Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns

The month of November 2010 saw the return of two beloved series from the past. The first of which is Donkey Kong Country. If you've read any previous blog posts, like my favorite games of all time list, you'll know that the DKC series has a special place in my heart. Many hours were spent frolicking around the jungles, ancient ruins and industrial areas of the tiny island; Cranky Kong's spiels about youngsters and what not, Candy Kong's... ability to save your game, etc. etc. It's good to know that somewhere, someone at Nintendo felt it necessary to dig up this series, dust it off and hand it to one of my favorite developing studios. The apparently adequately named RETRO studios have had such titles as Metroid Prime on their resume, which was a game that brought back the Metroid series from it's coma induced by the amazingness that was Super Metroid. Because when a game is that awesome, no one wants to make the next one. So with memories soaring around in my head while RETRO studios began crafting what could only be a masterpiece game, I think it's fair to say my hopes were abnormally high for a video game. How life makes fools of us all. Because what Donkey Kong Country Returns is, instead of a glorious return of an iconic series, is merely a derivative of its former accomplishments. In other words, it blows.

I was seriously ready to like this game. Reviews were glowing, it was a return to 2D side-scrolling, Retro Studios has made an awesome Wii game already, what could possibly go wrong? Well, apparently the development part. I don't know if Retro played a Donkey Kong Country game before making this, but it sure seems like they didn't. Readers, meet me in paragraph 3.

Let's talk graphics. They're good. I hate them, but it's not because of the technical side of things. They're clean, they're crisp, I get everything that's going on screen; sure there's a moment where I'm confused about what's in the foreground / middleground / background, but those instances are rare and far-between. What I don't like is the styling. If you've played a DKC game, you know each world evokes a different feel. In fact, you could make the comment that each game evokes a different feel. DKC1 had the lush jungles, DKC2 brought us pirate ships and marshes, and DKC3 mostly just combined everything before and made it better. What DKCR brings to the table is ultra-polish, next gen graphics ripped straight from Mario Galaxy. It's all too cartoony. There's no mood, no personality; everything's just ultra colorful and that's it. There are a few levels that simplify the colors and put everything into a silhouette, but these levels just remind me of World of Goo. There's nothing really original about it. And each area seems to just recycle the same vegetation and surroundings.

The soundtrack isn't much better. There are a few songs they brought back from the original series that brought me joy while playing, but all the new tracks are really just lifeless. They're that cliche, upbeat, stock music that doesn't help convey any sort of atmosphere or feeling, just uninspired rubbish. There's a particularly jarring soundtrack played during some of the industrial levels that's an upbeat jazz tune. I don't know why this level is so happy since the industrial area is causing pollution and ruining the environment, but as long as I can tap my toes and swing my hips to it, no harm done. I wanted something dire for the situations that were dire and the game seemed to afraid to show us a little bit of a dark side.

It's hard to differentiate between a lot of the levels because there's so little variation. Besides just straight-up platforming, you can ride in a little rocket barrel that's controlled solely by how much you mash the A button; more to go higher, less to go lower. Navigating this Kong Rocket is probably the hardest obstacle in the game since precision is a must, and you're only means of control a single button. Could this event have been controlled with the d-pad or nunchuck? Yes. Why wasn't it? Because some village out there is missing an idiot because Retro Studios employed them.

But the biggest disappointment, the biggest mistake this game makes and the primary reason I detest this entry is they don't make use of what the series has already established. There's no hint of nostalgia or use of past mechanics at all.

Here's the segment of the review I like to call, 'Hey, remember this?'.

Hey, remember how in the SNES series you eventually ended up with a whole cast of colorful characters in the Kong family? Well guess what, they're gone. You only have Cranky Kong and he's still cranky. No Candy, no Swanky, no Funky, no anyone.

Hey, remember how in the SNES series some levels let you control various amounts of animals and let you go through levels like that? Well guess what, there's 2. 2 whole levels that I came across were you control Rambi. That's it. Just a-two. No swordfish, no ostrich, squawks is non-playable, no snake, nothing. There's not even a single god-damn water level. So if you're like me and wanted to here an updated rendition of Aquatic Ambiance, you're SOL my friend, you're SOL right in the A.

Hey, remember how in the SNES series you could find secret areas that would give you some goal and a time limit? Well guess what, that's... still kinda true. You can collect banana's within a time limit for example; and when I say for example, I mean that's all there is. There's no bash the baddies, no find the coin, nothing. Just get the bananas and that's it.

Hey, remember how in the SNES series rolling around was fun? Well guess what, you have to shake the wii mote to do that now, and it sucks. The problem is shaking the wii mote performs a ground-pound, while shaking it when holding a direction left or right performs a roll. So there are times when you really need to roll, but ground-pound instead. I think they actually did their best so you'd never really need to use the roll move. It's used so little and not very effectively. Overall, its hard to control and can fail you at any moment. There was no reason not to make this title classic controller compatible. Screw you Nintendo.

Hey, remember how in the SNES series there were various types of barrels and blast barrels? Well guess what, they're gone. You have 1 type of barrel and about 3 types of blast barrels and that's it. Oh, but we have flowers we can blow with our monkey breath; thanks.. so... freakin'... much. Seriously, they actually spent time making it so down + wii mote shake makes you... blow on stuff. Hurray?

Hey, remember how in the SNES series you could collect DK coins, KONG, banana coins? Well guess what, this game takes that and takes a donkey dump on it. First off, the DK coins are gone. They're just gone. KONG is more of a collection feature; the game makes a note on which levels you've done it, and banana coins return as currency, but you get so many that really, you're never short of stuff to afford. You can buy extra lives, a key per world, Squawks, potions, etc. But it's just so easy to get them, it makes you wonder why the game has them in the first place. All the items you buy are one-time-use only. The keys are used to open up secret paths to an extra level, but these secret levels don't really offer anything new.

Hey, remember how in the SNES series the enemies were mean and tough? Well guess what Chuck, that's all gone. There's no Kremlin gang this time, just a bunch of stock animals that are more cute and cuddly than threatening. Honestly, I know this game was marketed to a broader audience, but give us some credit. If you're going to take away alligators, at least replace it with something just as menacing. Instead, the evil forces at work are wooden planks that hypnotize the inhabitants of the jungle to steal your bananas. Donkey and Diddy are the only two not effected because you have to have a brain to hypnotize for it to work. And why are they stealing bananas? Apparently to make an army of robot chickens or something. My brain died around this point in the game so it's hard to recall the stupidity.

Hey, remember how in the SNES series Donkey actually sounded like a gorilla? Well guess what, now he sounds like some idiot saying 'yahoo'. By the way, has anyone seen Mario lately?

Hey, remember how in the SNES series Donkey and Diddy could be interchangeable, offering different perspectives on the layout of the level? Well guess what, you're stuck with Donkey. Diddy is acquired by a barrel and has a jet pack, which suspends you in the air for slightly longer. No more taking the little bastard and hurling him across the screen, or throwing him up high to get a treasure.

Alright, enough of that.

I've heard people talk about the difficulty of this game, but really, all I've found is moments I have to fight with the controls. There's not really a steady curve either. Some spots will just spike the difficulty randomly, while later levels pose no threat at all. Most levels do start off easy, then moderately difficult before ending on a part that's hard. The level design is much more straight forward as opposed to the various barrel puzzles and complicated maneuvers from the old games.

Like most Nintendo games, the entire game play revolves around a lives system. For whatever reason, Shigeru Miyamoto can't get passed dumping this system and just letting people continue indefinitely. Gaming over in this game isn't even that bad, you're just sent to the beginning of the level. You still have all your coins and you still have all your unused items, so what's the point?

The game saves the biggest slap in the face for last. After all that platforming and barrel-blasting, the final boss ends up being a disembodied head with two hands... I'm not even kidding, that's the final boss. A disembodied head with two hands and the first targets you have to hit are his hands before moving on to his head. This is the biggest Nintendo cop-out final boss ever. How many Nintendo games end with this exact same boss structure? It just pisses me off to no end that they couldn't even come up with an original final boss fight for this game.

The overall point is: this game offers the least of all the games to gaming, which is inexcusable. When you have 3 games' worth of content and source material to work with, the product should be greater than those parts, not less. DKC1 had more ideas thrown into it than this game; that is why it has earned my strong disapproval. Had this been the first game in the series, I probably would've liked it. But it's not. It's game number 4 (5 if you count the N64 game) and it acts like the other 3 never happened. So if you don't mind, I'm going to act like this game never happened.