Revisiting Donkey Kong 64

Something that I noticed in my replay is that this game is too damn noisy! I hadn't figured before. I have complained about the ports of the Donkey Kong Country games for GBA having a crap load of cartoony sounds, but this one has a bunch too. There are lots of explosions, whistles, punch waving, birds... this has more sound effects than a freaking Tom & Jerry cartoon. I can imagine my parents hated it for the collection of noises.

And possibly what I hate most about this game, is the difficulty. No, it's not frustrating for the difficulty, at the opposite, this game is way too darn easy. It could be my experience and number of times I have played it, but the ease on it does not make it feel like a Donkey Kong Country game. Donkey Kong Country usually means a world plagued with enemies, hidden objects and very challenging places. The way the enemies are distributed make this a real breeze for the veterans of the games in the SNES.


On its defense

Okay. This is tedious, annoying, and all that. But let's be fair, it tried something else and it was sold as something huge to explore, not really much into the challenging platformer. I mentioned that it was way too easy, but it gets pretty challenging when it's about the mini-games, some random Golden Banana challenges like races, or when you have to do an objective in a very limited time. I could be playing this with a different set of mind.

I should also be fair that the music is very fun, it is not pumping 16-bit David Wise, but more of Grant Kirkhope's wind instruments like in Grabbed by the Ghoulies or earlier titles. Jungle Japes does not feel as "jungly" as before, but levels like Angry Aztec, Gloomy Galleon, Fungi Forest or Creepy Castle are perfect fit for his music. They give it a great use of thematic. The spirits on the ancient ruins, rusty coves at the shore of the sea, fancy European woods, or a very eerie touch of baroque under the enchanted light of the moon. And these all got even better with the boss battle remixes.

What puts salt in my wounds is that this game highlighted the cart levels a lot, including the box art above, however there were very few stages like that. But I will say, they become pretty amazing, especially the one at Creepy Castle. It gives me Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest goosebumps.



And one of my favorite features is that two classical games for Nintendo and Rareware are inside of it. One is the original Donkey Kong arcade game and Jetpac for the british ZX Spectrum. I enjoyed playing both games as well, I thought they were a very rad feature to represent the bond of both companies for that time.

Ok so, to conclude now.

Donkey Kong 64 is not the best game in the library of the Nintendo 64. It is memorable, but not the best. However I HIGHLY suggest you to play it and have it in your collection especially if you have never tried it, because it does have quite a lot of content to check out.

It is a great adventure, it has an interesting story, funny characters and a bunch of challenges.

7.5 -- Good (7s are solid games that definitely have an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.)





P.S.: I cannot believe I forgot to include this. (thanks for reminding me, Mark Griffiths!)

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