With the Cheerful Ghost Games Club playing Half-life 2, my recent play through of The Legend of Zelda and now Donkey Kong Country I have been having a good time just playing through the classics. It's been really fun but as i've been reliving these games and often times I noticed things I hadn't before. With Donkey Kong Country and my recently play through of it may have tainted my perspective on what I used to think was a perfectly constructed game. Don't get me wrong, the play control, music and tone of the game are still unmatched but the game has some pretty huge glaring issues I never noticed before.
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.
Another sticking point with me and this game is that the difficulty is so varied as well. The game goes from a pretty even difficulty for the first level to a massive brick wall in level two that will leave your head spinning.
All that said, Donkey Kong Country contains some of the best platforming mechanics on the Super Nintendo. It contains some incredibly beautiful graphics and music and I really enjoy the in game bonus stages and banana collection. At the end of the day i'd still consider this a classic, but it's so cheaply brutal it's legendary status dropped a few pegs.
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.
Another sticking point with me and this game is that the difficulty is so varied as well. The game goes from a pretty even difficulty for the first level to a massive brick wall in level two that will leave your head spinning.
All that said, Donkey Kong Country contains some of the best platforming mechanics on the Super Nintendo. It contains some incredibly beautiful graphics and music and I really enjoy the in game bonus stages and banana collection. At the end of the day i'd still consider this a classic, but it's so cheaply brutal it's legendary status dropped a few pegs.
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I remember playing the Donkey Kong Country on the Gameboy back in the mid-'90's. I thought it was graphically one of the very best Gameboy games. I enjoyed it.