A Wii review? On Atomic? Shut up - Donkey Kong's a classic, and it seems Donkey Kong Country is a worthy entry in the series.
During its twilight years, the SNES was starting to lose a bit of its steam in the market. Then out of nowhere, like finding a $50 note hidden in a jacket pocket, RARE amazed us all with Donkey Kong Country. The game took all by surprise and helped extend the SNES shelf life with two more brilliant sequels hitting the shelves in the following years.
It seems like a trend is hitting Nintendo at the moment. Let's be honest, the Wii hasn't been living up to expectations as a great console. The lack of triple A titles, a control system that doesn't come close to the marketing hype have lead a few to think that Nintendo have really lost the plot. It surprises no one that Nintendo are falling back on a lot of their popular IP in order to boost sales and the console itself.
As cynical as this sounds we'd like to point out one thing, it's working ... and we like it.
Being that RARE jumped ship many years ago Retro Studios took the role of developing the Donkey Kong Country - Returns (DKCR) sequel and have stuck with the winning 2D Platform gameplay with 3D graphics which is a trend much to our liking that many developers are starting to catch onto.
The storyline is as simplistic as its predecessors. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong get their Banana stash stolen. This time by some mysterious beings that hypnotize the Island's animals into doing their dirty work.
In other words, you can replace Princess with Banana's and Jungle Island with Mushroom Kingdom and you start getting the picture.
Although it has a paper thin plot all the Donkey Kong Country games have always been about fun gameplay and DKCR have stuck to that. DKCR have extended what has already made the first games great. Hidden areas, timed jumps, limited health and classic platforming gameplay.
Being that we're not living in the 1990's anymore we expect a little more though and DKCR delivers. You'll be shot into the background where gameplay will continue and often at times the background will be attacking you. Whether it be a ship firing cannon balls, a volcano erupting or a crashing wave that continuously threatens to wipe you out in one go.
And this brings us to a good point. You'll die … a lot. Get used to it, you'll have plenty of lives so you don't need to worry but you'll be thankful that Nintendo have done plenty of shock testing endurance on their controllers before release. It's nice to see however that there is that sense of urgency and threat of instant death as this challenges you, the gamer and forces you to hone in your timing and reaction skills.
Our biggest gripe with the game, sadly, is the control scheme. We have no issues with the movement or jumping. Our problem rests with the fact that this game would work better with a classic or cube controller. You see like the previous games, you can perform special attacks. As many may recall Diddy and Donkey could do rolls that would do one of two things. Firstly it would perform a side attack on an enemy and secondly you could do this on the edge of a gap to perform a longer jump distance.
In DKCR you can still do these, and it works the same way. There's an addition of other moves you can perform depending on the situation.
Sadly it sucks, or as one of the special moves would have it, blows.
In order to activate these moves you need to shake the controller. In a game where speed and reactions are vital you'll really notice that 0.5 - 1 second delay from where you want to do the move and where it'll perform. Now unless an update comes out at a later date, there is currently no support for any other controller. There is simply no excuse for this and the option for either controller should be there.
There is no doubt in our minds that the ability to replace these actions with the push of a button would make the game vastly better.
Despite that annoyance we can honestly say that this is still a fantastic game. It's fun, fast and furious and is as beautiful to watch as well as play. Anyone who owns a Wii should pick this up and give it a go.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012