Super Mario Land (Gameboy VC):
...It preserves the SMB physics and play-style...
? SML physics are absolutely nothing like traditional SMB1.
Donkey Kong '94 (Gameboy VC):
...but the stiff movement and jumping doesn't translate super well to this kind of experience...
?? Physics are not like SMB at all, but they're not bad at all. As one can guess from name alone it comes from Donkey Kong and has DK arcade specific things like fall damage, that was abolished in Super Mario series. But they're massively expanded upon, like you can
roll out of a long fall.
DK' 94 rivals SM' 64 in terms of how many moves Mario has. It's not just handstand. It's back flip (somersault), triple jump, jumping INTO handstand, jumping OUT of a handstand, rolling and many other moves.
And they're all available to you from the get go -- it's not like you're unlocking them as you go. Every four levels you're shown a new move or a new gimmick. DK' 94 manages to keep it up for the entire duration of relatively long game. That's the level of creativity Galaxy games have where they invent a cool gimmick to play with for one-two levels and then drop it.
Borrowed PS3 from a friend to play some exclusives (mostly for MGS4):
3D Dot Game Heroes:
Character creator was pretty amusing. One thing that makes it stand out is graphics -- i really like water ripple and voxel destruction effects. Otherwise it's a very straightforward Zelda 1 clone.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots:
It's quite amazing how each MGS game manages to have broken controls time after time after time. MGS3 (or MGS3 on 3DS) was probably the closest series ever got to having comfortable controls. I would be completely fine if that control scheme was used in MGS4 intact.
But noooooo... MGS4 changes controls make them closer to traditional console FPSs and in result you get an unhappy medium that screws over both newcomers to the series (while tweaked around, controls are STILL way too unconventional) AND longtime players.
Third person camera worked in 3, because you mostly operated on wide areas outside. Even occasional buildings and corridors were very wide to allow you easily manipulate the camera. While 4 is full of cramped, tight passages and corridors and babysitting camera there is major problem.
Also there is something wrong with lying down, crouching, standing cycle on X. It was a problem even in MGS3 but it has become especially bad in 4. I constantly randomly lie down or crouch when i just want to stand up during combat.
It's cool that you now can move while aiming but i don't think it was worth losing aiming with the left stick. I am considering activating auto-aim option, because i am rubbish with aiming on the right stick.