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He's finally back to kick some tail: Donkey Kong Bananza

Fantastic game so far. Started playing right after work, five hours gone in an instant. I'm a huge music person and everything I've heard so far is top notch, especially the song that plays when Kong Bananza is activated.

The Nostalgia Country challenge give me a chuckle.
 
My copy still hasn't shown up yet, apparently because UPS handed it off to their gig worker operation Roadie (which is how I learned Roadie exists). Really hoping it arrives tomorrow, I'll likely be avoiding all further discussion until I get to play it.
 
Bongo said:
oh... banana
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This is the new "Shine Get".

I played up through unrocking Pauline. Cannot emphasize enough how much of a blast this is. My absolutely only complaint so far is that the camera could be more naturally cooperative during the climbing bits. I steered DK off into a bottomless pit a couple of times just due to visibility impairment. Other than that, this is definitely a "oh it's been hours already" kind of game that doesn't let up.
 
gogglebob said:
This is the new "Shine Get".

I played up through unrocking Pauline. Cannot emphasize enough how much of a blast this is. My absolutely only complaint so far is that the camera could be more naturally cooperative during the climbing bits. I steered DK off into a bottomless pit a couple of times just due to visibility impairment. Other than that, this is definitely a "oh it's been hours already" kind of game that doesn't let up.
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With a smattering of BotW/TotK's "Going to the objecti- What's that over there?"
 
Got my copy today and immediately lost 6 hours. It's so good!

gogglebob said:
My absolutely only complaint so far is that the camera could be more naturally cooperative during the climbing bits. I steered DK off into a bottomless pit a couple of times just due to visibility impairment.
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This is also my only issue with the game thus far. When you're hanging and climbing, there's surprisingly nothing that keeps you from just going off the edge of the track that you may or may not be able to see.

It's also still weird to me that Pauline is the only character with actual recorded dialogue, particularly when the three evil Kongs all seem to be "speaking" too, but I'm getting over it.
 
lincolnic said:
It's also still weird to me that Pauline is the only character with actual recorded dialogue, particularly when the three evil Kongs all seem to be "speaking" too, but I'm getting over it.
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Pauline quickly notes with good kongs and bad that "I can understand them?" with the implication that she could not understand them before (presumably before she got stoned). I don't know where they're going with this globally (as DK spoke perfect English in the Mario movie), but the current "lore" seems to be that DK and Pauline would not normally be able to communicate. Pauline having "lines" reinforces that she's the only one "we" would normally be able to understand. Eek ook.

If this related to my pre-release assumption about where this "plot" is going... Well, I'm not saying anything concrete now that the only thing keeping me from seeing the ending is my lack of infinity Bananaza time.
 
gogglebob said:
Pauline quickly notes with good kongs and bad that "I can understand them?" with the implication that she could not understand them before (presumably before she got stoned). I don't know where they're going with this globally (as DK spoke perfect English in the Mario movie), but the current "lore" seems to be that DK and Pauline would not normally be able to communicate. Pauline having "lines" reinforces that she's the only one "we" would normally be able to understand. Eek ook.
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You know what, I hadn't really registered the fact that Pauline herself comments about being able to understand everyone else. This is actually a very convincing argument to me.

Let it be known that on this day, July 20th in the year of our lord 2025, a man on the internet changed his mind.
 
Got through the first "world" of sorts in this game.

When Odyssey came out, to me that was the best Mario game since Mario 64.

So far, this game has Odyssey handedly beat.

Also, beeg monke >>> round plumber
 
Rolled credits on this last night. Just south of 600 banandium gems and, of course like SM Odyssey, there are still a ton of shinies to get.

Might be recency bias but, yeah, one of the finest 3D platformers I've played. Pure joy.

I don't think I have any strong opinion about it one way or the other but the eleventh hour appearance of King K. Rool was certainly a choice. Felt odd, disjointed, but it was fun, so whatever.

Somewhat common nowadays but there appears to be a fairly substantial post-game, so I'm going to start in on that today, a rarity for me. Once I roll credits I lose motivation to keep playing in the majority of games I play. That I want to keep going here is a testament to how good the game is.
 
4-So said:
Felt odd, disjointed, but it was fun, so whatever.
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I just beat the game last night. That part specifically made me so happy (especially the visual and musical callbacks to previous DK games!)

Really great game overall. I sort of wish they had a few less bananas to collect -- 120 stars still feels like the ideal number to me, where every star gets to be more of an event, and they don't need to recycle ideas. But overall, I enjoyed this more than Odyssey and I'd put it as one of the best collectathon platformers ever made.
 
Bee said:
I just beat the game last night. That part specifically made me so happy (especially the visual and musical callbacks to previous DK games!)
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Yeah, I can see that being the case for a lot of folks.

I'm not a fan of the DKC games. Tropical Freeze is merely okay but I outright dislike the others, so I don't really have any engagement there and obviously any homages or callbacks didn't really register. K. Rool being in Bananza is just more a mild reference for me, doesn't carry any weight. Fun fights, though, and that's all that matters.
 
Bee said:
Really great game overall. I sort of wish they had a few less bananas to collect -- 120 stars still feels like the ideal number to me, where every star gets to be more of an event, and they don't need to recycle ideas. But overall, I enjoyed this more than Odyssey and I'd put it as one of the best collectathon platformers ever made.
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My hope is that this game existing means the next 3D Mario can have this.
 
I think I've gotten what I need out of this. The Ostrich Rehearsal is the kind of challenge I don't know I have the patience for. Probably have close to 150 banadium gems still out there waiting to munched.

Excellent game. Looking forward to whatever this R&D team does next.

(Now I can direct my focus on the not-so-patient wait for Metroid Prime 4.)
 
I'm still playing -- tonight I unlocked the final column in the skills page -- and still having a lot of fun, though I've come around to feeling like the combat isn't quite right. I think there are a handful of reasons that make it feel weird to me:

1. Since you spend so much time effortlessly smashing through terrain, most enemies also feel pretty trivial. You just kinda whack 'em and they fly off somewhere.
2. I find it hard to know how far ahead of me the punches actually hit, even after 20-25 hours of play.
3. Most of the time there isn't a lot of feedback when you hit an enemy (this in particular stands out to me in the boss fights).

It's not bad, necessarily, but it's just kind of...there? Like, most of the time I think it's too inconsequential, but for the times when it is important (i.e. boss fights), my second and third points combine to make the whole affair feel somehow like I'm supposed to be mashing the attack button while not actually getting anything out of doing so. I know that the combat isn't strictly the point of the game, and I certainly don't want this to be Dark Souls or anything, but when three of your four face buttons are for punching and you have multiple bosses per layer, it just doesn't quite hit for me the same way the rest of the game does.

I think maybe I just want the punches to feel a bit weightier. It could even be a sound design issue, I'm not sure. I'll have to give it some more thought while I keep playing.
 
Nintendo would probably say there is some unified design sense happening here, but I feel the exact opposite way regarding the combat: I love how mindless it is. I punch through a whole world, and then when an opponent or boss shows up, I mindlessly punch through them, too. I am so exhausted by parry/dodge systems in other games that I am loving that the general challenge with bosses and enemies is "how do I close the gap without getting hit", and then once I am up close... it's clobberin' time. They should make a movie about a big, dumb gorilla enjoying clobberin' time.
 
Oh, it's not the mindlessness that bothers me - it's that I can't really tell if I've hit the boss aside from the fact that their health bar goes down. Maybe I just want a little more vibration when it happens or something. I'm on board for all the smashing.
 
The battle challenges are where the combat reveals its true depth: enemies covered in troublesome material or standing in inconvenient locations are how they mix things up, triggering neuron activation in the ape subject's brain.

So far, most of the layer bosses have gone down so fast that I didn't even notice their patterns, so I'm hoping for rematches that aren't quite so unga bunga. But that degree of unga bunga was certainly satisfying for the initial encounters on the critical path.
 
1. Zebra
2. Ostrich/Kong
3. Elephant (still good, but not quite as catchy as the others)
4. Snake (I'm in the post-game and I can't even remember what this one sounds like)
 
I said this elsewhere, but Ostrich is my favorite song and least favorite ability. To elaborate, this game is 100% meant for diggin' 'round the world, and "extra horizontal jump" simply doesn't feel as empowering as the other abilities. Considering how this has so much Mario DNA, I am vaguely impressed by this change in circumstance. Jump Man always wants to jump to solve problems, Donkey Kong and his attendant universe is so delightfully punch-based. You want to keep your gorilla rolling forward through everything, like, I don't know, some manner of barrel.
 
I haven't completely decided on what I think about this, mainly because I've only got about five hours in. I do like it a lot, but the differences in how this plays compared to Super Mario Odyssey will likely cement where it lands. I think I prefer the extra structure that SMO provides. But my monkey brain definitely tells me "one more banana". It's very, very good, regardless of whether I put it above or below SMO in my own ranking.
 
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