3/5 ★ – Poefred's review of Donkey Kong Country Returns.

This is a good game and definitely one of the better traditional platformers Nintendo put out in this era. I think this game has a pretty wide appeal and follows the DKC tradition of being a more impressive, challenging version of 2D mario. Platformer enthusiasts should definitely try it and the sequel out. I love DK's weight, they somehow made him feel both heavy yet acrobatic and precise at the same time. Climbing on walls is a great addition to the formula as well. And a lot of the level design is very engaging and the whole experience is masterfully polished. I say all this right off the bat because I don't want to give the impression this is a bad game or that I even dislike it. It's just that at some point, retro revivals became more and more common. And VERY rarely did they seem to ever even attempt to match all the qualities of the 20 year old entry, let alone follow up on any of it. And this game is no exception. You now ONLY play as DK, Diddy is simply an accessory that lets you float for a moment and gives you extra HP. All animal buddies except Rambi for like, 2 levels, are entirely omitted. The variety of bonus rooms and all the different rewards for doing them that built over the course of the first 3 games? Reduced to a SINGLE bonus room type, almost all hidden in the exact same very predictable ways. That type? Collect all the bananas, and there's only a handful of different layouts within this goal, and you'll very quickly see copy paste repeats throughout the whole game. All you get are puzzle pieces that give you concept art for a game who's art I'm not really intrigued by. Memorable level themes? Largely nonexistent, it's all jungle and tropical beaches with...more factory stuff near the end I guess that's pretty much just a visually uninteresting grey wall through the whole thing. This holds back an already held back soundtrack, that's mostly just songs taken from the first game. Good versions of the songs at least, but honestly sometimes they don't even fit in this game's lack of aesthetic. Just playing old songs that used to mesh beautifully with the art direction and overall tone specifically the original games went for, over a very standard bright beach level doesn't really evoke the emotion these songs do before. The original music fits a lot more with the more new super mario bros-ified version of DKC this game's got going on. Kremlings are entirely absent though I don't hate the tikis tbh. Their mind control gimmick they do with the bosses is charming enough. If it was just this one game I wouldn't harp on the lack of K.rool but it's one part of a seemingly endless attempt to scrub Rare's identity out of the series and it really does the games no favors. The world maps are all tiny, and even though it's all on one island they still feel very disconnected from each other. Honestly most of the worlds just blend together. Your character being represented by a floating arrow icon on the map is lame too. I always end up maxing out at 999 coins because they're largely worthless if you're decent at the game. And to top it all off I don't understand the direction they went for with the Kong's voices in the modern games. I love every previous iteration...Never really cared for the more standard human sounding voice he's got now. Among other things that aren't just direct downgrades from the old games. Like I really don't care for all the interactable objects they have scattered all over the floor. *ground pound this to make stuff appear above it, blow on this to make stuff appear, grab and pull this thing to move something* They're just everywhere and get repetitive really fast. And of course actions like blowing done by shaking the wii remote are pretty lame. Motion controls should have been limited to slamming the floor, it being tied to your roll is such a genuinely bad decision and probably one of the only genuinely obtrusive uses of motion control from a first party Wii game I can think of. If I ever replay this game again, which I probably will, I'll be getting the 3DS version. It's actually a lot of fun to infinitely roll when you have diddy and donkey together but you're gonna be shaking the remote literally the entire game. Imagine if you had to shake the remote to run in New super mario bros or something. Also small thing, Diddy's fully playable by himself. But is exclusively locked behind player 2 for some reason. Even him just being like, a hard mode unlockable where you play the game without being able to get DK or something would have been....something. But nope, forever just player 2. I like that the K O N G letters unlock special super hard platforming challenges that all form to unlock a special world at the end. The mine cart levels are very dynamic which is a lot of fun. Frankly though that's honestly the only two things they took from the originals that they really tried to actually expand on. Good game, just very much a product of its time in a very...New Super Mario Bros/Sonic 4 kind of way.