Banjo vs Mario vs Conker vs R&C vs Jak

[DevilRising]

I never got into R&C. The first Jak & Daxter game was good, I thought even though it obviously borrowed some elements from 3D Mario, that it did some creative things, had a fairly unique setting, etc. I liked the different energy powers, for example. But then the two sequels made it so that suddenly Jak talks, which made his pairing with Daxter pointless, and not only does he talk, but he's an ANGRY talking BADASS character (with a brand new goatee to prove how cool he is), and the game was essentially GTA-lite. I just hated the sequels, because to me they abandoned all the good things the first game established, to try and cash in on the fact that GTAIII was selling like hotcakes. Pretty fuckin' stupid, in my opinion.

Banjo Kazooie was a good game, had some very cool level designs, and for it's time was very good looking. It was blatantly a Mario 64 clone of course, but it was fun. The sequel, however, I found to be a huge disappointment, not because it was BAD. But just because compared to the first one everything about it just seemed very....."MEH".

Conker, for me, that was my friend's game, and I watched him play it, even played it a bit myself. But it's really not my bad of chips. The whole basis of their redesign was the gimmick of "Hey look, a game with poop jokes and sexual inuendo and a drunk cussing squirrel on an NINTENDO console!". That was fine. But it was also the main basis of the game. The actual gameplay itself, I would say, is the most lacking of any of the games/franchises listed. The point of the game was to get to the next funny part, the gameplay was just a means of getting there. Not really for me.

On the whole, with the exception of Sunshine which just wasn't what I wanted out of a 3D Mario game, and the fact that I found Galaxy 2 to be entirely unnecessary as a sequel (because the first one was pretty much perfect), 3D Mario (if we're just talking about 3D) is where it's at for 3D platforming action. The controls are just spot on, tight, responsive, colorful games, creative level designs, you name it. Mario has always basically been the standard of platforming action games, be they 2D or 3D, so nothing really changes here I guess.