Yoshi's New Island

This was, all things considered, one of the most disappointing games I've beaten in the Back-Blogged era. It's hard to explain why. It wasn't a bad game on any technical level, nor did it take up much of my time, clocking in at less than six hours long. I didn't even pay any real money for it. (Thanks, Club Nintendo, and rest in peace.)

No, this game wasn't broken or relentlessly difficult or glitch-prone or anything like that. It was just so profoundly lazy. And boring. At no point in the six hours I spent on this game did I ever feel challenged or impressed in any way. I ended the game with 91 lives and lost maybe ten over the course of the game. It was just this strange reboot of a Super Nintendo classic that nobody ever asked for.

In all seriousness, aside from an overused giant egg mechanic, this game added no new gameplay whatsoever from 1995's Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. It had no charm and it didn't even look prettier. It was somehow much shorter. Worst of all, it took a big old shit directly on its predecessor's happy ending. The 1995 game ends with Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being safely delivered to their parents thanks to the tireless work of eight different Yoshis. As this game begins, it turns out that the stork fucked up and delivered them to the wrong house. And then on the stork's way to the real house, the babies are stolen once again by Kamek, and once again it's up to eight different Yoshis to save the day. (Are these the same eight Yoshis? You'd think so, but then, this is all taking place on a new island. Fuck it. Nintendo doesn't care. Why do you?)

I've gotten this far into my post without even mentioning Yoshi's Island DS, a 2006 title that served as a spin-off of sorts to the first game. It wasn't nearly as good as that first game, but at least it tried a whole bunch of new things instead of stripping down the 1995 game and polishing up the graphics a little bit. The 2006 DS game introduced Baby Peach and Baby Donkey Kong and Baby Wario. It utilized both screens on the DS. It wasn't a great game by any stretch, but at least it was something new and different. This 2013 3DS game didn't make any effort whatsoever to be anything new whatsoever. Its very existence was such a shamelessly no-risk move by Nintendo.

Almost every time I beat a video game, something stirs somewhere in my emotional recesses. Satisfaction, usually. Relief, sometimes. Sadness, rarely. But Yoshi's New Island didn't make me feel anything other than tired. My favorite memory from the game was the moment I learned that there were six worlds and not eight. I gave the game an honest chance at first, and it was stale and repetitious by the third of its forty-eight levels. By the second or third time I picked the game up, I just kind of felt like, "Am I done yet? Can I be done yet?" And even while I was fighting Baby Bowser - and then later regular Bowser, from a time warp, apropos of nothing whatsoever - I just kept thinking, "Can I be done yet? Will this be over please?" One of the most bittersweet things about living a very long and very happy life is that sometimes, by the end, the person is just tired, and just ready. Not depressed or suicidal, but completely melancholy. At peace. Simply no longer interested in any aspect of living. And I bring this up because Yoshi's New Island kind of made me feel that way about video games. "Are we done here? Is this really all there is?" What a soul-crushing disappointment.