Donkey Kong Country Returns

by Nintendo

Developed by Retro Studios

Donkey Kong is making a triumphant return, along with his trusted sidekick Diddy Kong, in a brand new side-scrolling platform game from Retro Studios. Donkey Kong Country Returns, for the Wii system, has all new levels and all new chest-pounding challenges for players of all ages. The game takes inspiration from the original Super NES series, from barrel blasts to mine carts and then builds upon it by adding stunning graphics and new layers of depth to the world and game play. Donkey Kong Country Returns features the first ever simultaneous cooperative game play mode for the series allowing both novice and skilled players to actively play and experience the game together. Run, jump, climb and defeat enemies through diverse environments until you retrieve Donkey Kong's stolen banana hoard!

Dusting Off The Wii For Donkey Kong Country Returns

Nintendo's Wii might be a system that no longer has any new games coming out on it but it has a robust back catalog of a few titles that are fantastic. If you haven't played Super Mario Galaxy you need to, it's one of the best modern 3D platformers i've played in quite some time. The Wii has a ton of other great first and third party games and recently I picked up Donkey Kong Country Returns. I've decided to head back and purchase Wii games I missed to help fill in my collection. As a huge fan of Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo, this seemed like a no-brainer and the fact it's on everyones best of Wii lists helped.

It bears repeating that the original Donkey... Read All Nintendo's Wii might be a system that no longer has any new games coming out on it but it has a robust back catalog of a few titles that are fantastic. If you haven't played Super Mario Galaxy you need to, it's one of the best modern 3D platformers i've played in quite some time. The Wii has a ton of other great first and third party games and recently I picked up Donkey Kong Country Returns. I've decided to head back and purchase Wii games I missed to help fill in my collection. As a huge fan of Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo, this seemed like a no-brainer and the fact it's on everyones best of Wii lists helped.

It bears repeating that the original Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo was hard. I did a recent replay & review of the game and I noted that...

"The biggest problem the game suffers from is that it gets it's difficulty simply by making certain levels so hard you need to memorize them to complete them. For instance, there is a minecart level that is so hard, i'd argue the majority of it is impossible to complete without completely memorizing where everything is located. This reliance on memorization was pretty common for old games but doesn't make it any less cheap. I would say a good platformer can be challenging but not so brutal you simply just need to burn it into your muscle memory to complete it."

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/2470/criticisms-for-a-classic-game-donkey-kong-country

Donkey Kong Country Returns understands it's roots and is both challenging yet fair. I'd say, at least to the part i've played, it never seems crazy difficult but it is a platformer that will challenge you. Like all good games it slowly works in more and more difficulty and doesn't seem overwhelming. During one level Donkey Kong gets in a rocket and needs to ride it while avoiding cannon balls from a pirate ship. The level is nuts and keeps layering things requiring your to memorize how the level plays out. Luckily Donkey Kong Country understands this and places extra lives and bananas throughout the level so if you collect them don't run out of lives and have to start over.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is available on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS and if you have any of those systems and are looking for a challenging platformer banana revenge story, this game is worth looking into.