nekunando

I've played until the end of World 8 now! I can't remember exactly when I stopped chasing the secondary objectives but it would have been at some point in World 6 or 7. It was becoming tedious and I knew the point would come where it wasn't going to be worth the effort for me to keep chasing them with the increasing difficulty of the stages. The stages themselves are becoming more interesting to navigate, as expected, and hopefully that continues without resorting to too many cheap gimmicks or irritating sections 😅 At this point, I'm feeling like trying to burn through it all now and sell it on while it still has value!

Personally not really enjoying the spin dash so far and am a little concerned about how good I may, or may not, need to get with it later on. I'm finding it tricky enough to judge how much power is required in addition to general tilting/movement to get the required height and distance to reach things in the air, be it bananas or even the goal! It's mostly necessary for completing the stages within set times and fluking shortcuts but it has been required on another couple of occasions to get the golden banana. Maybe I'll get the hang of it but with the length of cooldown also seemingly dependent on how far it was charged in the first place, it's not immediately intuitive to me 🥲 There are plenty of occasions where modern advancements and improvements in accessibility, or whatever else, is welcome but it certainly isn't always the case. Hearing a recent NVC brought up certain franchises that they'd like to see return and it made mention of both Starfox and Wave Race. Ultimately, I don't think they felt that the traditional structure for both of those franchises necessarily works in the modern day (and certainly at the price Nintendo want to charge) but, for me, to change or drastically expand what made those games special would ruin what it is I love about them. There's nothing wrong with Starfox being a relatively short, highly relatable experience and Wave Race, particularly Blue Storm, works wonderfully with needing to score well enough to progress whilst also making your own choices of which order to race the courses based on the weather conditions. I love it and I'd just want that again, only with perhaps a few more courses 🥰 The same kinda applies to Super Monkey Ball. The first game got so many things right and they've just continued to deviate away from what was so fun to me about that experience. Even if the latest game still had things split into worlds with 10 stages each, there's no reason why it can't give you a set number of lives to beat each group of 10. I understand accessibility options and not wanting to lock content away from the player but I often think there can be too many options. If there are things I can tweak, sliders to move up or down or other options I can turn on and off then I actually don't like that. I don't want to set my own difficulty parameters as I'll never know if I'm giving myself the right level of challenge or if I'll feel satisfied from beating something on the settings I've selected.. if that makes sense. Maybe Super Monkey Ball would have run out of steam following the same path as the original game (heck, I even think Super Monkey Ball 2 kick-started the downturn) but I just never felt like they went the right direction with it and that's such a shame. It could be one of the most fun franchises out there but it has just never got there!

Almost half way through World 6 today and I'm unsure what I make of the structure of the game right now. Whereas in the original Super Monkey Ball I'd beat a level (trying not to lose too many lives) and instantly be moved onto the next, I'm finding myself focusing on the secondary objectives in Banana Rumble. I can appreciate the push to make the series more accessible and also provide the freedom to constantly take risks and experiment with different routes and tactics but it kinda goes against what I want to be playing the game for. I feel similarly with racing games that have to just take on one race separately at a time instead of the much more preferable system of having successive races grouped together where you must perform across the entire series to succeed. With the jeopardy of failure largely removed (up to this point, at least), there are so many careless deaths and also lots of hoping that you'll hit certain parts of a stage at just the right speed and trajectory to either grab a golden banana or beat the target clear time. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to chase the even more difficult times that become known. Like I say, the game allows you the freedom to go nuts and try to find any which angle and shortcut you please but when it feels like you'll need large amounts of luck to go along with the required skill, that challenge will eventually become uninteresting to me. I just hope the stages themselves become fun enough to navigate in their own right but we're generally not there quite yet!

Hoping, and kinda expecting, that Conker comes to the Nintendo Switch Online. I played through it again on N64 only a few years ago and I still absolutely love it 😃 The structure of the game is much more to my liking than the sprawling and confusing vastness of Banjo-Tooie and I'll never regret choosing Conker over Tooie all those years ago, despite being one of Banjo-Kazooie's biggest fans!

I almost bought a 1.5TB Micro SD in a couple of previous sales in preparation for Switch 2 but when news of the Express Micro SD broke a few weeks ago I was so glad I waited 😅 I could always have used the extra space on my current Switch OLED but it wouldn't have been the widest use of the best part of £100!

I wasn't exactly in love with the game when I played it on 3DS a number of years ago so my rhyme would have used very similar words but perhaps a different sentiment 😅 I'm not sure if I'll play it again on Switch to see if I enjoy it more now or leave it be. I can't really remember anything about it! A game I did just finish again for the first time since the N64 days is Ridge Racer 64! It's a game I enjoyed back then and was delighted to see it come to NSO 🙂 It starts out pretty well and ramps up to an exhilarating level.. and then it ramps up even further to irritation and frustration! The game starts out slowly in comparison to what is to come so there isn't any great pace or necessity to string a long drift around successive corners. Eventually that comes and the decisions between properly braking around some corners and crazily drifting around others makes for an exciting and fun game. Unfortunately, the game goes beyond this point where I find the cars become too fast and sections of most tracks become too much of a pain to navigate due to how tight and windy they can be. Even some simple corners require you to drop your velocity and drift around at a slower pace than what is ideal, leaving you open to be overtaken. Once you're overtaken, get ready to become frustrated when you clip the back of the car in front and be overtaken by one or two more! Anyway, it's still a fun game and I enjoyed revisiting it but I made use of save points at times to reduce some of the frustration late on. Can barely believe I managed some of it at the start of the millennium 🥲

My impressions of the first 2 worlds have just been OK so far. Navigating the stages has been zero challenge so far (something that will inevitably change later) but the objectives of collecting certain numbers of bananas, picking up the gold banana and clearing the stage within a set time is what makes things more interesting.. but is that what I want..? These tasks have been welcome up to now and the lack of lives allows you to experiment and take risks without a severe penalty. I do, however, miss the pressure of having to be careful in every stage back in the original Super Monkey Ball 😕 We'll see how it goes the further I progress but it isn't particularly pleasant on the eye. The muddy grass of the first world was succeeded by, to me, the very visually unappealing Rose Garden. Not feeling overly positive or negative so far, though!

I finished this 100% a few days ago and, despite the graphical and performance shortcomings, it's still a fun game to play 😀 It's just a shame that it ends on the sourest of notes with that fruit level that I despise, mainly because of an exploding cherry platform that sways irritatingly. I spent ages trying to get the bananas that circled above it in anticipation of a puzzle piece.. and there wasn't one 😖 Apart from that, it would have been easy enough.. but I hate the level visually too!

I've always enjoyed Ridge Racer 64 (heck, I even picked up the questionable DS version relatively recently 😅) but I can't say I've ever completely nailed the drifting! It feels great to take out 2 or 3 corners in a row at blistering speed but I always struggle with when the game locks you back in after the drift. It has never felt consistent and crashing straight into a barrier because of that is never not frustrating!

Show us the receipts, Sony!

I played this on PS2 only a few years ago and I think I'm pretty sure I prefer the first game. I'm definitely not going to say no to this on Switch, though, and hope it isn't the last remaster we get. I haven't played any beyond Samurai's Destiny!

The @Hero-of-Time I know could crank that out by the end of January and still have time to contemplate suffering further combat tedium with Okamiden too!