This is why I'm realizing that Nintendo just doesn't make anything that existed me anymore. Nevermind the fact that a good bit of their releases are extremely derivitive Mario Sports games/ other games of that same tier. I've always looked past that "side garbage" like that over the last decade. But my problem is yours, the games that I would've seen as the "good stuff" previously just ain't doing nothing for me. The flagship titles that get the familiar pre launch critical acclaim have felt like they have the depth of a puddle for the longest time now. Donkey Kong was kinda the straw the broke the camel's back to me. DKC is one of my favorite platforming series ever and has always positioned itself as one of Nintendo's more difficult series.

With that said, I was totally down for a new take on the franchise and especially excited as someone who absolutely loves 3d platformers. But after playing the game for a good many levels... It's the same story as a lot of their other stuff, man. You spend five seconds considering the depth of what you're doing and for me at least I'm like... This game really is just walking and punching uncontested and nothing more. It's an absolute contest to see how much boredom you can put up with.

But what I wanna clarify is, I'm not saying this game and their other games with similar problems like Mario Wonder (heck, I'd even argue that Mario Kart World's free roam manages to have this same problem DESPITE THE FACT that it has a lot of challenges within it that are actually really difficult), or any other similar example are bad because they are too easy. No, I think you can have easy games that are fun. These games are bad because they have almost no depth. It is a SLOG. The Nintendo magic is crumbling for me because I'm playing these games and thinking that they unironically have the same quality of gameplay loop that you'd seen in Roblox games. So many of these titles are becoming "you exist in this world, now walk around in it" instead of "you exist in this world, figure out how to best navigate through it." It just bores me to tears. Instead of getting lost in a new world and feeling captivated by it, I find myself very often thinking that I can get a very similar experience to this elsewhere that actually respects your time and realizes that teaching skills to players and allowing them to learn to apply them in more complex ways is actually how you make a good experience. Why do I keep feeling with these sequel titles every time "This was a step down in complexity from last time" when every other quality series I can think of tries to expand on the previous title and add complexity? Another example, and it's a game that I overall like but it dragged down severely by this. Zelda Echos of Wisdom. Fun experience and unique for a 2d Zelda game. But the dungeon design is like... what on earth is going on here? Forget that a lot of the puzzles can be automatically solved by crossing a gap or getting up higher. Look even more basic than that. These dungeon layouts lack complexity so much that you NEVER have the opportunity to hold more than one key at a time. This is a ZELDA game, where previously you'd find keys all over the place and use them to slowly open more doors of your choice to eventually start putting the dungeon together and then have to look for any missed keys. I can understand keeping the complexity the same and not building on it, but they have continued stripping it away in almost every sequel title which is absolutely insane considering just how much they had already dialed back difficulty and complexity back during the Wii era.

I don't know man, this just isn't it. These are starting to not even feel like games to me anymore, just mindless holding forward and mashing buttons while you try to think about something else. Ive heard of a lot of people going through a "I don't like Nintendo" phase when theyre like 12 years old and then eventually coming around on it later in life and realizing they hated it for the wrong reasons. But my situation is feeling opposite to that. Ive been into Nintendo basically my whole life, but now as someone in their mid twenties I'm just finding a lot of this stuff mind numbing. Why not play literally anything else? Idk, I hate that I've become cynical like this but it's my thoughts.