Lately I've been listeting to this a lot
Its a really catchy tune and it got me interested on playing the actual game.
I'm a big fan of the Donkey Kong Country games, fast paced platforming at its finest, I'd argue that they're better than the Mario games but I digress. Anyway Donkey Kong and Rare were a good combo back then so I had high hopes for the game so I dusted off the old N64 and got myself a copy of DK64, but there were some problems.
I didn't knew about the expansion pack so was unable to play the game for a week, fastforward to yesterday when I finally got one and was quick to play the game, so right here are my thoughts of the game after playing a few hours.
The first thing that's stopping me from enjoying this game are the controls, and I don't mean the ingame controls, I mean the N64 controller, after 20 years its just as unconfortable and awkward as it was the first time I used it, the controller its what has stopped me from enjoying plenty of the N64 library, in fact most of my experience with the system was on the Wii Virtual Console, I just can't get used to the controller not even on prolonged sittings.
Anyway after 30 minutes of playthrough I can say that its surely is a N64 (I know it sounds stupid) the graphics are vibrant and colorful, sound quality is meh and the camera is terrible, it was the standard of the time so its not much a problem for me, the controller makes it harder than it should be though.
The game starts really slow, to many tutorials cuntscenes and parrots talking, Mario 64 is not, the beggining of this game is too slow and boring, music its pretty lame as well. Grant Kirkhope is a talented man, I've really enjoyed the soundtrack of the Banjo games, but he's not quite as good as David Wise and his work here is not catchy or memorable, its just sort of there, its pretty forgettable to be honest (except for the rap!).
The actual controls of the game are alright, they follow the formula of Banjo and Mario, its not an improvement but at least it works, jumping around and whatnot its fine, the camera can get in the way some times but the mostly wide open levels help out. Speaking of that, DK64 levels are huge, its putting that expantion pack to work, I've spend a few hours and I'm not even done with the first two levels, then again, the objectives aren't very interesting, the game is a collectaton and it can get pretty tiring.
Now collectatons were never my thing always felt too reperitious and tedious in long sittings, I like to think that you can separate 3D platformers in 2 categories, collectatons and plain platformers. Collectatons are like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo, you're thrown into a large world and you have to go around doings stuff to get stuff, it mixes up platforming with adventure in a very unique way, the plain platformers are more of a continuation of the 2D ones, you're thrown into a linear level where the challenge comes from the jumping and what not rather than exploring, say the Galaxy games and 3D World, they're pretty different types of games, I tend to favorite the plain platformers but one isn't inherently better than the other, its like 3D and 2D fighting games.
Anyway, after an hour of collecting bananas and kicking gophers in the face I get a gun, a gun in a freaking DK game, its unique but really weird, I like it though, messing around Jungle Japes some more and I free Diddy Kong and here's another unique aspect of the game multiple playable characters!
Apart from the Goemon games I don't know of any other platfomer that lets you use multiple characters, so that's pretty cool, I got around to the rescuing Tiny Kong before calling it a day, messed around with ther along with Lanky Kong (who has no style) and Diddy, the all have a unique play style and they're own crap to collect, also got to the second level and just more jumping and shooting coconuts its fun, but as said before it can get pretty tedious.
My biggest problem with the game its its lack of soul, one of the things I love about Banjo is the evident love that was put into the game, all levels and characters are full of personality, I was able to overcome the terrible N64 controller and play that game for hours without really getting bored, that's not the case with DK64 it feels more a by numbers sequel, as if RARE said "Well I guess we better make another game" and that was it, given the performace of the N64 at the time it was a good decision its not as if the system was getting a bunch of games but today that's one of the undoings of the game.
I feel like a lot of N64 games (as well as Saturn, PlayStation games and early 3D games in general) are difficult to recommend without nostalgias its as if you needed to have growned up with the system to truly appreciate the games, I feel the same way with the 8bit systems, great for they're time but relatively poor today, however I also feel that their successors in more advande hardware fixed several of their issues as it happened with 8bit to 16 bit games and how they successors of N64-PS games saw big improvements on their successors, DK64 however had no successor its a one of kind of deal and that's a shame, despite its problems there's a lot of cool ideas nad untapped potentials, there's plenty of fertil ground here but its being wasted.
DK64's biggest enemy is time, I talked with some colleagues that played this game in their youth and they all told me they loved it back then, after I asked them to replay some of it, they all told me that this game has aged very, very poorly.
I'm done with this game for some time, will try to dig more time into it in a few weeks or so, but for the time being I'm planning to give this game a proper second chance when I get a WiiU so I can play it with a more comfortable controller.
So that's that.
I'm in a good mood tonite, so if anybody want some sales thread done now's the time to ask.
I need to get around to playing this someday.
