donkey kong game review
Test: Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: A portage that does the jobOn May 4, 2018, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze takes a tour through the Nintendo Switch, in a portage faithful to the original. Unsurprisingly, it is still a very good platformer, fluid and pleasing to the eye. Note however an arrival of weight: Funky Kong, who leaves his store to become a playable character.
Designed for neophytes, the bandana gorilla can be considered an easy mode all by itself: it can perform double jumps, hover for a short time, breathe underwater and has five hearts. Yes, we can practically see it as cheating, however let's be clear: it's up to you to choose if you want to use it or not. Funky Kong has the advantage of allowing a confirmed player to play with a neophyte in a more balanced way than usual, but also not to be frustrating for casual gamers.
Beyond that, the handling remains impeccable, even at Joy-Con, which seems logical for a game that ultimately uses very few buttons. You will not have the impression of being embarrassed by your controller, good news for a rather demanding platform title. In summary, if you have already made the title on Wii U, you can largely go your way, however otherwise it would be a shame to miss a game always as good, always as beautiful.
Hailed by critics in 2010, the resurgence of Donkey Kong Country requires confirmation on Wii U, a medium that allows the Nintendo series to enter the high definition dimension for the first time. Like Returns, Tropical Freeze was entrusted to Retro Studio, to whom we owe in particular the Metroid Prime. And like its predecessor, this new episode gives us a little lesson in old-fashioned platforms, intended primarily for players of yesterday, without disregarding those of today. A friendly but hardcore title as we now only find it too rarely ...
Do not imagine finding in Tropical Freeze a DKC with a surprising script and breathtaking intrigue. The interest is elsewhere and the story is mainly used as a pretext to allow the Kong family to tap on all victims and go hunting for bananas on their favorite island. An island suddenly invaded by the Frigoths, a fiddling with Vikings from the North Seas. A big chill was therefore thrown on the little paradise of Kong which lost some colors during this surprise raid. Your objective will consist in knocking out one by one minions and infantrymen to go back to the person in charge of the invasion to settle his account with big blows in the face. A habit for Donkey and his friends.
ON THE LAUNCH OF DONKEY KONG COUNTRY RETURNS
Tropical Freeze is a direct sequel to Returns and Retro Studio takes it on all floors. If the display has a completely different look in HD, the foundations of the title are strictly the same as those of its predecessor. From the real old-fashioned platform, embellished with some more modern mechanics and sublimated by a level design ranging from good to engineering, passing by a lot of very good. And if the phases of pure and hard platforms are legion, they are punctuated by more aerial levels in flying barrels or others at the controls of mining trucks. The latter introduce phases in isometric 3D which magnify the action magnificently, but to the detriment of the gameplay, unnecessarily complicated in favor of a nice staging. Nothing blocking however. Under these conditions, I do not frankly imagine how a fan of the first episode and the following Country can pass his way. Especially since the developers have not set any constraints relating to the GamePad. So when you play on your TV, the tablet is simply turned off and acts as a classic controller. An insignificant detail for some players (including myself) but perhaps a bit shocking for those who like the controller to be used as a HUD or inventory. Note however that it is possible to switch the display of the game on the GamePad if the TV screen is not available and the player has the choice to move using the left stick or the D- Pad.FOUR KONGS INVOLVED, A FIRST!
Solo, Donkey has two hearts of life and his inventory of objects bought from Cranky to overcome many difficulties. But he can also and above all rely on the precious help of Diddy, Dixie or Cranky. The three companions hide in the traditional barrels struck with their respective logos or in special barrels, which allow to choose the Kong to "invoke". If these three additional heroes can be embodied in coop (see last paragraph), they just grab Donkey solo and use it as an item. Thus, Diddy allows his best friend to float for a few seconds in the air thanks to his turbo barrel. Dixie gives Donkey's jumps a little verticality by twirling his quilt. As for this good old Cranky, who was thought unable to leave his counter, he can use his cane to bounce on peaks, brambles and carnivorous plants, where some coveted objects are sometimes located. Once mastered, the extra Kongs are a life-saving aid and introduce a little tactical notion when it comes to choosing which one will come out of the barrel. Especially before the bosses, since the gameplay and the approach to combat change considerably depending on whether Diddy, Dixie or Cranky supports Donkey. However, one would not have spit against a more independent AI, capable of descending from Donkey and helping everything else. Finally, note that after having harvested 100 bananas in the level, Donkey and his sidekick can clap their hands to make a "Pow-Kong", which has the effect of transforming all the enemies on the screen into various objects and varied (parts, lives, bananas, etc.). Frankly practical!RETURN TO UNDERWATER LEVELS, ABERRANT DIFFICULTY
Tropical Freeze follows the classic architecture of a DKC, namely that you operate on a total of six islands, each with an end boss and its share of bonus and hidden levels. The themes, colors and bestiaries vary, from a lost mangrove to an atoll via a magnificent savannah. Artistically speaking and in terms of animation, the title of Retro Studio is almost flawless and discovering a new world is always a pleasure. Forget about Returns, the submarine levels are making their return in this opus. Real moments of poetry where splendid plays of (Chinese) shadows and lights follow one another. But Donkey's inertia poses big problems, as it is also the source of some nervous attacks on other phases of more classic platforms, especially on jumps. Heavy and sometimes unpredictable, the hero is not helped by checkpoints that are too rare and placed in any haphazard manner, forcing you too often to start again well before your failure. However, lives are distributed like Cochonou samples by the Tour de France Caravan. But it must be! Indeed, the difficulty of the software sometimes borders on the ridiculous, so much so that one approaches a progression die and retry. Everything, or almost, is done so that you fail on your first attempts and fussing a title like Tropical Freeze seems feasible, but reserved for the elite. The bosses do not escape this logic and if each has easily identifiable weak points, the maddening duration of the duels makes these confrontations winded, long and repetitive. Retro Studio wanted to make a hardcore game, mission accomplished. But pleasure, in all of this ...
A COOPERATIVE MODE TO FORGET
The coop mode of DKC Returns lacked ambition and it is not that of Tropical Freeze which will reconcile the series with multiplayer. Full of faults that can sometimes be considered as huge bugs, this real false coop succeeds in complicating progression. Two, everything is more jerky, untied, and the stupid dead are linked to the point of screwing up your reserve of red balloons in a few moments, especially since it is easy to confuse the two characters in the richness of the tables. Because when you die in a coop, two lives are taken from you ... Not very encouraging all of that! But it is not the only flaw in this mode which allows, I remind you, a second player to control Diddy, Dixie or Cranky to accompany Donkey. It is up to him to choose to stay on the back of the big monkey to serve as an item or to get off and progress individually. Still, the interaction between the two protagonists is no more developed than solo ... Worse, some assets quickly turn into a hassle. For example, if Diddy falls into the void, Donkey can bring him back to life by boxing a barrel falling from the sky and containing his friend. Problem, the trajectory of this barrel is uncontrollable, only its dispatch is the responsibility of the "dead" player. And if the level is full of traps or emptiness, the barrel can become inaccessible or force the player to die as soon as he comes back to life ... Finally, when a player disappears from the screen because he is at drags, he is automatically teleported to his friend after three seconds ... Even if the latter is jumping over the void ... You guess stupid death, one more.Good points
A lesson in level design.From the platform as we like it.
5 playable Kongs.
Some epic passages.
Artistically very inspired.
The sumptuous underwater phases.
Varied and superbly animated environments.
A hell of a lifetime.
Funky Kong, for casual players
Negative points
The sometimes aberrant difficulty.Boss fights, long and repetitive.
The frustrating and pointless co-op mode.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze stands out as a benchmark for the platform, all media combined. Stubbornly respecting the historical codes of the series, the Retro Studio teams, failing to refresh the genre, sign a quality title, neat, inspired, able to please fans of the Super Nintendo episode as well as those who discovered the monkey on Wii. If its level design is a model of its kind, the progression is sometimes a bit spoiled by a poorly proportioned difficulty, unfortunately not compensated by a coop mode that misses its subject. However, I recommend it without hesitation to reckless players and more generally, to all owners of Nintendo Switch.
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