Nintendo was a trailblazer of the platformer genre, but violence has always been baked into its formula. One of the very first things you do, in the very first Super Mario Bros. game, is stomp on a Goomba. Yoshi games have typically skewed to the younger side of Nintendo's target audience, but they're often still recognizable as traditional, if gentle, platformers. Yoshi's next game, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, is so gentle it has eliminated combat almost entirely. You can't die. You mostly don't eliminate enemies. But in its place, Nintendo has found an inventive new hook focused on creative play.The eponymous Mysterious Book here is Mister Encyclopedia, aka Mr. E, a talking compendium of all the various flora and fauna that inhabit this land. His pages have gone blank, and he asks for the Yoshis' help restoring them. That framing makes your job squarely about research and observation, which in turn makes the proceedings mostly peaceful and playful.To aid in the research, Yoshi's 2D moveset is even more generous than usual. You can still grab things with your tongue, but it's multidirectional. You can aim eggs using the right stick. You can flutter-jump seemingly endlessly, which keeps you at a steady height but can't keep reaching perpetually higher. And you can use a tail-swipe move to have a creature ride on your back, or switch between them. You're always Yoshi, but which rider is with you can have different effects. With this suite of moves in tow, you can open up the book and peer into its pages, using Mr. E's magnifying glass monocle to identify which creature habitat you want to examine. Then your chosen Yoshi will jump into the book and start poking around.Continue Reading at GameSpotRead more: Full article on www.gamespot.com

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