Yo, Yo, Yoshi - fire bars by a disembodied voice

I can't say that I would compare this entry in the Yoshi series favorably to that of Yoshi's Island or the later Yoshi's Wooly World, or other N64 side-scrollers like Mischief Makers or Kirby 64, but I feel that it still holds merit.

The artsy juvenile charm from the earlier SNES entry is carried over in full, combined with prerendered strangeness that likens it to games like Tomba!. Adding to this style are some of the level set pieces and music tracks, which are entirely unique and bizarre across the genre.

I found that the most interesting aspect of this game was its overall game design, especially how it handles progression, which is vaguely reminiscent of Shadow the Hedgehog funnily enough. Across the six worlds, there are four levels to play, with 24 overall. However, only the first world has the first four available to play immediately. Upon beating one level, you are sent to the next world's set of levels with no way to play the other three until you beat the game. This is already strange enough, but the number of levels available to play are linked to collectibles scattered about the level you just played. If I had to guess, this is done to incentivize exploration in the limited stage count, which ties back into the more score-attack focus of this game. The more collectibles you find, the higher your score. While I vastly prefer the more traditional progression of Yoshi's Island, there's enough depth present in the systems here to enjoy thoroughly.

My one and only complaint with this title is the control. There's this weird momentum to when Yoshi's on the ground that interacts weirdly with the jumping mechanics, resulting in a sort of sluggish feel. Granted, this doesn't tend to seriously impact playability, but can rear in rare life-or-death moments like in my least favorite level "Jungle Puddle" where instant kill hazards are plenty.

With my final thoughts, I'd say this is a very imaginative experience with interesting system and level design. My personal favorite levels from each world were "Tower Climb", "Jelly Pipe", "Tall Tower", "Piranha Grove", "Lots O' Jellyfish". and "Lift Castle".

"You're mocking me, aren't you?", Buzz says for the fourth time after missing a ledge grab because the game hates me.

I was very pleasantly surprised with this game, being a movie tie-in license, which are historically terrible. I'm usually very mixed on Traveler's Tales pre-Lego games like Sonic the Hedgehog 3D Blast or Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex which are decent, but uninspiring.

Toy Story 2 also tends to fall into this camp, where its entirely competent as a game, but isn't particularly special in comparison to its contemporaries. Granted, the level design is very solid, focusing on more contained environments that link together with their own unique challenges. Each level contains five collectible tokens, with three of those being linked to repeated challenges like collecting 50 coins, finding and returning 5 items to an NPC, and fighting against the level's boss. Most of the remaining tokens are linked to time-limit based challenges or just by reaching a point in the map Mario 64-style. As you might gather from this description, while the design is very safe and solid, it does get very repetitive.

While I mostly enjoyed my time with the game, there was always something frustrating that kind of curbed that enjoyment. The more vertical levels like the construction yard and the alleyway are really annoying with knocking you off at the worst time. Some of the bosses are really thoughtless too, usually being war of attritions with little strategy. My biggest gripes are with some of the control quirks, the ledge grab doesn't seem to work reliably, even when it looks like it should. Sometimes bounce pads won't send you where you need to go, which is weird since they're mostly automated.

While these are mostly minor grievances, its really the technical aspects where this game has aged the most. It's not unexpected with the N64, as many first party titles were guilty of substandard frame rates like Banjo-Tooie or Ocarina of Time. This combines with a camera limited to the x-axis to create a sometimes nauseating experience.

I know I've been mostly negative for this review, but I still enjoyed my time completing the game. The level design has little moments of cleverness, especially in trying to turn regular mundane environments like houses and toy stores into charming video game levels. I also really appreciate how the backtracking is handled, where only new sections of levels are tied behind powerups found later in the game.

In short, this is a very no-frills experience with fun, charming level design and strong collectathon design. It does show its age in the technical aspects, and its lack of budget in presentation, but still proves to be a good time in spite of itself.