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Review: Donkey Kong 64
n64
01.12.03 / 05:02PM / Boris
Mascot themed pick-em up ad nauseum, x 5
I'm old school enough to remember when Donkey Kong first arrived in video arcades, and I also remember the first addition of a Kong, that of Donkey Kong Jr. So I've always somewhat resisted Rare's efforts to continuously add new Kongs to the line up; wasn't two of the poorly named apes enough? Every Donkey Kong country has made a habit of adding new and entirely flavorless Kongs to the brood, and every following DKC has more or less ignored the overwhelming family tree to stuff even more monkeys in it. DK64 is no exception to this; you get 3 new Kongs who you'll never hear of again, plus Diddy, Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong (this time as a wrinkled old hermit who brews potions and insults you).
So you have a cast of 5 characters. This is a platformer game, the same kind of game Rare's been spitting out since Banjo-Kazooie (which is still the superior game), so you'll naturally have the opportunity to troll these 5 primates all around a hub world. Attached to this hub world are going to be non-sequiter "lands" where you have to pick up things and learn new abilities that let you pick up more things. You can probably already predict the worlds, especially if you've played any other platformer. Let's see if you can guess them out of a list:
Natural settings: Grassland, desert, volcano, frozen wastes, swamp, ocean, clouds
Man made settings: Ancient temple, castle, factory, airship, boat
Alright, have you made your picks? Good. The entries in DK64 are: Jungle (grassland, really), ancient temple, factory, ocean, forest (just like a grassland with giant mushrooms), caves. Way to not even nudge the envelope, Rare.
Now, what makes DK64 unique is the sheer number of times you have to repeat each world. Yes, 5 characters means 5 times the suffering PER LEVEL. You see, all 5 primates have their own representative color. Each level has colored bananas , coins, and map pieces that you pick up. Only the right color of primate can pick up their color of item. In addition, each primate has 5 golden bananas (I'll explain that in a second) that they and only they can pick up. There's mercifully a few areas that only one of the apes can get into, so you only need to visit those once. By far and large, you are told where to go by the colored bananas, so you find the nearest change-barrel, which aren't very common, and go back to the same area with that ape to pick up your bananas. Then, you troll around until you see a pad with a character's face on it, go get that character, and stand on the pad to go do something that lets you get a gold banana. And repeat. That, my friends, is the point of every level.
If you like what you hear so far, well… um… go buy the game, I guess. For the rest of you, read on.
The plot: King K. Rool, a tubby gecko with bad eye strain, has made a floating fortress in the shape of his head, and he wants to blow up Donkey Kong Island. He also stole all of Donkey Kong's golden bananas and kidnapped all of his friends (i.e., the other 4 playable characters). He figures that DK Jr. (who's all grown up, and I'll just refer to him as DK), will be so busy getting his bananas and buddies back that he'll never notice the fortress charging up its death ray, just off the coast. Your goal is to find said buddies, get said bananas, and knock the fortress offline.
To do that, you need to collect boss keys, which are hidden in every level, and you need to pick up regular bananas (the annoying colored ones) until you get enough to feed to a pig who wants to outweigh a hippo. Yes, that's right. No, I'm not making this up. It's a weight gaining contest between a pig and a hippo. Imagine, if you will, the designers sitting around coming up with this idea. "Ok, so we want a boss on each level, right? But we don't want the player to just get to the boss right away, they need to pick up some stuff. Ok, what do monkeys like? Bananas, right? So we have them pick up bananas. But we don't want this to be like Mario, and have him just pick up coins he never spends. So we'll have… oh, I know! We'll have them feed the bananas to a pig because a hippo is too fat!"
Does this seem reasonable to anybody else? Because I was flabbergasted the first time I encountered Troph and Scroff (the hippo and pig, but I don't know which is which, nor do I care). Actually, I think you feed the bananas to the hippo, but I don't even care enough to change the previous paragraph. At any rate, the animal you DON'T feed is eventually raised by the teeter-totter the both are standing on, high enough to reach the boss door. The bosses are actually the only clever parts to the game, and I won't spoil them too much, except to say that they repeat two of the bosses. You fight the Armor-Dillo and the Dragon-Fly (who are, respectively, a tank and a dragon, so very clever, Rare) twice. Lazy! Once you finish off the bosses (who are really easy), a giant Kremling that King Rool brought with him stomps around, opening up new areas of the world for you. Yes, that's right, a giant Kremling in a cage stomps with happiness, thus wrecking his boss' plans. I think he was put in the cage for breaking stuff to begin with; if that was the case, why would the king bring him along with his super cool fortress? So that he can break it later in the game, obviously. Try to keep up.
Also, you need to get map pieces, which are given to the toughest Kremlings, who look a bit like Mighty Ducks. Each of these guys has cool colored hair, and guess what? They drop map pieces that are colored like their hair. Now, what do you remember about colors in this game? That's right, only the right colored Kong can pick up their color of stuff. Each level has 5 of these guys, so you need to go through each level with all 5 guys to find their Mighty Duck Kremling and kill him. It doesn't help that these Kremlings like to say "Splat!" a lot. They're also fairly dangerous, but that's like saying "You could choke on that pie, be careful!" Compared to the beavers and grunt Kremlings that exist on every level, they're unholy terrors.
You give these map pieces to a weasel, who helped design the fortress, but I think the King didn't pay him. Or he fired him. Or something. So now the weasel wants to help you defeat the King, and your performance on the Factory level is entirely dependant on the number of map pieces you give him. I.e., once you beat the factory, you need never bother with them again. You then get to square off against King K. Rool and win… well, actually, you just get your bananas back. Not much of a victory, really.
The gameplay: Perhaps I've touched on the boringness of the game once or twice. Perhaps I need to touch on that some more. This game is dull. It literally is an exercise in strolling around, picking up things that are the same color as your monkey, then getting a different monkey and doing that some more. I have learned something very valuable from this game: Never, EVER play another platformer that feels compelled to put in teleporter pads. Teleport pads means that the level was too long to walk around. Normally, that would be an acceptable concession; nobody likes wandering over the same territory over and over again. Unfortunately, Rare has taken this to an unholy extreme, and just made the levels waaaay too big (they repeat the same mistake in Banjo-Twooie). Meaning that there is a LOT of ground you have to cover. 5 times. Did I mention that already? You need to play each level 5 times. The monkeys have different abilities that let them get to different areas, but the main gist of it is that they all do the same thing – they walk. A lot.
Lets spend a minute on your monkey pals. There's DK, who's big and tough, but not as strong as one of the other Kongs. There's Diddy, who's a chimpanzee; I'm not sure exactly who he's related to, but I suggest that the zookeeper keep a lot closer eye on what the primates are doing when they're not on exhibit. The three Kongs you'll never, ever hear from again are Tiny (who I guess is a chimp too; she doesn't seem like a spider monkey), Lanky (an Orangutan, and generally the most fun to play), and Chunky, who's a big doofus gorilla. Each of your apes get different abilities (that's what you spend the coins on), but in general, they're more or less the same thing, except for running speed, jump length, fighting reach, and their special ability. Diddy, who has the fastest running speed, has a pitiful jump length, puny fighting reach, and really nothing to redeem him; I hated playing Diddy. Chunky also has a pitiful jump, a fairly unimpressive fighting reach, he's ponderously slow, and his special abilities only ever come in useful about twice. But at least he's amusing. The other three are ok, and you'll probably run around as Tiny or Lanky, because they typically can cover the most ground and have the easiest time with bad guys.
The special abilities simply let you get to golden bananas. When you get to special pads with your ape's face on it (meaning that you know a banana is near), you can do your special thing. Lanky can inflate himself or speedwalk on his hands, Chunky turns invisible or gets really huge (no, I don' t know why he can turn invisible), Diddy can fly, and I think do a super jump is his other ability, Tiny can, obviously, shrink, and Donkey can turn invincible or shoot up in the air to enter a barrel. Some of these moves require golden coconuts, but those are plentiful enough that they're never a bother to have enough of. Essentially, since you can only do these moves when the game lets you, it makes them no fun at all to have; you collect coins to pay Cranky Kong (the original DK) to give you an ability that lets you go back to each level and get to one of the golden bananas. Hooray.
Now, I should mention the golden bananas. Sometimes they're more or less in plain sight, and you just need to do some insulting task (fly through something, jump up to get something, shoot something) to get at them. Fine. However, to compensate for poor level design and the sheer number (25!) of golden bananas per level, Rare decided to cop out. Not all the bananas are accessible, generally half of them are hidden in mini games. Meaning that you have to fly through something, jump up on something or shoot something to get access to… a mini game. I guess people like mini games. Mario Party has made a very successful franchise off of nothing but mini games. And that's fine, in a setting where you expect mini games. Here, however, it's a cheap cop out, particularly when you find out how lame the mini games are.
The games aren't randomized, but they change each time you encounter them, so the version of the game you played in the jungle stage is different than the one you'll play in the castle stage. However, they're the same game. Two of them are firing games, one, you fire melons at snakes juggling turtles, the other, you shoot at a Kremling and not at the other 5 Kongs. These are both easy and stupid. Two of them are adventure games, one, you have to dodge Kremlings with flashlights in a dark hall and get to the finish, the other, you swing from vine to vine. Donkey Kong alone gets a game where you fire out of cannons that swing back and forth, and fly into other cannons which do the same. That's really boring. Lastly, you get to play Beaver Bother. Beaver Bother gets its own paragraph.
Beavers are apparently the defacto enemy of primates. I'm sure, somewhere in our own evolution, primative Homo habilis struggled against the saber-toothed beavers, hiding in caves until the giant flat tailed rodents returned to their wooden lodges. The designers used beavers whenever possible, which is a real pity, because they're incredibly simple to kill, have no real charm (their only attack consists of them running after you for a short while until they give up and go back to their spawn point), and serve no part of a game dedicated to Kremlings. To be fair, Mario kills his fair share of things that aren't turtles and evil mushrooms. But at least Boos, Thwomps and the like have some character. So enamored was Rare of the beaver scourge, that they dedicated the most annoying mini game to hurting them. Beaver Bother is a circular stage with a well in the middle, and you take the role of some form of Kremling dog, who snaps at the beavers. When you bite a beaver, it runs away from you. Your job is to herd the beavers into the well. Except the beavers also don't want to go into the well, meaning that you spend a lot of time chasing beavers and biting them until you eventually stampede it into the well. This requires you to work very closely to the edge of the well. If you fall in, you lose the mini game, and have to start over. If you fail to get all the beavers in the hole before time runs out, you lose the mini game. You can repeat each mini game as often as you like, but you won't like to repeat Beaver Bother. There were several times in the game that I just gave up on a banana because of Beaver Bother.
The only other "games" are the typical fare of races, battles, and mine cart rides. Most platformers have these, and I won't fault their tried and true nature. However, in a struggle against evil, do you REALLY want to dally with some well meaning aardvark, brine shrimp, apple maggot, tapeworm, plague-infested rat, bloated tick, and burrowing five-toed yak who wants to race? Why is it that platformers are compelled to throw in some well-meaning random animal who has nothing better to do than to hoard the thing you have to collect and only give it to you when you beat them? Mario had to race a Koopa, Banjo had to race a polar bear, the Kongs race all sorts of creatures, just to get their damn stuff back. I wish there would be an option. "Please, kind [insert animal name here], I am on an important mission to save the [insert world name here] from the evil [main bad guy]. I realize your heart was set on this race, but I promise you, once [main bad guy] is defeated and [world] is safe, I will come back and race you, if you'll just give me [the important thing]." If only these mascots would try reason over brute stupidity, the [world] would be a happier [genre].
You also get to turn into a rhino, a sword fish, and I think that's about it, and kill and break stuff for a prize (surprise! It's a banana!), and Diddy Kong gets to ride in a mine cart and collect coins, which, if he gets enough, he gets a prize (oh boy! A banana! Who knew?!). These are generally fun, but they're so rare compared to mini games, you won't really care when you get one.
I'm purposely leaving out two more factors of the game, musical instruments and guns. The only reason either exist is to add two more things to collect (music energy and ammo), let you do more stupid puzzles (go to a music pad and play, or shoot switches), and let you spend coins (on instruments and weapon upgrades). There are two Kongs who sell you this crap, and clearly they're more interested in lining their own pockets in a time of crisis than they are with helping save their precious island. "Hey, news flash; if King Rool kills us and blows up the island, you're out of business, sucker. And we're your ONLY customers. Why not just hand over the crap, and nobody gets hurt, ok?"
Lastly, I'd like to detail the sheer amount of garbage you have to pick up in this game:
Colored bananas: To feed to the pig. Or the hippo. I forgot.
Banana medals. You get one for collecting all the colored bananas. They unlock something lame.
Map pieces: To give to the weasel. He gives you a golden banana for it.
Colored coins: To buy special moves, music power ups, and weapon upgrades.
Battle crowns: To unlock something lame.
Nintendo coin: To unlock an INCORRECT port of Donkey Kong (they goofed up the level order).
Rare coin: To unlock a port of some ancient rocket game.
Boss keys: To unlock the big dumb Kremling's cage. He opens up new areas.
Ammo: To reload your guns.
Oranges: They're grenades. You'll probably never bother to use them.
Crystal coconuts: To power your special moves.
Film canisters: To take pictures of banana fairies. Don't ask.
Golden bananas: To open up all the levels until you can beat the game.
Barring special items which are only there to unlock junky optional features, you still have to pick up a load of crap in this game. Note to Rare: This isn't fun.
The aesthetics: The graphics are very nice and bright; hell, they made you buy the memory expansion pak just to play the game (Majora's Mask and Turok 2 were the only other games I even know of that required the pak). Things do pop up, but by far and large, the graphics work out well enough. It's a cartoony platformer, so you don't really expect realism, which is fine, because you don't get any.
The sound is where the game really takes a beating. The level music is both generic and annoying; there's no real sense of orchestration in it, and there's nothing to listen to besides the awful midi-synth music. Your characters largely just grunt when you tell them to jump or fight, and no character in the entire game can talk. You just get annoying word bubbles floating on the bottom of the screen. If not for the "Monster is respawning" whoosh warning, there would be no reason to even have the speakers turned on.
That the music is so atrocious and that no characters can even talk is a real let down, particularly when Banjo-Kazooie had excellent music and hilarious use of limited sound memory. I won't go into great detail about this here; suffice to say that the main game theme music was catchy, and they made excellent use of it near levels – it would slowly morph into a hybrid of the level music and the main game theme. DK 64 tries to do the same effect, but flops miserably because the level music is obnoxious and the main game theme is forgettable. As well, B-K gave each character a couple of sound effects, and repeated them at various pitches to effect "speech" – none of the characters could talk, but hearing Gruntilda rhyme her insults like "heh herrrh hennh, herrrh hrrrr heh!" was worth a good chuckle every time she did it. At least to me, I'm easily amused.
The only characters that can talk is an annoying parrot (who only squawks, and generally fills up your screen with "Hey! I found a banana, and you can have it!") and King K. Rool, who only says "Rahhh!" and "Thank you!" You don't get to hear that, really, until the boss fight (oh, spoiler, by the way, you fight King K. Rool as the final boss. Duh.) However, the sound effect is so horrible that it sounds like "Fuck you!" and not what it's supposed to be. Strangely, I think it works better that way.
Lest I forget, I need to mention the Monkey Rap. When you first play DK 64 (not generally recommended), let the Monkey Rap play all the way through. It's awful, and it's your first slice of hell. That it resurfaced in Super Smash Melee was a bizarre nod to the game, but they remixed it so you couldn't understand it very clearly, and for that, I'm grateful.
Final thoughts: Avoid. Even if you love platformers and love Donkey Kong, avoid. This is an exceptionally tedious entry into the "Me too!" category of platformers, and really soured me on the genre in general. You spend so much time on each level that you'll absolutely hate it by the time you're done, and I can't imagine why you'd ever bother to replay the game. I haven't, and I've owned the game for years. The levels are too big to effectively memorize, the only real challenge is getting your ape to where it needs to go, and you have to get so many new abilities from so many of the later levels that you forget where those areas where by the time you get the ability to go there. It is, however, too long of a game to rent, so unless you're keen on late fees, you'll need to buy the game in order to beat it. Clever of Rare, I suppose, but that shouldn't be the motivating reason as to why the game needs to be 30-40 hours long.
Incidently, I learned that if you take Lanky, the orangutan with long arms, up to the lock character guarding each level entrance, and punch through him, you can access the level without having enough Golden Bananas. Now that's quality control for you. It also means you could rent the game and breeze through it without wasting time on Golden Bananas... but I'd still argue that was a waste of time, money, electricity, your lifespan... 01.12.03 / 05:02PM / Boris |
