17th October 2021, 2:24 PM
The "high score for this run is what matters" part of note collecting in Banjo Kazooie was, in retrospect, a weakness of it's design. You're right. The XBox 360 version, which fixes that oversight, is thus the superior version of the game. Now, I do wish that it left "shadows" of already collected notes around when you reenter the level on the 360 version, and allowed you to set "single run" high scores for notes just to recreate that particular challenge for players that wanted it, but other than that it's a change for the better. At this point, the 360 version has been out longer than the N64 version had been out before that version's launch. Yes, we're old, but my point is it's been out so long at this point that it's well established by now as the "definitive" version and it's also the version included in Rare Replay. Heck, Stop & Swop is finally properly functioning between it and Banjo Tooie in that version. I can't say it's completely perfect, but the few criticisms I have are tiny nitpicks (things like the flow of the opening scenes being thrown off by the absence of the big N's logo spinning around at the start) compared to the overall improvement. The full 60 FPS is also a dramatic improvement, especially to Tooie (and outside platformers, HUGELY welcome in Perfect Dark's case). The high resolution? I'd say for N64 graphics, it works pretty nice since N64 graphics tend to be a lot smoother thanks to antialiasing. In the case of Playstation games it kinda throws off their "retro" look to boost the rendering resolution too much.
Generally speaking in the case of DK64, you often have to switch to different kongs to experience their unique ways of getting through areas anyway, thanks to the banana colors. They clearly indicate which kong's abilities are suited to this or that path, so just by swapping to whoever's bananas you need to pick up, you're in a situation where you want to just go ahead and take on each section with their skills anyway. It really doesn't take away as much as you'd think and I urge you to give the game another playthrough with this mod at least once for yourself. You may like it.
Generally speaking in the case of DK64, you often have to switch to different kongs to experience their unique ways of getting through areas anyway, thanks to the banana colors. They clearly indicate which kong's abilities are suited to this or that path, so just by swapping to whoever's bananas you need to pick up, you're in a situation where you want to just go ahead and take on each section with their skills anyway. It really doesn't take away as much as you'd think and I urge you to give the game another playthrough with this mod at least once for yourself. You may like it.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)