Donkey Kong Country Returns - Review

 Donkey Kong Country Returns - Nintendo Wii

Before I say anything, this game taught me that I need to finish the games I put on my Top 10 for a year before I make my Top 10 list. An ending to a video game, or any other type of media can completely change your opinions.

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When I was growing up, the video game consoles that I played were the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the Nintendo 64 (N64). My main love in video games fall into the realm of 2D games; so growing up the SNES had a bigger influence over me. Out of all the SNES games I played, the Donkey Kong Country series was one of my favorites to play. They were challenging, but they never pissed me off.

Fast forward 14 years since DKC3 came out: A new Donkey Kong Country game is released and is rumored to be a direct sequel to the original Donkey Kong Country. I was a little skeptical of this game being good since a lot of sequels to older games have disappointed me lately. However, I was willing to give this game the benefit-of-the-doubt... and I was right in doubting it.

Nintendo seems to be in the habit of "dumbing down" their games in an a way to appeal to the casual gamer (which is a vast majority of their customer base) by way of introducing a mechanic called "Super Guide". Now I am not having an argument against casual gamers, because if the "hardcore" crowd wants a hard game then there are a plethora of hard games out there. Getting back to mentioning the "Super Guide", at first I mocked the mechanic because I am normally really good at platforming games, but I ended up relying on the Super Guide heavily towards the end of the game... This includes the Final BOSS.

I want to make something clear that a lot of people in various gaming communities seem to forget. MEMORIZATION does not make a game HARD... it only makes the game IRRITATING. Now the only thing that I will mention about the game being hard was the Final Boss. However, that was because there was a memorization part that was attached to the level before the fight (which in a previous stage, the memorization part was not connected to the Boss) and then it would save at the Boss, which if you failed on the Final Boss you had to start the fight over without Diddy. I tried but I'm not that good with fighting parts in sidescrolling games; let alone doing it with only half the normal amount of health.

Aside from the memorization issues, there were a few other things about the game that depressed me. First off, for this game being a sequel-to-the-original-DKC/in-the-DKC-series then it is severely lacking animal buddies that help you. The only animals I saw in Donkey Kong Country Returns were Squaks and Rambi, and Rambi was the only one that was present in the actual levels (though only present in about 3 levels). Secondly, I was not amused by the new Rocket Barrel mechanic (which lead to my anger of memorization for the most part of the game). Thirdly, I was sad to see no King K. Rool, but I can always accept new villains in a series.

Now I'm not fully ragging against the game, there were some things I liked as well. For instance, I adored the levels that screamed "ARTISTIC VALUE" despite those levels only appearing about 2 or 3 times in the whole game. Though one of the artistic levels actually bothered me since it was too foggy most of the time to see everything, but I still managed to finish it without the Super Guide.

Overall, I really did enjoy the game... when it was not requiring me to memorize patterns. As far as the story, I enjoyed it's wackiness and for the sake that when a game can express it's entire story without ANY use of dialogue but still convey what is happening through the characters' expressions that I must give it a prop of some kind. Even if Super Smash Bros. Brawl was not the greatest thing EVAR, I still give it's unneeded Adventure Mode a prop for telling a story with no dialogue as well.

As far as what I would rate this game, I give it nothing. I used to rate games when I reviewed them, but not anymore. It should be evident by how I explain the game if it is good or not.