Donkey Kong Country Returns 3DS Review

As a fan of the original Donkey Kong Country games on the Super Nintendo, I was skeptical about the series being reborn on the Wii and 3DS systems. And after playing through a majority of the 3DS version, my worries had been well placed. This review is only on the 3DS version, for I have never played the Wii version of this game.

Story: The story is almost as basic as the original game. Donkey Kong's banana hoard is stolen again, but this time by a weird gang of tikis. They are a less threatening enemy than the Kremlings from the original classics, and makes the motive less substantial.

Gameplay: The gameplay is sluggish at best. Using the circle pad feels ok on the first levels, but when the game require massive amounts of precision platforming, (i.e. during the incredibly challenging Kong stages) DK will feel very slow to respond and will lead to many deaths. To do the high bounce off of enemies, one must press the jump button a moment before landing on the enemy and doesnt seem to work half of the time. And with the frame rate (which attemps 30 fps most of the time) drops very frequently and can ruin the flow of games. The hit boxes also feel very lacking, sometimes reacting when you are inches away from an opponent. This wouldnt be as bad, but due to the SNES classics having near perfect hit boxes, it throws you off. Instead of only having two hits with Diddy Kong, you get a total of four hits on full health. At first glance, I thought that it would make the gameplay suffer due to ease, but with all of the issues in this version I am glad that they added the extra hearts, because you will need them. This game is hard for all of the wrong reasons.

Graphics: The graphics are very decent, not the best by any means but they are nice. Sometimes though, the graphics deceive what one can distinguish as a platform to jump on or a background design that will lead you to jumping down a pit. When DK jumps into the background and the camera doesn't follow, it can be hard to keep track of where you are and will probably die repeatedly before getting the hang of the controls. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is when you get injured you have invincibility frames like in most 2D platformers and due to the frame rate stuttering frequently, it can lead to Donkey Kong literally vanishing. This was terrible on certain Kong stages because they require bouncing through enemies.

Music: The music in this game is probably the only thing I can walk away from this game happily. The tracks sound amazing and even though most of them are recreated beautifully from the SNES game, they all sound simply amazing. I sometimes open up the game just to hear the music, and makes for very good ambiance.

Overall, this game was very disappointing. I did not think it lived up to the hype that it generated. The Wii version might be much better, but after my disappointing experience I will not be trying for a while. I really want to like this game, but Retro Studios is not making it easy. Sorry Donkey Kong, maybe I will play Tropical Freeze in the future and it will work out better between us.