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[Kinsei]

Maybe it's because I go 100% on a level with a single Kong before switching to the next, but I never had a problem with the switching.

What about Spyro 3? There are 15000 gems and 150 eggs to collect.

20000 gems and 151 eggs actually.

DK had the bananas, the fairies, the keys, the blueprints, the golden bananas, and the key items from the arcade games. And those are just the ones that I remember for sure.

Eh, can you really count enemies out on the open path, and the keys, which you automatically get after each boss? The banana fairies are also completely optional.

 

[The Xtortionist]

YI's collectables ruin the game for me. Something like DKC2 is infinitely more satisfying and only has four collectibles per level, max. And they don't all need to be collected in one go.

 

[Lijik]

Eh, can you really count enemies out on the open path

When you're only doing it so you have adequate time to play through crummy minigames later on, and the items dont count as collected unless you bring them back to an extraneous npc, then yes.

 

[Leafhopper]

Ehhhhh, I don't agree here.

The collecting aspects in DKC2 come down to only three major elements - Banana Coins, Kremkoins and DK Coins. The former are purely an aside used for hints, repeat saves and backtracking, and usually you have enough of them to do what you need to do optimally. Kremkoins are the best kind of collectible you can get because they encourage you to scour the levels and beat the varied and fun bonus levels you get alongside them. They reward the player for being creative and crafty, and usually it's pretty easy to digest where they're going to be available when you account for all the gimmicks involved in accessing them. The reward that comes alongside them is also worth it. They do a great job in building up player investment and is pretty much how I feel a collectible bonus should be. The Kremkoins are undoubtedly part of the reason why DKC2 is so fondly remembered alongside it's predecessor and sequel. They were designed all around well managed secret areas that were fun, relatively difficult, yet fair to discover, and always had a fun little bonus to test yourself.

DK Coins are the only ones that seem a bit arbitrary and more hidden but they still effectively follow the same line of thinking as the Kremkoins and don't even really add onto anything in the game, those are really just for the dedicated players who want to fulfill a little endgame ranking.

In contrast, Yoshi's Island kind of just demands too much of the player in terms of maintaining their collectibles, having to "hide" several of them behind regular items and overall making most of the occurrences be circumstantial (you need things like Eggs for them a lot of the time which is never a guarantee for you to have) rather than any specific design choice that is solely dependent on your wit and ability to overcome the obstacles necessary. You need to play that game as surgery if you want the 100%. It's rarely about how you perceive the environment, and outside of that you always have to worry about getting screwed of those damn stars by the time you get to the boss or ending of the level.

Great response. After reading this it seems I forgot what some of the coins did.

 

[XaosWolf]

DK64 is still champ.

YI would only win if they made each Yoshi colour have their own collectables for every level.

 

[JinjoUnchained]

my strategy a few years back was put on some music or a podcast, rotating the stick, zoning out and just feeling the vibe maaaaan
if you aim to win in beaver bother then you already fucked up and you've lost before the game even begins

its the most zen of all the minigames, only when you become one with the beaver and the bother can you acquire the golden banana

Spoiler

theres probably an actual strategy that would have saved me the 40 minutes

This made my day, hilarious!

 

[BGBW]

http://www.pwnem.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Collectathons-2.jpg

I don't know, OP. This picture alone freaks me out, and there's none of Yoshi's Island's design and two dimensional platforming to offset that feeling.

DKC3 isn't that bad. Bonus coins and one DK coin per level which is the same as DKC2. The cogs were actually granted for just beating a level in the Lost World so they weren't exactly things you had to hunt for. The banana birds are part of the world map so in essence its own little game outside the levels and the squares are part of a trading sequence with the brother bears which are easily found on the map. So in terms of hunting levels it's just Bonus Coins and DK Coins.

 

[antitrop]

Any open world Ubisoft game, though...

Far Cry 4... look at this shit:

Great game, but it's the definition of collectathon. There's collectible icons on top of other collectible icons.

 

[Kyoufu]

Far Cry 4... look at this shit:

Great game, but it's the definition of collectathon. There's collectible icons on top of other collectible icons.

Assassin's Creed Unity would like to have a word!

 

[antitrop]

Assassin's Creed Unity would like to have a word!

Fucking christ, I went cross-eyed. At least Far Cry has good gameplay.

 

[Kinsei]

Assassin's Creed Unity would like to have a word!

That's someone that bought all of the maps that show off the collectibles before picking any of them up, right?

 

[Man God]

Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Starfox Adventures are all similar slogs to DK64.

 

[Kinsei]

Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Starfox Adventures are all similar slogs to DK64.

By that logic so is Mario 64. 99% of the jiggies in Bajo come from completing unique objectives and finding secrets, just like the stars in Mario 64.

 

[Professor Renegade]

This is like comparing apples to steaks.

Yoshi's Island consisted of 2D levels that are simple to navigate and fun to play through. When you come across a collectible in Yoshi's Island you actually want to go find the rest of them.
DK64 is a whole collection of 3D environments that you need to explore with different characters; on top of that you need to have certain upgrades in order to unlock or access certain areas of the game.

 

[Man God]

By that logic so is Mario 64. 99% of the jiggies in Bajo come from completing unique objectives and finding secrets, just like the stars in Mario 64.

Mario 64 has fun collecting...except for the damn wing cap bits. It's also quite a bit shorter than BK.

 

[NotLiquid]

Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Starfox Adventures are all similar slogs to DK64.

Jet Force Gemini is a funny one because it doesn't actively turn into a collect-a-thon until the very end of the game, and by that point you've practically seen 90% of everything the game has to offer. Not even I could tolerate that fetch quest as a kid. Didn't actually finish the game fully until two years ago with a walkthrough and although the final level is quite frankly beautifully done, that final boss just wasn't worth it. I usually think Rare has a good grasp on decent bosses but Mizar is one of the worst.

That said I'm kind of thankful that its held back all the way to the latter end of the game though. Jet Force Gemini is worth a playthrough just up until that point alone - collecting all the other ship pieces is basically akin to exploring the areas and unlocking the levels you haven't already done and those are still fun just to go through. The game was like a third person Metroid. Has some really lovely production values, great game play and overall one of the best Rare soundtracks ever composed.

 

[Man God]

Hilariously enough out of the games listed the only one I like is JFG. It's very short if you know what you're doing, though you can make the final boss extremely tough if you don't pick up missile upgrades for Juno.

 

[KarmaCow]

DK64's problem isn't the number of collectables or even that they're multiplied fives times over, it's how they are sectioned off to each Kong. It takes the backtracking aspect of Metroid without any of the interesting traversal aspects necessary to make revisting a level not tedious. Not to mention all the stuff behind shitty minigames. It's Rare at its worst, overdo everything to point of almost self parody.

 

[Nocturnowl]

Well I have collected everything in DK64 before and not Yoshi's Island so...

Nah they ain't really comparable, DK64 is a game based upon the collecting of items to progress where it ventures too far into the shopping list. Meanwhile Yoshi's Island can be progressed through its linear reach the goal format that just throws what is in my opinion a flawed collecting/score system on top of each stage which I feel obligated to tackle because well otherwise there's not much going on in half these stages.
Which is to say screw the red coins and the all in one go setup which opens the door for much annoyance.

 

[Sydle]

Phew.

Any other collect-a-thon fans relieved such a thing doesn't actually exist?

 

[Femmeworth]

Jet Force Gemini was pretty brutal. You got to the very end of the game only to find out you need to go back through every level of the entire game looking for secrets to get the spaceship parts needed to get to the final boss. I remember trying so hard as a kid to find them all but eventually gave up.

Me too. :| I even had the official guide.

 

[erawsd]

I am genuinely shocked the OP wasn't referring to Assassin's Creed or any Ubisoft game.

 

[giant_frying_pan]

Heh, not the game I was expecting when I clicked on the thread. I mean, I don't know what I was expecting as DK 64 is the king of superfluous collectathons (and I 101%'d or whatever the absolute maximum was...yes, every single banana with all five Kongs).

Yoshi's Island doesn't even fall in the category, in my view. The red coin hunt has perhaps only been bettered in the Galaxy games with its Purple Coin challenges.

There's a method and craft to where and how each red coin is positioned in Yoshi's Island to the point where it isn't frustrating that many of the coins are disguised as gold ones.

And as many people are pointing out, Ubisoft are the new undisputed kings here.

 

[Jeevesmeister]

No mention of Dragon Age Inquisition? I hope you like being locked into that same shitty, drawn out pickup animation a thousand times over. Literally. I'm not fucking joking.

And that's not even a single area's worth of pickup quests.

 

[Papstr]

Jet Force Gemini was pretty brutal. You got to the very end of the game only to find out you need to go back through every level of the entire game looking for secrets to get the spaceship parts needed to get to the final boss. I remember trying so hard as a kid to find them all but eventually gave up.

To make matters worse, even if you collect all the parts, (uh, spoilers I guess just in case?)

Spoiler

You were told you still had to free any remaining bear things you hadn't as well.

 

[virtualS]

Collecting everything in YI is anything but an overbearing chore. It's a fun challenge.

 

[zeemumu]

Eh, can you really count enemies out on the open path, and the keys, which you automatically get after each boss? The banana fairies are also completely optional.

I count them because Fake King K. Rool is bullshit.

 

[Watch Da Birdie]

DK64's problem isn't the number of collectables or even that they're multiplied fives times over, it's how they are sectioned off to each Kong. It takes the backtracking aspect of Metroid without any of the interesting traversal aspects necessary to make revisting a level not tedious. Not to mention all the stuff behind shitty minigames. It's Rare at its worst, overdo everything to point of almost self parody.

Yeah, the biggest issue with the Kong Mechanic is that the Kongs on their own actually aren't that unique...

I mean, visually, they are, and I think the game has a great sense of personality, but all the Kongs when you first get them are all the same EXCEPT Chunky who can pick up boulders with relative ease and smash panels the others can't, but he's the exception. They may jump and run slightly differently, but I don't think there's a single moment in the game where platforming using your basic skillset is used to cordon off locations for each Kong, instead it's dependent on switches and locked abilities you have to earn. It's pretty off-putting that even simple skills like Lanky's Handstand and Tiny's Helicopter Hair have to be bought, when they really should be the default abilities.

That said, I'm playing Donkey Kong 64 right now and I'm finding the Collectathon to have some basic rhyme and reason...the game is pretty good at keeping collectibles around sensible locations and in groups, there's never really a weird one-off item except a few glitched balloons, and I think the level design actually has a good flow that you'll stumble upon the location of everything without much difficulty, just remembering which Kong to revisit with might prove tedious. And the Kong Switch Barrels are placed pretty generously. I've heard some people say you should be able to switch at anytime, but I don't think that would necessarily be better, really the issue is not every item should be character dependent.

 

[Dr. Buni]

Yoshi's Island isn't even a collect a thon.

Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Starfox Adventures are all similar slogs to DK64.

Collecting stuff is fun in Banjo-Kazooie. The same can't be said about DK64 and Star Fox Adventures.

 

[Watch Da Birdie]

I'm tempted to say Tooie is almost as bad when it comes to switching characters...

True, there's no character specific items, but you technically have 5 characters---BK, Banjo solo, Kazooie solo, Mumbo, and Transformation to switch between, and often this means doing a lot of legwork to switch between characters, travel to a certain character specific switch, and then play a minigame. It's especially noticeable in Witchy World, the first level where you have access to all "five characters" since it introduces the Split Up Pad.

Doesn't help Mumbo and the Transformations more or less just "hit switches". All the van does is put coins in slots, all the exploding TNT does is break a few rocks, even the giant T-Rex ultimately is just used to scare off a caveman.

Having played both recently, I think Donkey Kong 64 easily has more fun moments than Tooie does, although it's way worse with minigames. At least in Tooie most of the minigames still had you control Banjo-Kazooie in a way you control them through the rest of the game, whereas DK64 has weird shit like a slot-machine and herding beavers that are devoid from what you're doing the rest of the game.

 

[devonodev]

If anything's worse than DK64 with collectables, my vote goes to many of the recent Lego games. There's just so much to get in them.

 

[DodoZozo]

Yoshi's Island isn't as bad as DK64, but the fact that getting 100% is so damn tedious is a major flaw that people rarely bring up.

It's the worst on boss levels. You play through the level, get all the red coins and flowers, get to the boss with full health... then the boss hits you ONCE and you have to do all that shit over again.

If you lose health on a boss, you can just lose a life. You go back to the last checkpoint you touched (which is usually right around the boss door) and your stars, coins, and flowers revert back to the status that they were when you touched the checkpoint, so you can keep trying the boss over and over.

However in Yoshi's New Island (and maybe the DS one, don't remember), if you die, you don't get your stars back, which then makes it as tedious as you say.

 

[Magnet_Man]

Arkham City's Riddler Trophies annoy me more than any other collectathon. So many of them are such farts.

 

[Man God]

To make matters worse, even if you collect all the parts, (uh, spoilers I guess just in case?)

Spoiler

You were told you still had to free any remaining bear things you hadn't as well.

You are informed of that at the same time actually. Need all the parts and all of the Tribals.

 

[SiegRein of Takamagahara]

Yeah its called Assassins Creed