Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii courtesy of Retro Studios (Metroid Prime).
That’s pretty much all you need to know about the game. If you have fond memories of playing Rare’s beloved Donkey Kong Country on your Super Nintendo, you’ll feel right at home in this 2D sequel on the Wii.
It’s clear that Nintendo didn’t tune the difficulty of this game to be as easy as, say, Super Mario Galaxy. One of the first things I noticed about DKCR was that I couldn’t sleepwalk through the game. Donkey Kong has three hearts and once he loses all three, you have to replay the level. Replenishing these hearts isn’t as easy as picking up the coins being thrown about you in Mario Galaxy as hearts seemed to be few and far between. Perhaps this was compounded by the fact that I felt extra pressure to play perfectly because my demo time was constrained on how many lives I lost. Nevertheless, I consider myself a fairly competent platformer, and was definitely challenged throughout the demo.
The E3 demo consisted of a 3 levels of which I was given the choice of playing 2. I first had a go with a boss stage involving a typical “jump on his head three times” encounter that I thought I would breeze through, but ended up having to concentrate to defeat. The encounter involved platforming boss mechanic standbys such as “run under the boss as he jumps really high” and “avoid the charging boss so he hits the wall and you can jump on his weak point.” I was thrown off, though, by the unpredictability of when the boss would leap high enough for me to run under and how quickly he would recover from the stun of running into the well. The other level was a standard side-scrolling platforming level that reminded me of the first level of the original Donkey Kong Country.
Donkey Kong has three moves he performs in the game: ground pound, big breath blow, and a spin attack. You may be familiar with these moves if you’ve played Super Smash Bros. Each is done by pressing a particular combination of buttons on the nunchuik and Wiimote. It’s not as simple as the sideways wiimote 2-button action, but is almost there. Donkey Kong can use the ground pound to make certain items fall from trees or as an attack against enemies. The breath maneuver can be used to blow the leaves off plants and flowers, uncovering hidden items. You can guess what the spin attack is used for.
Something new to the series is the utilization of Diddy Kong as a “helper” rather than a tag team partner. Once you break Diddy out of a “DK” labeled barrel, he will ride on top of Donkey Kong with his J=jetpack. Controlling Donkey Kong still, you’ll be able to hover for a short time while also being able to fire peanuts from Diddy’s cannon. More importantly, Diddy will also add two hearts to your life meter, increasing your survivability. Lose those two extra hearts, though, and Diddy will disappear again.
Although it was not playable at the show, I was told there would also be a 2 player co-op mode with the second player controlling Diddy. Not many more details would be given by the Nintendo rep, so we’ll have to see what this will entail exactly. It definitely sounds like something that could be fun, although I hope it’s not as passive as Super Mario Galaxy’s “co-op” play.
Other than that, the game is pretty much what you would expect from another entry in the Donkey Kong Country franchise. Nintendo has even brought back the iconic collectibles from the original franchise as well. You’ll want to replay levels to collect bananas, letters spelling “K” “O” “N” “G”, and also golden puzzle pieces. (My friendly Nintendo rep would not disclose what these are for yet)
Nintendo has had great success reconnecting with it’s 2D platforming roots in New Super Mario Bros Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns looks to continue that streak. If you’re a Wii owner who’s nostalgic for the ol’ DKC or just love 2D platformers, you’ll probably want to give this one a look this fall. Just keep in mind it’ll be a tad more difficult than some of the more recent platform games.