jjmccullough's Yoshi's Crafted World review

This is a really strong review, and I'm afraid I don't have much feedback to offer beyond that vague praise except extremely nitpicky stuff.

Yoshi’s Crafted World for the Switch is the latest entry in the Yoshi franchise, which began in 1995 with the SNES platform Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and has since spanned multiple titles across numerous platforms.

This sentence is technically fine, but the "and has since spanned..." bit feels redundant after you've spent the opening three pragraphs effectively making that point.

Controls remain intuitive, though shooting eggs continues to use a somewhat cumbersome targeting system that may frustrate younger gamers (the game does have an “mellow” mode for the very young in which Yoshi can fly and takes very little damage).

I'm not sure "an 'mellow' mode" is right here, since there's not a vowel sound at the start of 'mellow' to necessitate "an" instead of "a."

Finally, is the white space at the end intentional?

To get back to my point at the start of this post, I don't have much feedback to offer that isn't extremely nitpicky. The writing throughout is sophisticated and hard to fault, providing ample evidence you have a strong writing background and experience with games. I enjoyed reading the review, and thanks for posting it!

Overall, good review. I've love to play this game but I don't have a Switch. Did you play Wooly World? I was curious how this game stands out from Wooly World.

Just to be nit-picky (again, good review), there are a few points in this reviewer where I think the arguments could use some evidence or backing-up.

Yoshi, the happy green creature (he has long ceased to be much of a recognizable dinosaur) is simply a much less compelling character than Mario, the heroic human, and the colorful, cuddly worlds he inhabits are visually interesting, but devoid of much ambition beyond that.

Could use an explanation of why you think Yoshi is "less compelling" and why that even matters. The visually "interesting worlds" seem to be the main point of this game, so I would have liked to have seen more discussion on that as well. I would like to have read more about how the crafted metaphor plays out and whether it's just a gimick or if it makes the game play fundamentally different from its predecessors.

Coins and flowers are often well-buried in the various nooks and crannies of the elaborate collage environments, and the programmers fully exploit the game’s semi-3D orientation, sticking secrets in both foreground and background that require focused attention to notice.

Flipping the screen to see behind objects looked to be a core mechanic--that's the impression I had from trailers anyway. I was expecting to read more about this, but this was the only mention of it. Is this trick frequently used in the game? The review makes it sounds like it's a minor thing for secret coins and stuff. (If that's the case, that sounds like a weakness in the game you could point out)

Yoshi is a cute character and gliding him through the amusing, innocent stages of Crafted World has been described as “meditative”

Who called it "meditative"? If you personally think it's "meditative", you could just say that (and maybe explain why)

Since the earliest days of the series, Yoshi games have been used to show off the graphical hardware of the systems they’re played on

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. Yoshi's Island pushed the SNES hardware, but pretty much all Yoshi games since have been about style and aesthetics over "showing off". It doesn't really matter, I suppose, but if felt like an odd way to end the review.

Again, overall a good review. I liked that the review didn't only discuss this game but tried to contextualize it within the rest of the series.