Donkey kong country returns reviews
Donkey Kong Country Returns gets a fruity 9 out of 10. If you like hardcore platform games this is the one to get – luckily they’ve included an auto-play option if you do get stuck and just want to get to the next level. There are bosses to fight, mine karts to race in and loads of other cool spins on the 2D side-scrolling platformer genre that genuinely give Mario a run for his money.Īnd if you fancy an extra challenge you can of course go back and try to collect everything in every level and even do the time trials which believe me, will take you an age to accomplish. This game actually gets harder and better the more you play through the 8 worlds. Play with just the remote on its side and you can press a button to ground pound instead. When the game sometimes calls for you to be very precise in your movements this can lead to some sudden deaths which can be frustrating but this by no means breaks the game. Unfortunately there is some forced shaking of the Wii Remote and Nunchuck in places when you have to ‘ground pound’ and occasionally for jumping. There’s nothing particularly new or inventive here but it’s a solid platformer which can be punishing at times but that’s what they’re all about after all. Play on your own and Diddy Kong can hop on your back at the touch of a button and with a friend you can both do your own thing or get together to find some extra height when trying to collect those bananas, coins and those KONG tokens scattered around each level.
The game’s a side-scrolling platformer with some 3D depth as you fire yourself around in barrels and can be played solo or with a friend. For some reason Mr Kong is immune so goes on the rampage with his little buddy to get them all back. The game begins with some strange masks with hypnotic powers emerging from a volcano and hypnotising all the animals so they can steal DK’s stockpile of bananas. Even when there’s only one enemy onscreen, the art screams with personality and character.We’ve seen Donkey and Diddy Kong appear on various games for the Wii and DS over the past couple of years but Donkey Kong Country Returns goes back to the days of the SNES classic and brings the platformer right up to date. Every level across the six primary island “worlds” features mind-boggling details - enemies churning in the backgrounds, objects moving from backgrounds to foregrounds, and themes that evolve from the start to the end of a stage. You can revisit a level multiple times and still not collect all of the items hidden inside - that’s the mark of a great platformer.īeautiful graphics, great music, and generally good sound effectsįrom beginning to end, Tropical Freeze is absolutely beautiful, and the best-looking Donkey Kong game. Each level is so packed with various bonuses that even adults will want to dilly-dally rather than just keep running. Kids will find it challenging enough to just complete levels by running and jumping, but the game deliberately distracts you with so many alternatives that mere completion misses the fun of exploration.
Donkey kong country returns reviews plus#
With Donkey Kong Country, the SNES suddenly had a Sonic competitor with even better visuals and music, plus the polish gamers expected from Nintendo.Ībove: One of the game’s intense barrel rocket sequences. Nintendo handed its Donkey Kong characters over to British studio Rare, which married the best parts of Mario and Sonic platforming with breakthrough 3D-rendered graphics.
Donkey kong country returns reviews series#
The Donkey Kong Country series dates back to a time when Sonic the Hedgehog was helping Sega’s Genesis crush Nintendo’s SNES, and TV ads made Mario look uncool. Even so, I wish every future Nintendo game had a Funky Mode, because it’s a great idea with a fantastic, fun-sounding name. Retro succeeded in making the game more accessible, but not in making the levels fully kid-friendly, unless just skipping parts of the game all the time strikes you as a good solution. But once my kids started playing, I knew I’d be asked to wield the controller through Tropical Freeze’s many hard parts.
I was excited about Funky Mode, and so were my kids, who wanted to play what looked like a Pixar movie. Above: As tight as the controls are during the platforming, they’re floatier underwater and downright challenging during barrel rocket rides.