Yoshi’s Woolly World

n Publisher: Nintendo

n Price: £34.99

n Format: Wii U

n Age rating: 3+

MARIO’S dinosaur sidekick, Yoshi, is back in a new solo adventure and, much like Kirby’s Epic Yarn from a few years ago, the game takes place in a world made out of wool, felt and buttons.

Looking more like an advert for HobbyCraft than a side-scrolling platformer, Yoshi’s Woolly World is a delightful mix of knitted characters, cotton wool clouds, and plenty of loose threads, which, when pulled, unravel bits of scenery and expose secret areas.

This arts-and-crafts aesthetic runs through the entire game, and it’s a real joy to poke and prod the environment just to see how it reacts to your touch. Despite this lovely hand-stitched exterior, there’s a traditional Yoshi game lurking underneath, which sees our dinosaur chum set off on a quest to rescue his extended family, who have all been turned into balls of wool by the dastardly Kamek and scattered across six worlds, made up of eight levels apiece.

Luckily, Yoshi has a few tricks to make this task a little easier, including a ground-pound, a flutter jump and the ability to use his tongue to latch onto enemies and gobble them up, before spitting them out as deadly projectiles. Yoshi also has the ability to transform himself into other objects at certain points in the game, such as a speedy motorbike, a floating umbrella, and even an aeroplane. It’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before, but it all works well enough, and there are a host of collectibles to scoop up along the way.

You can race through a level in a matter of minutes, but it’s these collectibles – often hidden in secret areas – that can significantly extend your playing time. For example, finding five balls of wool will give Yoshi a cosmetic makeover, while gems can be spent on power-ups and perks, including immunity from fire, a speed boost, and the ability to summon a canine companion who can sniff out rewards and clobber foes. Alternatively, grabbing all 40 flowers in a world unlocks a special stage, which dispenses with checkpoints and significantly ups the challenge.

While Yoshi’s Woolly World is a fun single-player game, it also boasts a local two-player co-op mode. This can be quite chaotic as you fight over gems, but it also encourages teamwork, as you can gobble up your partner and hurl them at enemies or across chasms. Like the LEGO games, co-op is a great way for mums and dads to play along with their children, lending a helping hand when necessary.

Despite some eye-catching visuals, the game is far from perfect, and features several tedious boss battles and a choppy frame rate. However, our main gripe is that Nintendo seems content to lean on nostalgia, dressing up an old game in new clothes, without introducing much in the way of innovation. If you’re happy with that approach, then fill your boots, but if you’re looking for a more hardcore challenge you won’t find it here.

Score: HHHII

Her Story

n Publisher: Sam Barlow

n Price: £4.99

n Format: PC (also on Mac, iPhone/iPad)

n Age rating: 17+

A videogame about a woman being interviewed by the police doesn’t sound that gripping, especially when it’s billed as a live-action interactive crime drama. It’s enough to make anyone who experienced the CD-ROM era of full-motion video games break out in a cold sweat, and it’s slightly off-putting that the game uses similar VHS-quality video clips.

That’s because it’s up to you to search through video archives of seven police interviews with a woman that were conducted in the mid-90s.

Searching through this database is made doubly hard, as the interviews have been cut up into short clips, and there are more than 250 of them to sift through using key words and phrases. You’ll spend a lot of time tagging relevant entries, making notes and piecing together the clues, and when you eventually crack the case you’ll feel like you’ve really earned your stripes.

Score: HHHHI

AlphaBetty Saga

n Publisher: King

n Price: Free-to-play

n Format: Android (also iPhone/iPad)

n Age rating: 4+

AlphaBetty Saga is a new word search game from the folk behind Candy Crush Saga. This time, you’re not matching three or more coloured items, but attempting to form words that are three or more letters in length. Each stage comes with a grid of letters and it’s up to you to link adjacent tiles with your finger. Each time you form a word, it explodes off the screen, and new letters tumble into place, and you continue racking up a hi-score until you’ve run out of moves or completed a specific goal.

The bigger the word, the more rewards you receive, whether that’s doubling or trebling your score if you use certain letters, blowing up nearby tiles and so on. AlphaBetty Saga is a great time-waster, and if you get stuck, the game will highlight a three-letter word, or you can shuffle letters around or buy extra moves.

Score: HHHHI

Alone In The Dark: Illumination

n Publisher: Atari

n Price: £22.99

n Format: PC

n Age rating: 18+

The title is a bit misleading, as you’re neither alone or in the dark (for very long) in this shoddy cash-in of a once revered survival horror series.

Set in an abandoned mining town, it’s up to you and three online friends to explore some spooky goings-on, and battle hordes of pitiful-looking ghouls and monsters that can’t be damaged unless they’re illuminated by a light source. It’s a bit like Alan Wake crossed with Left 4 Dead 2, without any of the tension or chills, as you race down endless identikit corridors turning on lamps and lighting torches and fires.

There are four player characters to choose from, each with their own abilities and weapons, so at least there’s some variety to this third-person shooter in that respect. There’s a single-player mode, too, but it’s hopelessly unbalanced, and the game is currently riddled with glitches and bugs.

Score: HIIII

GamesNews

IN SICKNESS AND IN STEALTH: Set 15 years after the finale of the original game, Dishonoured 2 follows the same stealth-action template as its predecessor. It even features the same protagonist, Corvo Attano, although this time you can also opt to play as Emily Kaldwin – the young princess from the first game – with both characters possessing unique powers. Players will also get to explore a new city at the southernmost tip of the Empire, which, once again, is beset by a deadly plague. Look for it on Xbox One, PS4 and PC sometime next year.

HANGING BY A THREAD: A jumbled piece of red string called – what else? – Yarny, is the unlikely star of Unravel , a new physics-based platformer coming soon to PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Our threadbare friend is rapidly unspooling in his quest to mend the broken bonds between a bunch of people, as he uses bits of his string-like body to swing between platforms, lasso objects, fly a kite, create a makeshift tightrope, rappel down the side of a tree, hook a fish, and so on. It looked great fun at the preview.