32 - Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2 2025) - BEAT - I'm gonna be honest on this...I'm a little mixed on this game. Broadly, it's a fun time. Tunneling is cool, there's fun mechanics, lots of colors, music, silly characters, there's a lot here as a game to do, it is a solid 3D platformer, it's good stuff. That being said, it sorta does some of what I didn't love with Super Mario Odyssey (This is the same team, where instead of each level having like...10, maybe 20 distinct collectibles like how things were back in the day, each level has anywhere from like 30 to I think 60, and there's nearly 800 in this game, just like Odyssey. After awhile, the grind to find them starts to get fairly tedious and this includes things like the Fossils, which are used to buy cosmetics, so there's a TON to find here.
It's not poorly handled compared to like Donkey Kong 64, but I realized by a certain point, I think it's abit over halfway through the game, that I was getting abit burnt out finding everything. You spend so much time just spamming R1, because it's the sonar clap which will show banana's and fossils buried around for you to dig or maybe find a way around, so much is just spamming that and you want to upgrade that as fast as possible along with terrain strength so you can find things better.
It didn't help that the bosses are kinda lame. They look cool, but nearly every single one is really easy. They also re-use a number of the bosses fights twice, with one even getting used a third time. It's like halfway through they gave up on bosses, it's very unsatisfying especially when they are super easy. The finale section of the game perked me up, but it was such a weird turn I did not ever expect, it's kinda baffling, kinda fun, I don't know, it's weird.
Game needs some optimization too, like real bad. It's generally quite smooth, but effects heavy levels like the Ice Layer, and Storm Layer, and then certain boss fights and things where lots of explosions happen cause serious frame drops, like going from 60 to 30 or something, it's bad.
I don't know, I'm generally on board with open world 3D platformer games and I did have a good time, this a good game, but I hit a point in the last third of the game I kinda just wanted to get through the story and sorta pushed my way through. I have so much to do and collect and there's decent post-game content added also, this is a hefty as heck game.
Also screw that one Rambi racing level, it's objectively the worst level and feels awful to play lol
I'm not finished yet, but this is
exactly how I feel about the game. Cool, bright, fun, tight controls. Way too long. I was beating a level, going back and getting every banana, but around Layer 1000 it started getting a little tedious, but I figured the game was wrapping up. There were
eight more layers to go.
