Yoshi Touch & Go! Review (no fat)

Game Description

Yoshi Touch & Go! - Gameplay

The game really shines in multiplayer mode. Sure enough, the game is pretty much the same, but it has the old tetris-esque when-you-do-well-bad-stuff-happens-to-the-other-person style of gameplay. i.e. if you defeat all enemies on screen, a corresponding inconvenience appears on your opponent’s screen. This leads to all sorts of grudge matches and it makes for endless fun. The fact that the game caters for wireless multiplayer gaming (this is the Nindento DS – goodbye to game link cables…), whilst only requiring one cartridge, certainly sweetens the deal and gives it a much greater lifespan.

Yoshi Touch & Go! - In the Spirit of Tetris...

Remember the good old days when computer games were rules by high scores as opposed to completing games? Well according to this game? That hellish phase has returned. In the complete absence of storyline, it would appear this is deemed the next logical step. But that is what makes this game so difficult to comprehend – it resembles a platformer, but it plays more like a puzzler, and it gets stuck somewhere half way and it simply doesn’t suit the game.

The lack of storyline or proper level structure makes for what seems to be a pretty pointless game. In the modern gaming environment, people don’t really compare scores any more (except, rather oddly, on their mobile phones), so there isn’t really a market for story-less environments for gaming – it tends to get rather tiresome after the first few attempts.

The game itself is pretty flawed, even before you even go into the controls. Once you get over those, the shortcomings are further exposed. The actual process of drawing circles around enemies to kill them isn’t particularly difficult, but it does feel awkward – trying to draw your attention towards a plastic pen whilst drawing around a sprite on screen. Most probably, the fun of the game can be perceived by a select few only.

Yoshi Touch & Go! - Controls

The game has rather innovative controls – if you draw a line on the lower half of the screen, a little cloud will be drawn which will protect your character as they progress through the levels. If you want to get rid of the clouds, you can blow into the microphone of the machine and all the clouds magically disperse (how cool is that?). There is a similar mechanism for dispensing of enemies and controlling Yoshi on screen.

When Yoshi is trotting along, you have very little control over him. He’ll basically do anything – he’s not very bright and he would also appear to be blind. What little control you have over him is determined almost entirely by the touch screen. If you want to kill an enemy, you can draw a little circle around them, you can also make him do a few other minor tricks but that’s about it.

As you progress from level to level, you will find that frustration cannot be underestimated – particularly when Yoshi (yes – a big strong dinosaur), only requires one hit in order to die. Needless to say, this is a little annoying when you have just negotiated your way through most of a level.

Yoshi Touch & Go! - Graphics

On first appearances, you would expect Yoshi Touch & Go! to be a port of Yoshi’s Island, however, be under no illusion – this is no platformer. In fact, it’s more like a puzzle game than anything else. The game itself is separated into 2 distinct parts. Half of the game consists of protecting baby Mario as he decided to foolishly drop from the sky. The other half of the game is spent protecting Yoshi as he goes about escorting baby Mario to relative safety. Oh how the mighty hath fallen...

Yoshi Touch & Go! - Summing Up

The fact that your obstacles tend to be randomly generated leads to at least a bit of variation but it has to be said that in the modern gaming environment, this is no big thing. As far as a game to introduce children to the world of computer gaming goes, Yosh Touch & Go! Can be termed as highly recommended – it’s cartoony, it’s colorful and it’s lots of fun, and if nothing else, it is a way to train you to use the touch screen properly. However, for serious gamers it’s a middle of the road option.

Yoshi Touch & Go! - Cost

The game currently retails for $34.99