52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

[Cartagia]

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.

[dhaabi]

33. I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero but I Can Secretly Edit the Metadata of the World || Browser || 09.06.2026



For a while, I've been wanting to play some sort of game revolving around language or words. I've had a couple of more premium games in mind that I own, but a game jam project with the same focus caught my attention lately, so I decided to play it instead. And that game would be I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero but I Can Secretly Edit the Metadata of the World.

In short, I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero is an adventure game with branching narrative paths, granting players the direct means to alter outcomes by weighing different possibilities in real-time before submitting the final change. Presented like a children's storybook of sorts with its simple illustrations, each screen introduces a brief story segment. There is a maximum sentence word count, however, so players are required to reduce the total number of words being used by marking some out in a way that maintains a full sentence structure with meaning so that the story can progress in some way. With such a gameplay mechanic, what once was one story outcome may transform to something wildly different, and it's made all more effective by the game's emphasis on humor. No matter what sentences are formed, there ultimately are two major paths to take with various differences in the smaller details. Describing the game in such a way implies little to be discovered, but that's not quite true despite the game's scope, and it's fun to experiment with removing certain words in a way that even alters their category as parts of speech such as transforming what once was originally an adjective into a noun.

As its title name implies, the game is centered around a hero named Gallafrey on a journey. However, whether they're a hero or not is entirely dependent on the player's choices. Perhaps his title is something else waiting to be discovered, or maybe he doesn't even remember his name. Yet, while there is a lot of freedom awarded to players to craft their own narrative, there is, in a sense, a right way to play. Once the story concludes or is unable to advance due to the player's failings, the end screen appears alongside scoring criteria. Not every possible action is achievable in a playthrough, so scores are designed in a way that's based on a pass and fail grading system or sorts. The severity of these choices depends on how many points are either lost or gained, and it's a small but fun inclusion to incentivize players to play as efficiently or poorly as they can. Of course, it's also worth mentioning that there are limits to how the story can advance. There's been plenty of feedback from its community about how certain sentences can be created in accordance to the writing that's already present without allowing the plot to be advanced in a certain way, though it's possible that updates could be published in the future to allow these new possibilities. Still, I found what's currently available to be plenty while offering a rewarding experience.

Alongside the grading score, a line of text stating how more options can be taken appears upon reaching the game's end. So for some time, I assumed that the game was keeping track of my progress in exploring story paths. I may be incorrect, but I don't think that sort of capability is actually implemented. I've made a strong effect to see as many scenarios that are possible while carefully removing words and experimenting with the results, and I do think I've exhausted all possibilities. Nevertheless, the message doesn't update. Instead, I think it's merely there to inform first-time players that various paths can be explored. Whether or not the message does update (meaning I've missed something), the presence of even a slightly more detailed metric that states how many story segments have been experienced out of the total figure would better allow players to play through the game repeatedly to discover new outcomes.

Before playing, I had already watched enough gameplay to know that I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero but I Can Secretly Edit the Metadata of the World would be a game I'd enjoy. That fact didn't diminish the enjoyment experienced, though.