Yoshi's Woolly World 2ds

 

Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World 3DS review: We’ve romped our way through Woolly World on the Nintendo 3DS and fallen in love with a bunch of yarn Yoshis, who have just as much personality as the fleshy version. Here’s our full Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World for 3DS review.

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World (3DS, 2017) at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products! Feb 03, 2017  Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World for 3DS game reviews & Metacritic score: Embark on a new Yoshi adventure in a world made from yarn, cloth and textiles. Explore the world by using yarn to weave wool platforms and warp pipes to reach n. Aug 01, 2017  Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World is a dyed-in-the-wool platformer that's bursting with colour and texture, only on Nintendo 3DS family systems. Explore a material world with Yoshi and Yoshi's adorable friend Poochy! Box Contains. 1 x Game Cartridge.

Yoshi's Woolly World Nintendo 3ds

Everyone loves Yoshi, cute dogs and yarn, so Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World is bound to delight gamers of all ages. This side-scrolling platformer for Nintendo’s 3DS offers a unique graphical styling, to help freshen up one of the oldest game genres – not to mention bags of content and secrets to unlock. Here’s our full Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World review for 3DS.

Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World 3DS review: What’s this all about then?

Woolly World’s story makes about as much sense as Donald Trump’s political strategies, but with a lot less menace. Essentially there’s a wizard who’s turned a bunch of woolly Yoshis into balls of yarn, for whatever nefarious purposes, and now it’s up to our hero to retrieve all of the yarn and knit his mates back together.

Yoshi

Frankly, it’s the kind of plot that requires liberal use of certain class A drugs to comprehend, and in the end who cares. You play these games because they’re fun, not for the captivating storyline or the inspirational character arcs.

Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World 3DS review: Gameplay and difficulty levels

Gameplay is as solid as you’d expect from Nintendo. Woolly World is a simple side-scroller at heart, although Yoshi differs from Mario in that he can hover indefinitely if you hold down the jump button. And as well as jumping on enemies’ heads, you can hurl balls of wool at them to despatch them.

At set points you’ll even automatically transform into a special powered-up Yoshi, similar to Kirby’s souped-up forms in Planet Robobot. From a super-speedy biker Yoshi to a Godzilla-sized Mega Yoshi, these short but thrilling segments add another dose of welcome variety.

Woolly World’s difficulty level is quite low, provided you don’t rush things. Finding all of the hidden treasures is where the true difficulty lies, although taking on the boss creatures is also fun. They pop up every four levels and each boasts his or her own attack sequences and weak points, as you’d expect.

If you’re struggling to complete a level or find all of its secrets, don’t get too depressed. You can stick Woolly World on casual mode at any time, which gives you constant access to some of Poochy’s helpful pups. These little balls of delight can sniff out hidden items for you, whenever you can’t be bothered to do it yourself.

And even if you find yourself seriously struggling, even on casual mode (highly unlikely), you can employ the help of one of your power badges. These are basically cheat codes which are unlocked by completing levels, and they offer a helping hand in many ways; be it making you immune to certain damage, or giving you big balls (don’t ask). Of course, you can’t constantly rely on these, as they cost virtual cash to use.

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Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World 3DS review: Game length

The game is split into six worlds, each with its own distinctive look and feel. Fans of Nintendo platform era know what to expect: desert world, lava world and so on. Each world offers eight levels of platforming shenanigans, giving 48 levels in total (not including bonus stages). Thank god we paid attention in maths class.

These levels are a good size too. If you spend some time hunting down the secret collectibles, you can expect each one to take roughly ten minutes to complete.

Completists be warned: you’ll have your work cut out to hit 100 percent on Woolly World. In each stage, Yoshi can collect up to five smiley flower heads, five balls of yarn and 20 special coins. You’ll have to explore carefully and use your wits to max out every level, but the rewards are solid.

For instance, collect all of the flower heads in a world and Yoshi gets a bonus stage to play. Find all five balls of yarn in a level and one of the kidnapped Yoshis will be resurrected, unlocking them as a playable character (the only difference being appearance sadly).

Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World 3DS review: Presentation and 3D effects

Yoshi and Poochy’s Woolly World offers some truly unique presentation, thanks to the yarn-based theme of the game. Every character and indeed the world itself is stitched together, giving them fantastic texture. Every World is a colourful delight and individual levels are pleasingly distinctive.

As for the 3D element, Woolly World does a great job of popping out the visuals to make the world feel even more immersive. Thankfully it’s still perfectly possible to play in 2D if the 3D makes you feel a bit iffy, or you own a 2DS. You only miss out on the striking depth.

Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World 3DS review: Bonus content and comparison to the Wii U version

In addition to the main game, Woolly World also offers plenty of engrossing bonus content, which wasn’t found on the Wii U version of the game.

For instance, head to the Poochy Hut and you can race through courses as Yoshi’s pet dog, who is otherwise criminally underused. These stages are great fun, with set objectives to complete in each one for maximum financial rewards. And although the controls are simple – just tap to jump – you’ll want to replay them over and over to grab every last gem.

You can also watch a series of stomach-achingly cute stop-motion videos starring Yoshi and Poochy, and then answer basic observation questions to unlock more virtual cash (used to enable the power badges in the standard single-player levels).

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Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World 3DS review: Verdict

Basically, you get a lot for your money in Woolly World and none of it is filler. Every single level is a delight, offering dozens of secrets to hunt down, while difficulty levels are perfect for a younger audience. And with extras like the Poochy Hut races to master, you’ll be gaming for many, many hours before you find and see everything on offer.

Yoshi's Woolly World 2ds Park

You can grab Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World from Friday February 3, for £35.

Twelve frames for a single second

To produce stop-motion animation, you position models by hand, take a photo, move them a bit, take another photo, and so on. You have to keep track of how Yoshi and the objects around him should be moving as you photograph frame by frame, so it’s a pretty painstaking process.

12 photos are needed to create one second’s worth of animation. Put the above photos together and what do you get?

Behind the scenes

2ds

3ds Yoshi's Wooly World

Let’s take a look at what happens during the animation process. This is the set where the animation takes place. With all the tools and equipment around, it gets kind of cluttered.

If you look closely at the photos, you’ll see that Yoshi and his pals are held in place by metal clamps. These are called “rigs,” and they’re used to keep objects in the positions they need to be.

The many faces of Yoshi

During the shorts, you may have noticed how Yoshi has all sorts of different facial expressions. How do they do that?

Here are some of the parts used for Yoshi’s eyes. These can be switched in-between frames to let Yoshi blink, change expressions, and more.

The Yoshi featured in the shorts looks a lot like the Yarn Yoshi amiibo figure, but it’s actually a little different.

See how the arms and legs are longer? Plus, there are metal joints embedded inside the stop-motion Yoshi model, which makes it stiff and heavy. Thanks to these joints, the animators are able to make Yoshi hold poses and move with precision.

Photographing frames, rigs and all

Yoshi's Woolly World 2ds Edition

Check out the difference between the original photos and the versions used in the animation. The rigs used to keep things in place stay in the shot and are then edited out later. That’s right – stop motion may seem like an old-fashioned method of animation, but it actually involve some pretty state-of-the-art image editing.

Here’s a behind the scenes clip we got our hands on to show you what the animation looked like during production.

A message from the production team

Here’s a message from Mr. Minegishi at dwarf, the animation studio, who lent his expertise to producing these animations:

“Stop motion Yoshi acts in his own special way, a way that’s different to the Yoshi you typically see in games. We hope that players will enjoy seeing Yoshi in a brand new light.”

In-game features

The game contains 30 different animated shorts. Each day you can watch a new one, so you’ll probably want to try to play at least once a day. You’ll also get quizzed on the movies you watch. You can try to answer the questions correctly to get Beads that are sure to help Yoshi along the way!

The lovable Poochy, who appears in the shorts, will also be getting his very own amiibo figure (sold separately or as part of a special bundle with Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World). It doesn’t move like Poochy does in the animated videos, but by scanning it at any time during a course you can call Poochy to your side, letting you continue the adventure with a faithful companion.

So if you ever need a little break from platforming in Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World, you can check out the stop-motion animated shorts! You can check out some of the videos and learn more about the game at the official Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World website.

Yoshi's Woolly World 2ds Games

Figures shown not actual size. Visit nintendo.com/amiibo for details on amiibo functionality.

Yoshi's Woolly World Nintendo Switch

ESRB Rating: Everyone with Mild Cartoon Violence