Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze Review

I’ll be honest here: I’m not a huge fan of the Donkey Kong Country series. Yes, the games are really good and all, it just doesn’t quite tickle my fancy in the same manner as other game franchises. I also haven’t played many of the games. However, with that being said, it is still a really good series of challenging platformers. Back in the 90’s there were the original 3 games on the SNES. The next 2D side-scrolling Donkey Kong Country game wouldn’t come out until 2010 with Returns on the Wii, which later got ported onto the 3DS, which is the version I have. At a first glance, one may mistake Donkey Kong Country Returns as another New Super Mario Bros. in that it’s an updated version of an old formula for the new generations. When people got Returns, they found it to be a great game that took the big ape back to his roots like how the original New Super Mario Bros. did for the Italian plumber. After that, Nintendo continued to make more and more New Super Mario Bros. games since the first one was so successful and they are all seen as nothing but copy-paste sequels made on the cheap. When Tropical Freeze got revealed at E3 2013 during the Nintendo Direct as the game Retro had been working on for so long, many people feared, including me, that the Donkey Kong Country series was going down the same path. So when this game finally came out after being delayed twice, did it end up being the sequel we all thought it was gonna be or did it manage to surprise us? Today I’m reviewing Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze and will give it a verdict that will answer that very question.

Graphics

The graphics for this game are… average. They look nice and crisp in HD, yes, but when looking at other games on Wii U this game doesn’t look nearly as good. For it being a 2D sidescroller, this is to be expected. The cutscenes do look really nice though, so because of that I’m giving the graphics a 7.

Plot

This game’s story is very simple; Donkey Kong’s home is taken over by a tribe of arctic animals known as the Snowmads and Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixey Kong, and Cranky Kong must run them out. I don’t assess a game’s plot strictly on the story, but I also assess it on the main campaign mode that it takes you through. This game has 6 worlds with bosses at the end of each one. It’s a considerably good length, and if you played the game at the pace I played it at then it should take you about a month to complete this game. The plot gets an 8. It’s decently lengthened to the point where it’s not too long but not too short either. I thought it would be a shorter game when I first heard about it only having 6 worlds but after playing the game I was gladly proven wrong.

Gameplay

This game plays almost wickedly smooth. I never played Returns on the Wii so I can’t judge the leap between that game and this one, but the way it controls feels very similar to the 3DS port of Returns, which was already well done in my opinion. You play as Donkey Kong, but you can have Diddy, Dixey, or Cranky Kong as your partner character. You can only play as the partner characters in multiplayer mode and in the challenge mode you unlock after beating the game. Diddy Kong uses his barrel rockets to glide. Dixey Kong, who is my absolute favorite kong to be partnered up with, gives you a little hover with her ponytail that is actually very helpful for avoiding hazards or bottomless pits. Cranky Kong gives you an extra spring in your step with his cane. You can use him to bounce off of enemies and even hazardous things like spikes like a pogo stick. You can build up momentum with this technique given the right opportunity. If you defeat enough enemies to fill up this new bar, you can perform a special attack with your partner character. With Diddy Kong you turn enemies into balloons, which give you extra lives. With Dixey it turns enemies into yellow hearts that give you even more hits that you can take, which is very helpful for bosses. With Cranky it turns them into banana coins that you can use to purchase stuff at Funky Kong’s shop.  At Funky Kong’s shop you can buy extra lives, potions that give you immunity to certain things, shields, barrels with partner characters in them for you to have with you, and things of that nature. You can get these little trophy-like things that have viewers that remind me of the trophy viewer in Smash Bros. The levels are very dynamic and will often change up the way they play. Not too much unlike a level in an action game like Kid Icarus Uprising. For example there’s one level that starts off with you walking around and then you hop into a mine cart. About halfway through the level you fall off the rail and ride on a little boat through the water, and then eventually back to the mine cart with a saw blade carving the path for you. These chaotic levels are very fun to play through and feel like a huge step up from the last game. There are underwater sections in this game like in the SNES DKC games. In this game you have a breath meter that you can either fill with these balloons you buy at the shop, surfacing, or by getting bubbles. The underwater sections are handled rather nicely and they don’t cripple you as much as other games do when you’re under water. Now this game is HARD. REALLY, REALLY HARD. The first few worlds aren’t that difficult (except for the bosses!), but once you get to World 4 it gets even harder. World 6 has one level particular with electricity in it that is one of if not the hardest level I have ever played through in a video game. Do not let the kid-friendly look and feel of this game fool you, it is not a game for noobs. You have to have at least some experience with platformers before playing this game or you will struggle to survive. It does have immunity potions and what not but I recommend that you don’t use those because the feeling of satisfaction you get when you beat a really hard level without using anything to dumb down the difficulty is totally worth the struggle. This goes for video games that are like this in general. Sometimes the camera will give you a 3D view in some of the levels. There’s a rail grinding section like this where you have to constantly switch which track you’re riding on and another for a barrel shooting sequence. They feel quite exhilarating. Like the last game you have your 5 puzzle pieces and KONG letters to collect. If you get all the KONG letters in a level you can unlock a secret level.  The only gripe I really have with the way this game plays is that in some parts (especially the electric level) I face questionable deaths, so because of that this game’s gameplay gets a 9.

Soundtrack

This game has an awesome soundtrack.  Every theme compliments the feel of the level/boss that they’re the themes of while sounding great. Special mentions go to Windmill Hill, Grassland Groove, Hijinx Homecoming, and the remix of the classic theme of the Donkey Kong Country games.  The soundtrack gets a 10.

Overall

Overall, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is a really good game.  It takes what made Returns good and expands dong on it with more imaginative level design, partner characters with different attributes, and chaotic and vibrant levels. It does feel very much like Returns, yes, and another Wii U game which is 3D World which was quite different from its predecessor 3D land did a better job at being different than this game, this game is still worth a go. If you have a Wii U, buy this game. It’s one of the best games you can get for it right now and it’s a fun experience. Tropical Freeze gets a 34/40 and an average of 8/10. Good job, Retro. I hope you’re hard at work on a new Metroid or something else that will blow everyone’s minds.