I know I said that Sonic 3 would be my last Pi Review. I forgot about this one, oops! Anyway, I REALLY wanted to like this one. I love Super Mario World, as explained in my earlier review. I love Yoshi. I love Miyamoto. I love hand-drawn sprites. I almost always love critics' darlings. But I just couldn't really enjoy this one much.
Let's start with the good. The music is catchy and fun. The concept is inventive. The graphics are fantastic. Some of the levels are really well designed, and there are tons of secrets in each level.
But SMW2 is crippled by one huge, glaring weakness. Pace. The egg throwing mechanic causes you to slow down, aim, and throw constantly. And this wouldn't be too awful, except for that some obstacles/enemies take two or more eggs to destroy! And God forbid that you have to go back and find more bad guys to swallow to make more eggs. You end up taking 15-20 seconds for every obstacle that needs to be cleared with eggs, and that's simply too long for a game that should be like Super Mario World, fun and quickly paced.
The controls are also a bit slippery, particularly in Yoshi's leg-kick float. Being able to use that more than once is a great design idea, but the long length of it, combined with the fact that its end is unclear graphically, makes it guesswork to be able to float again. I ended up killing myself more times by floating at the wrong time, or floating too many times, than I did by all of the other enemies in the game.
Anyway, I did beat this one, but I was glad to see it end. If you're one of those who thinks this is one of the greatest platformers of all time, I'm glad you enjoy it. I just can't say I'm one of you. I'll give it a 7.5/10.
-TRO
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