Donkey Kong 64 - I heard a whistle, so something cartoony and stupid's gonna happen... Oh, something stupid is happening

[Draexzhan]

I feel like the K.Rool battle is a lot more fun if you already know how it works. That first time playing where you have to figure out what to do is really rough, but like, as someone who is fairly familiar with the fight, I could go back to it and play through it and would likely have a blast. I guess that really goes to show the main issues with the fight. It's too punishing, not clear enough at times, and the time limit is completely unnecessary.

I'll willingly admit this is mostly nostalgia talking, but I genuinely consider DK64 a pretty good game, despite its ample flaws. It's a wacky adventure, has charm, and really feels like a journey to me. It's also one of the first games that belonged to me, as opposed to my siblings, and my progress with it more or less correlates with growing up. Got it when I was like 5 or 6, didn't 101% it until I was almost out of high school.

[Duker]

Played it for the first time ever right before the LP, it was a far better game than the rumors preceding it suggested. Some parts are genuinely horrible (bothered beavers, I'm looking at you), but on the whole actually not that bad as long as you're not forcing yourself to do 100% completion.

[The Doctor]

I've been critical of this game, but I loved the K. Rool fight. Sure, it's a bit janky, but having such an epic final confrontation where all the Kongs take on K.Rool using their unique abilities was amazing. Yes, you have to repeat the early parts of the fight if you die, but once you've learned a Kong's fight it's easy enough to get back where you were. You're losing at most 5 minutes of progress on a final boss of a massive game. Eh, that's fine.

[Draexzhan]

Played it for the first time ever right before the LP, it was a far better game than the rumors preceding it suggested. Some parts are genuinely horrible (bothered beavers, I'm looking at you), but on the whole actually not that bad as long as you're not forcing yourself to do 100% completion.

Oh I agree with this so much. I really do not understand why it has been so popular to hate on this game in recent years. It's definitely not a bad game. I'd call it a good game that also made bad decisions. It had the potential to be far better than it was, but it was still a good game. It had high points, it had low points, it had downright infamous points, but I'd say 50% of it is good, 30% of it is okay, 15% of it is bad, and 5% of it is a crime. I like it overall. It's not one of my favorite games, but it's still got a special place in my heart.

[Crow]

Okay

[Paragraph]

Not surprised at all that Lanky's part gave the most trouble, hitting those switches always felt like 70% luck. Combine that with the camera and you have a recipe for disaster. On the flipside, DK's and Chunky's parts are definitely the most satisfying, being able to attack K.Rool directly, I wish the fight had more of this.

Lanky's part is perhaps the most creative and varied, but also the most ass. Land of contrasts

I've been critical of this game, but I loved the K. Rool fight. Sure, it's a bit janky, but having such an epic final confrontation where all the Kongs take on K.Rool using their unique abilities was amazing. Yes, you have to repeat the early parts of the fight if you die, but once you've learned a Kong's fight it's easy enough to get back where you were. You're losing at most 5 minutes of progress on a final boss of a massive game. Eh, that's fine.

It's a better concept than execution (surprise surprise) but it's a pretty epic concept ngl so it gets a pass from me

[cheez8]

Okay

OKAY

[MonkeyShrapnel]

Besides being interesting, this vid also happens to show off the
Snide thing raocow mentioned in the finale's description

[PSI Ninja]

That ending was incredibly bizarre and a bit unsettling, I'm surprised I didn't remember any of it. So glad you didn't die during Chunky's phase of the K. Rool fight - I remember dying at the final punch where K. Rool is invisible and zig-zags across the arena, and it was awful.

This game does have glaring issues, but I still enjoyed every single minute of this LP. If anything, it was a nice trip down memory lane because it was the first time I've experienced a full 101% playthrough of this game since I played it as a kid. I remember liking this game a lot when I was young, but I guess the flaws weren't as apparent to me 21 years ago as it is today with the experience of many more games under my belt and watching someone else play it.

A minor thing that's bothered me throughout this LP is that almost everything in the game damages you for only one watermelon slice, no matter how severe the source of damage seems to be. But then you arbitrarily get things like Kosha's club doing half a melon of damage, and losing a full melon when touching the walls of the ice "maze". Though in the latter case, I understand that the damage output was highly situational and was meant to impose a challenge. I don't mean to question video game logic too much, and I've made sarcastic comments about this elsewhere, but it's a bit ridiculous when smashing into the ground when falling from the very top of DK Isle does the same damage as getting hit by a beaver. In Banjo-Kazooie, I think the damage did scale with height, so if that's the case, then it's weird that they didn't do the same here.

Another thing I didn't like is whenever the game takes away abilities without warning (i.e., the music). Yes, I'm aware of the reason for that (to not trivialize kill rooms and such), but the fact that it happens often enough I think shows that something is wrong from a design perspective. And besides, Chunky had a kill room in Creepy Castle where instruments were allowed. This wouldn't have annoyed me as much if they made it more clear to the player that music was disabled, such as a "no music" logo in the corner. I agree that the music should have been removed entirely, because it really does feel tacked on. Or maybe, to mitigate its power, have it stun the enemies for a couple of seconds instead of outright killing them, with some kind of tradeoff to balance things.

All this talk of collect-a-thons makes me want to give the Banjo games another try, just to see if they have aged well. As for Donkey Kong 64, I would play it again just for the multiplayer mode. I remember spending way too much time on that with friends and family because it was super fun.

[Taigiry]

A minor thing that's bothered me throughout this LP is that almost everything in the game damages you for only one watermelon slice, no matter how severe the source of damage seems to be. But then you arbitrarily get things like Kosha's club doing half a melon of damage, and losing a full melon when touching the walls of the ice "maze". Though in the latter case, I understand that the damage output was highly situational and was meant to impose a challenge. I don't mean to question video game logic too much, and I've made sarcastic comments about this elsewhere, but it's a bit ridiculous when smashing into the ground when falling from the very top of DK Isle does the same damage as getting hit by a beaver. In Banjo-Kazooie, I think the damage did scale with height, so if that's the case, then it's weird that they didn't do the same here.

Health in this game is just weird all around, you could remove it from most of the game and nothing would be lost. Just make the ice maze, for example, a flat "3 strikes, you're out" challenge. Like, a Kremling deals one quarter of a melon damage, but upon killing one, you get that back... everytime. The game doesn't even remember which enemies have respawned or not, so you could theoretically farm health on a single, weak enemy. And let's face it, most of the enemies don't even pose a challenge, even Kasplats are just a damage sponge. Hell, even that "GET OUT" guy is laughably weak and as could be seen during the hedge maze, more of an annoyance. Kinda anticlimactic finding that out after over 20 years.

The most egregious example might be the Kabooms, who deal just one damage and then kill themselves, thus giving you your health back immediately. And due to i-frames, when they're in a group like Gloomy Galleon, you actually gain more health than you lost, even though you should've been getting punished instead.

Another thing I didn't like is whenever the game takes away abilities without warning (i.e., the music). Yes, I'm aware of the reason for that (to not trivialize kill rooms and such), but the fact that it happens often enough I think shows that something is wrong from a design perspective. And besides, Chunky had a kill room in Creepy Castle where instruments were allowed. This wouldn't have annoyed me as much if they made it more clear to the player that music was disabled, such as a "no music" logo in the corner. I agree that the music should have been removed entirely, because it really does feel tacked on. Or maybe, to mitigate its power, have it stun the enemies for a couple of seconds instead of outright killing them, with some kind of tradeoff to balance things.

Not just Chunky in Creepy Castle, there were a lot of kill challenges all over the game where you could just use your instrument, making the limitation all the more arbitrary. Like the Zingers in the Angry Aztec lobby or Lanky's DK Isle portrait room in Jungle Japes. Probably Lanky's wind room at the top of Creepy Castle, too. That's just from the top of my head. The instruments really added nothing to the game.

Man, I do still have a soft spot for that game, but looking at it as a grown up, it certainly has a lot of baffling design decisions.