Got my
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3ds in the mail and played a few stages. While 30fps sucks and feels a little bit like slow motion-y, the non-motion controls are SO MUCH BETTER IT IS NOT EVEN FUNNY. Having just played the first few levels again on Wii over the weekend and now on 3ds I'm glad I picked up the 3ds version. Will finally play through this before I get to Tropical Freeze.
Also got my 8bitdo bluetooth SNES controller classic and man the SNES classic hacked is so much nicer now with this. Anyhow played more
Yoshi's Island and the more I play the game, the more I appreciate it for its time and everything new and groundbreaking it was doing and
the more I don't really like playing it. I googled around and read some more modern re-reviews of YI and I thought this covers everything pretty well:
https://medium.com/@lonelyrollingstar/yoshis-island-is-a-great-game-with-one-terrible-mechanic-7bebd9cfdab4Also going by that about Jeff Gerstmamn thinks Yoshi's Island is simply a bad game. Interesting.
I kinda feel like I should wait until I beat YI, and despite the chaos it will do to my blood pressure I do plan on sticking with YI and beating it (and maybe Wooly World) before Crafted World is out, before pros/cons but at this point to me YI is like:
+Has catchy jazzy music
+Has a neat art style
+Is often non-linear and about exploring levels and going in doors and up and down instead of just left to right
+Every level feels unique
+Introduced a focus on hard to reach collectibles
+Has good boss fights
+Egg mechanic is good and some good puzzle elements
-Introduced A LOT of trial/error bullshit on collectibles because you have 2 seconds to do something or a bunch of things perfect or replay the whole stage
-Controls don't feel as good as Mario imo. Yoshi feels laggy/floaty, ground pound doesn't feel consistent, platforming is less fun than Mario games.
-Baby mechanic isn't bad on its own as a regen life timer but the sheer amount of bullshit in some parts and then the baby goes flying off where you can't fucking reach him is annoying AF
-Stages are ungodly long because you're meant to be going slow exploring every nook and cranny. A YI stage can last 15-20 minutes (also only 1 checkpoint usually and collectibles don't keep when you die; have to do a perfect run), whereas I went back and played some Mario 3 and damn in the first world those stages are like 1-2 mins.
Basically it's a very long, slow game, with a bunch of bullshit everywhere and trial & error and ubisoft collectible nook & cranny hunting with kinda bad controls,
but it's also artsy AF and every level is a unique adventure and it's SMB2 off-kilter original and set the ground for collectible non-linear exploration platformers.
Today it kinda reminds me of a better Suda51 kinda game where it's not necessarily fun but it's interesting and worth continuing. I am glad the modern Yoshi games ditched the baby mechanic tho because fuck that baby cry!