This is much more a Yoshi's Island game than Yoshi's Island DS and it's much more charming with a lovely art style. Yes, the soundtrack is hit and miss (basically everything bad comes from the kazoos) but it seems that there has been much more effort put into this one than the DS game. Everything in this game screams "Yoshi's Island"-style, from the backgrounds to all the brand-new 3D models which are really nicely done.

Thankfully Yoshi's New Island moved away from the two-screen platformer action, basically eliminating confusing camera shenanigans and it feels much more focused this way. You get your platforming action on one screen and your stats on the second screen, just the way it should have been from the beginning.

The levels are nicely designed and there's one big change: instead of having to collect all red coins, stars and flowers at once, you can concentrate on ONE of these things each time you play the level, which makes this game much more fair and fun to complete. In fact, it should have been this way since the very first Yoshi's Island. The bonus levels are incredibly hard though (as they should be)!

This game also introduces some new mechanics such as big eggs, metal eggs and new transformations, all of which are nicely implemented and not overdone. I do think that the transformation sequences could have been easily implemented without motion controls though (you have to tilt the system to move in a specific direction), but they had to implement at least one gimmick, I guess.

I'm pretty shocked to read the negative reviews now because I don't find anything wrong with this game and it's better than the DS game in every way. Sure, the story doesn't make much sense and yes, this game almost feels "too safe" and too much like the original Yoshi's Island, but that's what I like about this game. This is the true successor to Yoshi's Island, period.