‹ Back

 

KONG OF THE JUNGLE

 

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD - https://youtu.be/jGp3gXGU18I

 

I said it before and I'll say it again: I love how much I can see around the Kongs in the Retro Studios games.

 

In both this game and Tropical Freeze, you can only play as Donkey Kong, with buddies' health running out first rather than whichever Kong is the one running around. However, you can always use the buddy's ability so long as they stick around. This game came out first on Wii, so it might be a bit of a shock to the people who only got the Switch that this has less features than Tropical Freeze, which was first on that system. You only get Diddy in this game, not any other Kong buddy, and you don't have as many levels with one-off mechanics such as the bouncy level in Tropical Freeze. On the plus side, that means that just about everything you learn applies everywhere. On the minus side, that means this game will feel less creative. But it's important to remember: this game came first.

 

It's a Donkey Kong Country game, so it honestly doesn't have much story. But what it does have is way more than you ever get in the Donkey Kong Land games (assuming you don't have the manual. I expect the manual actually explains the story). Rather than just immediately launching into the game, we get a brief cutscene of what's going wrong on DK Island. I don't know why the tiki tribe wants the Kongs' bananas, nor why the hypnosis doesn't work on DK. But we do know that something is happening and we know why DK is traveling across the whole island. He wants his bananas back!

 

It kind of feels like a Kirby game.

 

In this round of editing, I put the clips in chronological order. However, upon watching the video, it's rather confusing. I think that in the future, I'll put the time trial first, so you can see what the whole level is, then put the collecting stuff in the order it appears in the level (regardless of the order I actually collect things). All levels are 2D left-to-right sidescrollers, so I don't have to worry too much about discerning the order of things.

 

Final note: I've 100%ed this game before, on the Wii. There are levels in this remaster that were only on the 3DS port, so there will be some new experiences for me. I think they're all the levels you have to buy a key to unlock. Since I've played so many DKC games, I don't expect to struggle too much, but I'm glad for the extra-heart-per-Kong of Modern mode. It's not a huge buff like playing as Funky Kong, but it does give me a bit of a boost to reduce frustration.