Games made for babies can still be fun

[thayora]

So I have a lot of games that I bought but barely touched which is bad.... but I also avoid them because I wanna draw.... which I also avoid doing. But anyway, I've been playing Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn and Yoshi's Crafted World and damn.

They're good.

But in fairness, I already finished the Wii version of Kirby's Epic Yarn, but it still holds up really well today, and the 3DS port makes it even more fantastic. As for Yoshi, I literally haven't played a Yoshi game for years. I've really only watched my nephew play Wooly World, and Vinny's playthrough for New Island, and man... New Island looks like garbage. God, I really don't know what happened with Yoshi. I fell in love the GBA remake of Yoshi's Island.

Yoshi's Island is still the best, btw. Yoshi's Island DS was also alright because I'm a sucker for challenging platformers which is VERY evident by how many hours I poured into the recent Donkey Kong country games. Goddamn the Donkey Kong Country games are fucking good- play them. Just because they aren't cutesy or extremely aesthetically pleasing like Kirby games doesn't mean that they don't offer a lot. Oh by the way speaking of Kirby.

Holy shit, I've ragged on this all the time on twitter, but it's been more than a year since Star Allies released and my god - I'm still mad at that game. I have never been more disappointed with a mainline Nintendo franchise game like this before, and I've played Yoshi Topsy-Turvy. There is so much I can say about how disappointing Star Allies was.

Playing Crafted World and Extra Epic Yarn made me realized that I don't need overly difficult games (like Tropical Freeze) to be satisfied with them, I just want level designs that are fun to play. I want level designs that reward you for taking the initiative to explore. Epic Yarn and Crafted World do this!!! They reward you for exploring!!! I appreciate that so much!!!

Star Allies barely did that. There were so many levels in the main campaign where I wanted to see if there were any hidden platforms in the sky but. There. Weren't. I've wasted time thinking that being curious would reward me with a secret but that barely happened in Star Allies' main story.

God, I don't know why Star Allies makes me this mad. Maybe it's because of people defending a game that was barebones at release justifying it with the DLC. And yeah, that's great. The DLC added more shit to make it worth the money, but honestly, I would've preferred a main story line that felt more fine tuned with better level design. Kirby games have always been easy, that's not the problem. The levels in Star Allies were just underwhelming. Maybe it was because the developers thought that would be better to accommodate the multiplayer mode but it really... doesn't..... It's just nostalgia pandering.

Back to Epic Yarn and Crafted World, they both have that intriguing level design that Star Allies should've had. And yeah, Crafted World's level design doesn't really hold a candle to Yoshi's Island, but it's definitely on the right path. Especially with how terrible New Island was. Holy shit. But the music is just as bad tho. I can't defend that.