You can now aim your eggs at objects in the foreground and in the far distance, bulls-eyeing cut-out clouds or shy-guys peering out from behind the scenery. Maybe it's the influence of that corner of Nintendo's Kyoto headquarters that's busying itself with cardboard wonders as it conjures up new Labo creations, as Yoshi's Crafted World displays a mastery of its simulated materials.Īnd so it presents a world that demands to be played with and poked at, as is underlined by one of the few tweaks to Yoshi's established moveset.

These worlds feel like they've been constructed over long summer afternoons on living room floors or stretched out across garden patios, with a human touch - and a dash of tilt shift focus - making them feel oh so real. It's a more cohesive, coherent aesthetic than the half-hearted Wooly World, or even of that game's superior predecessor Kirby's Epic Yarn. Yoshi's Island was always a brilliantly tangible, physical game, brought alive by its tactile surfaces - the chalklines, the paper and the clay - and this time out Good-Feel have simply taken to another corner of the stationery cupboard, pulling out cardboard, string and fizzy pop straws to create its own colourful dioramas.

Somewhat incredibly, it feels like the first Yoshi game in nearly a quarter of a century and over five follow-ups that really understands what made the original sing, and it's then bold enough to place its own spin. Yoshi's Crafted World's best trick is getting to the essence of what made the original Yoshi's Island so beloved. Crafted World, meanwhile, feels fresh and full of ideas, its levels happily rifling through quick sketches and one-shot concepts before it moves briskly onto the next. It's certainly Good-Feel's finest creation yet, a world away from the slightly stale Yoshi's Wooly World, a game that ended up feeling as stuffy and insubstantial as a dusty cotton ball. It's there, embedded a little deeper, in what's a meticulously engineered side-scrolling platformer - perhaps the best to have come from Nintendo since 2012's Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.

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