I've been meaning to get back to writing more longform reviews about the new games I play, but playing Yoshi & The Mysterious Book was what really clinched it. I have so many thoughts about this new Yoshi game, and I just need to let them all out.
The Switch 2 has had easily Nintendo's most experimental game library since the Gamecube. A Mario Kart game with parkour and movement tech? A 3D Donkey Kong game built around terrain deformation? A sequel to Kirby Air Ride? A Pokemon-themed Dragon Quest Builders sequel starring Ditto? A Splatoon looter shooter? Star Fox-themed vtubers? These are all such off-the-wall game concepts and yet, so far at least, they've all been consistently well-executed and surprisingly fun. No thanks to Nintendo's marketing, though. Their trailer game especially this year has been absolutely awful, with Pokemon Pokopia being a glaring example since they for some reason neglected to mention the game's stellar 20-30 hour campaign. This damn company is lucky I trust them with putting out quality games because if they were anyone else, these trailers would've gotten me to walk away and never look back. And no game got hit with this worse than Yoshi & The Mysterious Book.
Yoshi & The Mysterious Book had some of the absolute worst trailers I have ever seen in a game, with each one slowly walking you through a single level in the first world. You know, the boring tutorial levels with the most basic puzzles. The concept of researching Yoshi's Island's enemies seemed cool but the actual gameplay looked very guided and mindless. The patronizing narration that was clearly meant to appeal to little kids definitely didn't help matters either. By the time the game reached its review embargo, I feel like most people still didn't know what Mysterious Book was even about and most the footage we saw looked really dull. But having played the game myself, I'm happy to say Nintendo did this game a serious disservice. Those trailers didn't even come close to showing off Mysterious Book's creative puzzles, varied mechanics, immense personality, and surprisingly unhinged energy. This is not just a traditional Yoshi game, this is the most experimental first-party Nintendo game I've seen since the original Chibi Robo.
