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slimerancher @lemmy.world

What are you playing this weekend? 2025-07-18

It's Donkey Kong Bananza time!

Have played a little bit, it's really fun being a strong gorilla and destroying everything in the path!

I am only in the first world yet, well, the first proper world after the starting / tutorial one, so can't say how the game progresses, but for now it's really fun. Some things make it feel like a spin-off of Odyssey, like some UI elements and in some cases the bananas look very similar to Super Mario Odyssey moons. These things are minimal though, the gameplay itself is pretty different.

The biggest issue now is to keep Switch 2 away from the kids so that I can get the time to play it.

In the week leading to it, I had some itch for Donkey Kong, I ended up playing Donkey Kong Country 3 on the NES app. I generally play these games with certain rules about rewind and save states, but I knew I am never going to finish it soon if I do that, so this time I cheated fully, with excessive use of rewind, and finished the game in a few days.

Didn't specifically rushed through the game, even tried to find any hidden items I could, and do as much of bonus stages as I could find, but it wasn't a high priority.

Also, finished The Hong Kong Massacre, just had a few levels remaining, finished them in couple of sittings. After that when I tried to look up if devs have made any other game, I realised that Switch version looks pretty bad compared to other versions. Image quality is pretty low. Not that bad if you haven't seen other versions, but still not great.

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?

26 comments

  • Yakuza 3 is being weird, and not in the usual Yakuza way. About a week ago, a big story segment happened and I have to go back to Kamurocho. I'm still not there. Why? Because things keep happening. One of the kids wants to tame a dog, several side quests open up and just as Haruka is dropping me off to board a plane, I get a phone call. The kids want to play Hide and Seek. What is happening here? If all of this happened before we were told to return to Kamurocho it wouldn't be an issue at all. On top of that, some sub stories don't seem to work right? My research says to try again later in the game, which just sounds like it's a bug to me.

    Anyway, Bananza. I was really not into the game during the tutorial. I was just lost and confused the entire time and I think it's mostly because you're just dropped into a cave with the ability to just dig anywhere. Once I was in the first world and had an open sky above my head, things got a lot better and I'm really enjoying it. I'm so happy they brought back "Oh Banana!" from Donkey Kong 64!

    The structure is a lot like Odyssey, but it also fixes some issues I had with it. While the main collectible is unfortunately still treated with 'quantity over quality', the fact that they act as skill points makes them more exciting to collect. And the costumes having passive effects is also a big improvement. Speaking of which though, I will never accept DK wearing pants. It's wrong. Speaking of very minor things that bother me: A boss dropping its banana down the hole to the next world, where it counts as a collectible for that new world. My inner statistics nerd can't stand that.

    So far I have completed the first two worlds 100%. I like that you can just dig around to randomly get maps pointing you at things you haven't found yet. So once I'm done exploring a world on my own, I just start destroying a mountain to get the last few pieces done. Though when I say 100%, I mean everything except the stats page. The fact that the game keeps track of how much of a material you have dug through and rewards you for it will drive the ultra-completionists insane. Have fun digging through 100,000m³ of apple!

    And one last thing: I had no idea Switch 2 game cover art wrapped around the spine of the box. They haven't done that since the GameCube and I missed that so much! The Wii, Wii U and Switch 1 games on my shelf are so boring to look at, I'm so glad to have some colors back!

    • Heh, that's how sub quests work in most RPGs, you stop and do menial tasks when the whole world is going end.

      About DK, yeah, structure is like Odyssey but the gameplay is very different so doesn't feel like it too much. I spent lots of time exploring the first one only to realise that it doesn't have anything 😀 Exploration in the next / proper first world is fun though. Also, looks beautiful.

      One of my favourite thing is how attacking friendly monkeys you both do High-Five instead of punching.

      Edit: About the covers, only thing I have seen is hate about Switch 2 ones, because of red colour. The front side is not full height, and has that red thing on the top, and also you can't view the inner cover when you open the case, as it's not transparent.

    • And one last thing: I had no idea Switch 2 game cover art wrapped around the spine of the box. They haven’t done that since the GameCube and I missed that so much! The Wii, Wii U and Switch 1 games on my shelf are so boring to look at, I’m so glad to have some colors back!

      Now that I have 2 Switch 2 games (Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza), I appreciate how much better they look than the all red Switch 1 boxes 🙌🏻

  • Playing Stella of the End!

    Been almost an year since I last played a Studio Key Kinetic Novel, and I've heard a lot of praise for this entry.

    And damn, this is one of the best-looking VNs I've seen - there's a lot of CGs and the artstyle is beautiful (check the screenshots on Nintendo's page for some samples). I think only Witch on the Holy Night impressed me more in this aspect (which is a game I should resume... maybe after this one?).

    Didn't get very far yet, only finished the first 3 chapters (of 20 or so total looking at the in-game list).

    Playing Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker!!

    Current side-game. I completed the first "Episode" and I'm around 30% into the second. So far I have managed to 100% each stage before moving to the next.

    • I cleared the first world of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker when the game was available for free for a weekend or something. How many worlds are there? If there are more than 2, could be worth to get it and complete it.

      I forgot to mention (since I have only played about 15 mins or so) but I started AI: The Somnium Files on Switch when my eldest hijacked Switch 2. And I am really impressed by the graphics. Though I don't think it's a pure VN, more of an adventure game, but still. Will share my views next week when I have played a bit more.

      • I cleared the first world of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

        Looks like there's three, with the last one being shorter longer than the other two. (Edit: Reached Episode 3 and it's clearly much longer than the others).

        Though I don’t think it’s a pure VN, more of an adventure game

        Definitely more of an adventure game.

  • I've been playing Gaucho and the Grassland on Steam for a review. Really nice game inspired by Zelda but with it's own Latin American fantasy twist.

    Today I got Donkey Kong Bananza delivered, so it's on like Donkey Kong for the rest of the weekend. Like you, I only played a little bit. You can definitely find the "Mario Odyssey" dna in it, but it's different enough. I had so much fun just destroying stuff, I didn't advance the story at all. So far seems pretty fun!

    • Haha, yeah, I spend tons of time in the first world, when it wasn't even needed, there isn't actually anything useful hidden in that 😀

      Edit: Gaucho and the Grassland looks nice. Is it coming to consoles? Can give it a look if it does.

  • I'm still on Star Ocean Second Story R.

    I'm about half way through the game, but I now have it broken to the point that 'Universe' difficulty is a joke. Now it's time to focus on the story, I think.

    On that note, if any of you want to play the game: Be warned. You can recruit up to 6 additional characters in a single playthrough, which means you cannot get everyone. Some choices even lock you out of other characters.

    In addition, you get to choose between two protagonists: A fantasy one and a sci-fi one. They are together for most of the story, but if you want everything out of your companions, it does make sense to recruit the sci-fi ones with the sci-fi protagonist, as they will talk about stuff the fantasy protagonist wouldn't understand. I missmatched these and would have to do three playthroughs now to get most of the interesting stuff - which I won't. Learning this even killed my motivation for a second playthrough...

    Other than that, I still highly recommend the game!

    • Interesting. So 2 playthroughs to fully experience everything. I rarely do multiple playthroughs, so will have to look up which one to go with.

  • This weekend is a board game meetup with fellow teachers. I’m bringing 7 Wonders, Flip 7, Make It Happen, and The Crew. There are more in my pile to bring, but if I can’t remember them now, they might not be good enough to bring!

    I saw postings for Unciv and Fheroes2 elsewhere on Lemmy, so I tried both out. Unciv is a free, open-source software take on Civilization VI. I got bored of it quickly with the nostalgia of the other game calling me. Fheroes2 uses the original game files of Heroes of Might and Magic 2 to make the thirty year old game playable on Linux and MacOS. I have the difficulty all the way down and I still can’t manage it! But I’ve spent a lot of time on it.

    I beat Dicey Dungeons! I think I’d beaten it before on my Mac, but I’d been playing it on Apple Arcade and saw how near to the end I was. What a great experience that game is! I love luck-based games that are built around manipulating your choices.

    I now have Final Fantasy IV’s Cecil as a character in Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent. The side story that introduces him fills me with such joy with its sprite work and music!

    And finally, Golden Lap. I’m enjoying the F1 management game, but I haven’t had much chance to play it with all this other gaming going on. Maybe Sunday.

    • We got dos and phase10 card games last week, both had "from makers of UNO" on it, mainly got them cause we at home seem to be picking more quick and short games lately instead of longer games, so decided to increase some variety in that.

      Have only played a couple of games of both, and they are fun. phase10 is kinda like rummy, but you need to play 10 hands in order, so can become a bit long. If we keep playing that, we may have to switch to some house rules for quicker gameplay for that.

      I played a bit of unciv a while ago, these days I don't play much on mobile, and if I have to play on PC, I would rather just play proper Civilization game.

      I remember Dicey Dungeons, looked interesting but skipped because it was roguelike.

      Looking forward to your review of Golden Lap.

      • My love of card games comes from long form games like Rummy and Euchre (sp?), so Phase10 is a game I enjoy. However, the game itself never finished. I think my record is getting to phase seven before we quit. But then again, I’ve only ever played it two-player.

        Golden Lap is fun! I played it last night and ended with my main driver for the last two seasons crashing when I didn’t even push him to race faster and my second driver running out of fuel on the last lap. Then after the race, the game announced that my driver had died. Yikes.

        Now I’m out of the running for the championship this year, out a top five driver, and out of enthusiasm to play for today. The things Golden Lap needs most in my opinion:

        Randomized drivers, engineers, and crew chiefs (when I start a new game, I know that Levi March and Moretti will be on the podium every race. At a certain point, the only hope is to do well enough to hire one of those two)

        Multi-player (I have not been taking races seriously since I hired the aforementioned Moretti and still finding top three every time. I want my friends playing so that there’s bragging rights of some kinds involved)

        Overall, it’s definitely worth its full price of $15 USD for me. Maybe I need to make a randomization mod for the game to fix the first of my problems.

  • Started playing Children of Morta so I can have some variety while playing Age of Calamity. I’ not far in, but I’m enjoying that us has more story than the average rougelite game.

  • Sekiro. This is my fourth time starting this game and this is the most it has clicked with me. Also playing Potionomics to balance it out.

    • Yeah, I try to balance my games like this too. Action with cozy, or turn based with real time.

      I was planning to play Sekiro, but decided to play Dark Souls first. Haven't decided if I will play 2 and 3 too, or move to Sekiro after that, let's see. It will probably be months even before I start the first one.

26 comments