The best Nintendo games are really great at creating a coherent world out of platforming gimmicks. Kirby and the Forgotten Land nails this! You feel like there’s a logic to the place, even when you go from an amusement park to a desert. Bananza just deals you a random playground every layer.
Bananza really benefits from having a central gameplay hook that’s just immediately satisfying. It covers for a lot of the little nuances it lacks. If you play like 6 layers and leave it there, I can see where one would adore it. But I don’t think the hook carries the long run of layers.
Probably explains why I ended up clicking with Mario Kart World more long-term. As flawed as Free Roam is, I really came to love just casually riding around the world and studying the internal logic of it. Just a specific thing I’m learning I value in games this year, idk!!
This is also why Chibi-Robo is The Truth.
haven't played World yet, but I never quite understood what people expected from Free Roam. seems like the main point of it was always just... driving around simply for the joy of cruising? no? the idea that it should be like, an RPG open world doesn't click
I get what people don’t love about Free Roam because I wasn’t crazy about it initially either, but I think the charm of it reveals itself the more you take it as a chill out experience.
I'm hoping Nintendo has Big Plans for open world, but who knows with Nintendo.
As with all things Nintendo, I just hope whatever they’re doing is built from its own weird playbook and not someone else’s.
my point of view is def coloured by roughly 50% of my forza horizon 5 playtime being just drivin' around, so I personally am primed for just drivin'. and it makes sense that that's not for everyone! it's the expectations->disappointment part that stands out in critiques. it's the just drivin' mode!
I kind of theorize that part of it on the review side was that codes didn’t go out early for it, so everyone was kind of inhaling it in a week and that mode just isn’t at its best in that context. I liked it more when I could just play for 20 minutes and do a few things while watching Netflix.
yeah, that's a fair read. I'm looking forward to checking it out later myself, but I've been assuming there will be a two-years-later "actually that was pretty chill" redemption/reassessment, even barring additional content
I could feel maybe getting a little tired of it over time but then I really discovered the flow of movement and was right back in. It ends stronger than it starts because of it, which I didn't expect, considering how quickly that satisfaction showed up
Interesting! I found that I hit a peak with that, but then there were like 10 layers after and none really tested my knowledge in new ways. Just more places to find gems, which wore on me eventually.
As it made you start swapping through the various Bananzas instead of one being like The Bananza for the level is when it picked up again for me. I had the tools and was expected to use them sort of thing.
-I loved it. -There's nothing else like it out there, and digging is just supremely satisfying if you love boundary-breaking. -It made me very happy. -Liked it way more than Odyssey (and I liked Odyssey!) -🤷♀️
Not engaging in the argument so much as saying I also like it more than Odyssey, but I don't think I ever liked that as much as other people (and I liked it plenty!)
It's just, I think there are ways to criticize games, even severely without dragging other people's enjoyment into it, you know? "Why do you like this pile of predigested content fed to us through a content hose?" Because people get different things out of different games.
I liked bananza in part because it was more abstract and dreamlike than most modern Nintendo games. Felt like return to incoherent early 80s arcade form maxutmost.com/the-giant-ha...
I love this piece.
Yeah that was great
Aw, you two are so kind! Thank you. Just spat out my feelings as fast and free as I could
Okay fine I will engage. Calling it "content" is really pushing it. Also completely ignores that the game is absolutely littered with challenge areas that are very much structured. And that you get so many bananas in the larger levels by exploring and experimenting, not just by happenstance.
I think these are valid things to critique in writing but fwiw, I don’t really feel that tone in this. I just think it’s a piece that has a strong opinion and isn’t couching it in the way your standard review might. I think it’s fine to call it content if that’s the way you see it, ya know.
Yeah dissenting opinions are good to have even when they make me grumpy (Kong) lol
Yeah to be clear, I also get grumpy about takes all the time lol
It's healthy, really, I can't tell you how many times being grumpy about a take informs future writing in some way or another.
Fine to not like it, I don't like lots of stuff, but this feels like a stretch in a lot of ways!
tbh I get cranky when people are like "How can anyone regard such a flawed game as a classic" or whatever. Sometimes a game tickles a person's nice spot. That's all I got for you.
I get it! I’m just offering my take on it, not saying other folks are wrong!
Yeah I'm talking more about the original essay tbh, haha.