Donkey Kong Country Returns

Nintendo

5 stars out of 5

In 1994, Rare made their mark on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System with the release of Donkey Kong Country, redefining Mario’s arcade rival as a platforming star. Highly praised for its impressive graphics and gameplay, the game was followed by two more games on the SNES and a full 3D title on the Nintendo 64.

Fourteen years after the release of the last Donkey Kong Country title, Nintendo announced Donkey Kong Country Returns was being developed by Retro Studios at this year’s E3. Retro Studios made a name for themselves by successfully transitioning the Metroid series into the third dimension.

For Donkey Kong Country Returns, however, Retro Studios has gone for a more traditional style, creating a game grounded in the ways of the original SNES trilogy. Fortunately, Retro has brought the best elements of the series to the forefront, while also adding a few new twists to extend and enhance the experience.

First is the story, which is almost identical to the original Country, but featuring a new enemy. This time, the Tiki Tak Tribe comes to Donkey Kong’s island, hypnotizes the locals, and steals DK’s banana horde. In order to save the day and his beloved food source, Donkey Kong, along with his partner Diddy Kong, set out to defeat the Tikis.

As with most platformers on the Wii, the story is bare bones. However, it does manage to add a bit of charm and personality, especially in the boss fights in each world.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the gameplay of Returns is fully featured.   Retro has taken the classic elements of the series and crafted clever, challenging levels, providing some of the hardest platforming stages available this generation. Just to name a few of the numerous styles of play, gamers will need to master jumping, hovering and mine cart riding.

The best part of the variety available in the game is that it all works well, providing different but equally challenging things for players to do. Only the rocket barrel sections edge a little too closely to cheap deaths, but every success still feels rewarding and hard earned.

As if the levels themselves weren’t enough, Retro has gone a step beyond in providing collectibles and unlockables. Each level contains four KONG letters, a carry over from the original games, and five to nine hidden puzzle pieces to find. These items range from easy to find to downright infuriating, but the optional nature of the items allows them to be skipped.

Those who do find all the collectibles in each of the game’s eight worlds, however, are rewarded with eight hidden levels that provide the greatest challenges the game has to offer. Returns offers a great deal to do for the dedicated gamer, and it all builds in a fair progression of difficulty throughout the experience.

Further enhancing the challenge of the game are the exemplary boss battles. Each of the eight bosses in Returns has multiple forms and poses unique challenges to the player. They cap off each world nicely by providing a change of pace from the platforming.

In another step up, Retro Studios provides some great visuals to complement the experience. For the most part, the areas are generic, but ooze with detail that bring each area to life. One of the game’s best features, utilized far too little, is a silhouette filter that casts the levels into black shadows, which draws wonderful contrast against the rich background colors.

Despite all the things Retro gets right, there are a few problems that slightly mar the experience. A few times throughout the game, the difficulty spikes for a single level, which can make for some frustrating periods early on. The game does implement a Super Guide feature, allowing a level to be played by the computer, but most gamers are probably going to prefer beating each level on their own.

 Also, unlike previous Country titles, Donkey Kong is the only playable character, with Diddy Kong acting as little more than a power-up when he is found. However, Diddy Kong is playable in the game’s co-op, but the lack of a single player option for the character is disappointing.

 All that said, Retro Studios has managed to once again to bring new life to an old Nintendo franchise. Donkey Kong Country Returns not only honors the past entries of the series, but also provides the best game yet. With a solid difficulty curve, creative level design and beautiful 2.5D graphics, Donkey Kong Country Returns provides the best classic platforming game available on the Wii and continues the run of triple-A titles the system has received lately.