A Mysterious Platformer
Mario is continuing to celebrate his 40th birthday. Coming up to half way through his big celebration, Mario is passing the spotlight to his long serving sidekick. Although not quite at the big four, zero. Yoshi is not far off by any stretch of the imagination. Announced during the Mario 40th anniversary Nintendo Direct, Yoshi & The Mysterious Book was always going to be involved in the party. Let’s read a few pages and see how much of a page turner the green dinosaur is!
The game starts with Baby Bowser and Kamek searching for a creature known as the Bewilder Bird. Shortly after this brief setup the Yoshi’s on Yoshi Island come into the possession of a talking book. The mysterious book called Mr E asks the Yoshi clan to travel through it’s pages, studying and chronicling the creatures and locations within. During such scholarly pursuits Yoshi finds that Baby Bowser and Kamek are amongst the pages, and a pursuit begins. Broadly speaking the plot doesn’t really go much further or deeper than that. There might be one or two big lore dumps for those who need to know all about Yoshi and the further Mario universe. However nothing really connected with me as a big story moment. The narrative feels almost purpose crafted to introduce the core gameplay mechanics.
The core gameplay loop is where Yoshi & The Mysterious Book shines. Levels are selected within the pages of Mr E. While scrolling through the pages using a magnifying glass you will find little creatures. Each creature is a level essentially. The gameplay sections in Yoshi & The Mysterious Book are presented as a side scrolling platformer. Don’t let that fool you though as this isn’t a game where we race Yoshi from left to right. Mr E tasked Yoshi with learning about these creatures and that’s exactly what you need to do. Through jumping on, attempting to eat and generally playing around with these creatures Yoshi uncovers various characteristics. An artsy splash fills the area where you have found note worthy knowledge, acting almost as mini challenges in each level for each creature. Through exploring the levels you normally find a larger task at hand which triggers completion state. I must admit I wasn’t expecting a full on puzzle platformer. Yet how Yoshi rewards both exploration and simply playing around is incredibly refreshing and fun.
Yoshi & The Mysterious Book is clearly made for a younger audience and the difficulty reflects that. The game doesn’t hold your hand on finding out about the creatures or what the completion task is. Most of the time you will stumble into something that seems either relevant or like a set piece and 90% off the time that is the case. Although Yoshi can get hit by some hazards they only daze Yoshi and never trigger a game over. Well all apart from one level, which younger gamers and families may find annoying. Other than the occasional head scratching moment Yoshi & The Mysterious Book is a total cake walk. Incredibly easy to progress and get through. With a relatively short runtime it could leave more hardcore gamers wanting more. For me personally, I love a shorter experience and thought Yoshi perfectly stays its welcome.
Typically Nintendo have used the Yoshi games to experiment with new art styles. Going all the way back to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, which to my knowledge is the first main Yoshi game. They have always had a unique visual that is very different to anything else Nintendo put out. Yoshi & The Mysterious Book is no different. It has a oil painting in a picture book aesthetic and it is stunning. Visually its makes the game totally believable that its taking place within an ancient book. It perfectly ties the environment and narrative (what little there was) together in a master class of art direction. Everything in Yoshi & The Mysterious Book looks so cute and adorable but also looks like they belong in this world. While not being the most outrageous example of graphical fidelity, it absolutely champions a stylistic approach and smashes it out the park.
Unfortunately Yoshi & The Mysterious Book does suffer from what I perceived as slight performance hiccups. Points in the game have subtle but noticeable frame dips. At first I thought it might be a choice to match the art direction and it didn’t really bother me much. However later in the game on some levels that had a lot going on I noticed even more frame rate issues. It became clear that the frame rate wasn’t an artist choice and that Yoshi & The Mysterious Book is technologically struggling in parts. I don’t claim to be a technical wizard but really don’t understand how the Switch 2 can’t keep this game at a stable 60 frames per second through out. As I stated earlier it’s no graphical power house so it’s a tad disappointing Yoshi can’t completely keep up. Granted Yoshi & The Mysterious Book mostly performs well but the few moments it doesn’t it’s very noticeable and a little confusing.
Overall Yoshi & The Mysterious Book is a great family friendly puzzle platformer. A short and sweet experience with an extensive list of collectibles for the completionists. For a causal gamer I can whole heartedly recommend Yoshi.
Review Code Kindly Provided By Nintendo
