I watched the video this morning and John praised a lot of the game's mechanics, art direction and music. Nothing wrong with being critical regarding performance.
It's not a bad game in the slightest and I'm sure there's a few things the devs could iron out in post launch patches.

I'll be that guy, digital download tomorrow to save a few £. Thought I would bring the thread back to the normal discussion of late on this site.

The 9 vs 10 is already getting a bit stale.

"Several issues have been fixed to improve the gameplay experience."

Nintendo should learn that the community is more aware of update notes. They should mention what does "improve" means, is it frame rate drops? Are the pop-ins? Because Reviews mentioned a lot about this

@The_Nintend_Pedant Wario isn't the type to destroy the environment with his bare hands - he's more likely to use bombs and explosives. Besides, Wario Land games aren't about strength and destruction, they're about greed and exploration. Punching isn't a Wario move in those games. Wario World has punching, but that's only one game and destruction still isn't the point.

"Excuse me but are you not digging in the ground searching for "crystal bananas?""

You're collecting those because that's the just the goal of a collectathon platformer - no different than Power Stars or Jiggies. In Wario, you collect treasure in order to get the best possible outcome. Not the same.

I expect these guys to give the technical spin, that's what they do but the good thing is that every article I've read today on the performance comes back to a summary point of it doesn't ruin the experience. 👍

Odyssey was not my style, I miss the faster pace of galaxy, but my kids are gonna love this.

I won’t be able to update the game due to the lack of internet when I pick it up.

I’ll be marking the occasion with my blender, ice, sugar and bananas 🍌

Would this raise Nintendolife’s score from a 9 to a 10, I’m now wondering?

@OctolingKing13 "WHAT DO U DAY"? I'm sure they're writing up your contract right now. 😉

I know nothing about either, which is a good thing. Better it's unknowns than big names people have an opinion on before even seeing any footage. And no controversial picks that cause a storm on social media for or against. I will say they look very much like they'll fit the characters. Benjamin looks as if he could be Kokiri. So who's playing Navi?

Good to see. I’m excited to play this when I get home Sunday!

How this isn't a 10 I will never know, it looks incredible! A great evolution of the Odyssey formula (and this is from someone who wanted something more akin to DK64).

Praying he says "well eeeeeexxccccuuuuuuuuuussssseeee me, Princess" at least once in this film.
I'm sure Ganondorf, Impa and dad King will be big names to "balance" the cast. So it's really good they got unknown's for the main duo.

@YoshiTails I think the environments of each planet were very resource-locked due to the Switch 1 being pretty low powered even at launch. That being said, I agree with you here.

The sparse environments were an original barrier to why I didn't want to play Odyssey or buy a Switch. I saw my kids playing it on theirs and my reaction to it was "Meh....seems like you just run around in lots of big open fields"

Later on, when I had my own Switch, I gave it an honest try and it ended up being one of my favorite games of all time. Got 999 moons and everything. I went down roughly the same path with Breath of the Wild.

I think on Switch 2 a game like this is going to hit a lot different than those. At least I hope, because DK is my favorite franchise.

@Broosh

Yeah, the ride-along "helper" is a major turn off for me. This seemed like a fresh idea when Jak + Daxter came out, seemed a little hackey to me when ratchet and clank copied it, and 20+ years later Nintendo just can't let it go 😮‍💨

“D. K. HOORAY!
A NEW UPDATE, YAY!
LETS PLAY IT, WHAT DO U DAY”
man, nintendo should REALLY consider hiring me as a songwriter

Well no wonder NL’s review said they couldn’t try out Gameshare!

@The21zonz If you watch the video, they do talk a fair bit about the gameplay. Seems like John enjoyed it quite a bit.

I just hope Odd Rock is still a skin option for Pauline, I thought the game's concept was more appealing before child was involved (and seeing the little rock sing to DK just sounds all the more entertaining).

This might shock you guys but.... Hair dye exists.

@the_beaver
Yep, those Lord of the Rings movies were terrible and a huge disservice to the fans and the books!

@N00BiSH

"there really is nothing Wario-like about Bananza.'

Destroying the environment and punching are both way more Wario like than DK. ✌️ That's what I'm saying.

There's literally nothing DK like in this game, imo, except that they though "strong arms = DK" and stuck him in there, and grafted in the setting and music. it might as well have stayed "Goomba With Hands in Voxel Land."

I know you don't agree but feel free to come at me again about it 😂👍

"Treasure hunting isn't really the focus here."

Excuse me but are you not digging in the ground searching for "crystal bananas?" 🤔

@IronMan30 aye, sure we know how it works now. These guys are killjoys, or is it NintendoLife? You decide 😅

Level design in Odyssey was absolute pants so hope it's improved here

Am excited to give it a go and hope for some Banjo vibes

@Axecon this will not brick your dock. This is basically a GameCube adapter connected by usb to your dock with a base plate. Looks fancy but does the same thing as the GameCube adapter.

Yeah I’m about to go apesh*t on this game, my time has finally come

Wait, wait, I think we need a bit more discussion in another article about the frame rate problems mentioned here. What does it mean that a near-launch, first-party Switch 2 title has noticeably chugging framerate in the more complex areas of the game? We can't already be seeing some of the limitations of this brand-new hardware, can we? I guess we can, but... oof.

@Acid87

"Funny that some people just can't grasp that digital foundry is about technical stuff, complaining about them finding issues is just baffling"

I know. 😮‍💨

"DF needs to learn that people play games, not specs" is a refrain in EVERY article about them. 🙄

It's so stupid I can't even think of a good analogy 😆 and that's like my thing.

It's a very fair tech review from DF. Overall I was left with positive feelings, although that one boss fight that they showed... yikes, that's pretty rough.

This kind of thing actually doesn't bother me so much compared to the as appreciation I feel on the relatively rare occasions that a developer actually designs their game within the confines of the hardware. 👍

Releasing a game that looks "better" than the system can actually handle is a cynical marketing move and I wish the practice were abandoned entirely. Personally. ✌️

@LastFootnote A day one patch for Bananza (ver.1.1.0) dropped earlier today

Ultimately, it would be prudent for them to delay their analysis until after the game has launched, so that the review guaranteed to be reflective of the technical performance of the game on day one.

I’m currently playing it early and so far in handheld mode it’s so clean and crisp and only just reached the first layer. There was a patch but until I get to these moments it’s played perfectly fine.

@JohnnyMind to be honest im in the same boat kinda as I started with a cassette deck amstrad then went to genesis / snes... so im ok with 30 fps etc.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

"while Bananza seemingly takes us "right back to the same types of Switch-like compromises"

Good, that means they'll have something to put the bread on their tables with the advent of Switch 3, too.😜

But seriously, in the light of the dev team's voiced priorities (ones to salute as they nurture confidence that the console isn't just turning into an nVidia frixel showcase), I wouldn't count much on "addresses in later updates". My thoughts go to the friends amd families of everyone subjected to 30 fps boss battles, but personally, I'm still waiting for the atrocious performance in Echoes of Wisdom or that one BotW forest to come my way.

@The_Nintend_Pedant there really is nothing Wario-like about Bananza. Treasure hunting isn't really the focus here.

Not only does "Nintendo" have to dye his hair, but they also NEED to dye his eyebrows!

Fake Hollywood Blinds really piss me off!

Look at Danyeris from Game of Thrones! Blonde/Silver hair with heavy dark eyebrows!

There are many, many more cases of this and it is ALWAYS so very distracting!

The problem with this and every other Nintendo article about digital foundry on Nintendo life is that Nintendo fans love when Zelda is all of a sudden 4k 60fps. It’s apparently game changing. But then when their new game comes out between 1080-1200p with drops down to 30fps it’s good enough and digital foundry has its priorities wrong. Again my problem is that if this dk game was on either a ps5 or a Xbox series X it wouldn’t have had for sure run at 4k 60fps. With the Wii era Nintendo fans would say our games are innovative and waggle waggle they can’t be the same on a dedicated system. Since the Wii u the only thing Nintendo is offering is portable play and there’s nothing notable to explain why we can’t have these games on a better system. So some of us do have to wait for the switch 3 and god forbid that thing is t backward compatible.

@VoidofLight
Link also was not Blonde in A Link to the Past

@Drummertist

"IGN gave it a 10. Performance hiccups pushed it to a 9? Graphic whores."

1) IGN has been trash for over a decade.

2) 9 is a solid score, of they gave it a 10 just because you or IGN said so, that wouldn't be very objective, would it?

3) performance goes beyond "graphics." Graphics means "visuals," do you really think framerate is a superficial factor that has no impact on gameplay? I don't think I saw any complaints about "graphics," per se. Rather, they praised the visuals themselves to the heavens! ✌️👍

@PikminMarioKirby Going from 60 to 30fps is a lot more severe than what Zelda had as far as performance issues go. That's a huge and jarring drop. Especially for a 3D platformer, which Zelda is not. I think it is completely fair to give the game a 9/10 for that alone. Doesn't ruin the game obviously, which is why it is still a 9/10 game. And a reminder that a 9/10 is very very good indeed.

Wow!!! There’s a part of this game that runs at 30 frames per second?!?

Well, that’s really informed my purchase decision. No thank you 😔✋

@MARl0 agreed that's a nasty drop

Performance seems to be quite disappointing, can only hope DF reviewed the game without a day one patch, at least hopefully patches can improve the games performance.

A 9 is pretty much what I expected! I've been sold on this game since we first learned about it. I'll be happy to pick this up the same day I finally cave for a Switch 2. I'll just dream of tearing up the scenery as DK in the meantime.

The word "barrel" does not appear one time on this page, until now, and that is a problem for me. 🫤

I've said it before, but "Wario's Oddysee" would be a better match for this concept IMHO.

EDIT - I looked it up, DKB apparently has barrels 😅 it's still amazing to me that they didn't come up in the review or seemingly any of the coverage or comments I've read here about this game. ✌️

@Yalloo People who like fun.

IGN gave it a 10. Performance hiccups pushed it to a 9? Graphic whores.