s worth of spritely fun with just enough push-back to satisfy.
As has been the trend in recent years for everyone’s favourite video game dinosaur, his latest jaunt offers up an endearing homespun arts-and-crafts aesthetic, albeit moving away from the yarn-infused style of Yoshi’s Woolly World to focus on a more general DIY mish-mash.
The story, if you care enough to even take it in, sees Kamek and Baby Bowser attempting to steal the magical Sundream Stone from Yoshi’s Island, causing it to scatter its gems across the land, and prompting Yoshi to venture out in order to retrieve them all. Basically, it’s exactly what you expect – it’s in one ear and out the other.
But bar a few brief cut-scenes, the game thankfully keeps the gassing to an absolute minimum, and moment-to-moment, Yoshi’s Crafted World is a damn entertaining platformer. If last year’s Kirby Star Allies invited ennui with its ludicrously low level of difficulty, Yoshi’s first solo outing on the Switch is a little more nuanced and challenging.
Sure, you’ve still got unlimited lives and there’s little here to make you fail multiple times in a row, but it’s not quite possible to sleepwalk your way through it all (unless you switch to Mellow Mode, anyway), and you’ll need to employ some degree of thought to make it to the end.
In some areas the balance does tip a little too far in the other direction, though, and these issues are largely in the form of easily solvable technical and design flaws. For starters, the controls aren’t great, with the game often not registering close together inputs, which can result in collisions with enemies and fatal falls that feel rather unfair. Checkpointing is also surprisingly sparse for a game that’s undeniably marketed primarily at children; on numerous occasions the aforementioned control issues caused me to lose over 5 minutes of progress due to the rather sparse placement of checkpoints.
But for the most part the game surges along confidently, hurling players from one agreeably quaint batch of themed worlds to another, ranging from the dinosaur-centric Dino Desert, to the Feudal Japan-inspired Ninjarama. It’s fair to say that the formula does start to wear a little thin near game’s end due to both the lack of enemy variety and saminess of the core mechanics, but at around 8-10 hours in length, it can’t really be accused of outstaying its welcome.
Every so often, however, the game dares to flirt with genuine greatness through its gimmicky one-off levels, such as a ludicrously entertaining set-piece placing Yoshi inside a gigantic mechanical model of himself, with the goal of punching as many incoming objects as possible.
Another sees you riding atop a plane, piloting it with your weight distribution determining its path as you attempt to pop as many balloons as possible – while fending off Shy Guys, of course. It’s honestly a shame the game isn’t comprised of more well thought-out levels like this, because they do a fantastic job breaking up the workmanlike nature of the more typical platforming stages.
But even the most straight-forward level still gives players plenty to explore, from secret paths on different planes of movement, to collectables hidden in the background environments and even riding the occasional Poochy Pup around. Yoshi isn’t exactly kitted out with the most diverse suite of abilities, but the high level of environmental interaction somewhat makes up for this.
And while Nintendo’s first-party platformers do tend to gate levels off to encourage off-piste exploration in the quest of hoovering up arbitrary trinkets, Yoshi’s Crafted World thankfully lands on the more generous end in that regard. The game is only too happy to dole out flowers to the player – you’ll get one simply for collecting 100 coins across a level – such that you’re never more than a run or two away from collecting the required amount to proceed.
Technically, the game certainly suffers from its sub-par resolution in both handheld and docked mode, but by employing clever tricks to mask the Switch’s limitations, it still manages to offer up an appealing standard of graphical fidelity.
Gameplay during levels maintains a (mostly) buttery smooth 60 FPS, though the world map incredulously takes a drastic hit, appearing to level off at around 30 FPS. It’s certainly not a powerhouse showcase for the hardware overall, but respectable enough – which is more than can be said for the rather repetitive and eventually irritating musical score on offer. It didn’t take long for me to mute it entirely and listen to my own Spotify playlist instead.
Yoshi’s Crafted World doesn’t provide the storming reinvention of the franchise Switch owners might be hoping for, but thanks to sharp, charming level design, it delivers the basic goods with a cherry on top. In addition to the already substantial campaign, the frantic extra Flip-Side levels and inspired inclusion of co-op add up to an admirable suite of content for your buck.
Pros:
+ Inventive level design with just enough challenge.
+ Colourful and creative visuals.
+ Level-gating is incredibly light.
+ Neat replay value and co-op options.
Cons:
– Frustratingly floaty controls.
– Low resolution and frame-rate issues.
– Checkpointing could be more generous in places.
– Banal, repetitive musical score.
Rating: 7/10
Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more video game rambling.
