It ain't a Yoshi's Island, but the game still has its ups. It doesn't deserve that low a score, Gamespot!
The only reason this game is very easy because of the goal...eat 30 fruit. Any thirty you wish. That said, people think it's far too easy. Now hold on...there's one special fruit ALL Yoshis love and that there's 30 of...melons. Melons...well, these are what you're actually aiming for! A perfectionist will want to grab all 30 melons, because that's how your mood score will go up...WAY up! Of course, there's other things to improve it. Yoshi's Story's mood score is the main replay value of the game. Can you get the highest score possible? There's plenty of tricks you can use to make sure you get such a high score.
The flow of the story ultimately depends on one thing: hearts! There are three hearts in every stage. Unless you're in World 6, these hearts can control which stage you can enter. The first stage in every world is open no matter what, and in World 1, ALL four stages are open at the start. If you got one heart, you get stages 1 & 2 open, two hearts open three stages, and all three hearts open all the stages on the next world. There's hundreds, maybe even thousands of paths to take in Yoshi's Story, and ultimately will affect your score at the end of Story Mode (since some stages are harder to get all 30 melons and some offer more scoring opportunities than others).
This game is "cute-looking", I'll admit. But still, this game is very nice. The Yoshis themselves might make you laugh a couple of time because of how they sound (and this is Yoshi's true voice), like when they growl at enemies (really cute and funny). It's worth a go. If you actually understand the idea of what to do in this game (grab all the melons and get the highest score possible), then it's a nice game to play.