Rare Appreciation Thread

[Zero Kirby]

I've actually been finding myself liking Rare's "golden era" less and less as the years go on. For example, Donkey Kong 64's not quite as timeless as, say, Super Mario 64 or something like that. I've played Super Mario 64 all the way through multiple times. I can't even bring myself to 100% Donkey Kong 64, or even just fight the final boss again. A lot just simply haven't aged well, at all - GoldenEye on the 64 is pretty terrible compared to the modern remake. And some just were never good to begin with - Star Fox Adventures, for example.

Pretty much all of their games suffer from really clumsy design at least once or twice. No matter what the game, there's at least one thing - be it a level, or gimmick, or a collectable or twenty - that's totally out of place. Donkey Kong 64 suffered from this a lot. Why did we need the instruments? They're just another key for another type of silly context-sensitive pad for each context-sensitive Kong which already HAVE their own context-sensitive pads. They have ammo as a smart bomb yes, but it's not even expended when you use them on this context-sensitive pad which is the ONLY time you'll ever use these instruments so why bother? That's just one thing, there's a multitude of others (why have orange grenades you never need, what the heck did we really need Chunky for when we have Donkey Kong, why is Tiny's context-sensitive pad just a character-specific teleport that's lazy). I dunno, I think they started falling apart a while before they got sold to Microsoft. (Conker's Bad Fur Day was godawful, Star Fox Adventures was just pitiful, and I really can't bring myself to play Banjo-Kazooie any further than I have, it's just BORING.)

I guess their games just have the same problem Super Paper Mario does. It was okay the first time though. But I just can't bring myself to play it again and I generally look back on the first time negatively.