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Seven Ways I Died In Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Added: 23.01.2014 21:45 | 17 views | 0 comments

Donkey Kong and company might seem like friendly apes on a banana adventure, but playing through the game’s first four worlds last week left me impressed with the varying levels of challenge you’ll find in the full experience. Not unlike Super Mario 3D World or the New Super Mario Bros. series, Tropical Freeze tracks all the bonus areas you find, all the bananas you collect, and does that while throwing tons of perfectly placed enemies your way. I was in a bit of a rush. I wanted to get through everything Nintendo made available at the preview event. I died a handful of times just for rushing through carelessly, but for the most part players will find a steady progression of death by dastard design. I refrained from comparing Donkey Kong to Dark Souls, as much as I may have wanted to. Clearing a particularly challenging sequence did feel satisfying in the way relentless challenge pays off in victorious reward, but "Donk Souls" doesn’t roll off the tongue. What’s more, you might spend four hours getting to the first "level" in Dark Souls, whereas the big banana of adversity and triumph didn’t really appear until World 2’s owl boss, some dozen plus "levels" into Tropical Freeze. Reading my notes from the preview event, I noticed seven different ways I died in my chest-pounding, vine-swinging campaign. Set on fire. One particular Savannah level actually shrugs away the title’s cold shoulder and sets the jungle around DK and friends on fire. Each level in the world progresses up to this moment and then players are forced to wrestle with platforms that slowly crumble to ash as you walk on them. There is a bunch of fire-breathing baddies in these levels and more often than not I’d end up wasting two or three lives to the same enemy in a row. The patterns are set up for players of all speeds, but finding a middle ground so I could explore, stay safe, and still move ahead at a moderate pace got really difficult. This was another level that screenshots simply won’t do justice. Tons of movement, combined with bright, sharp coloring make the game’s environments quite the sight. With or without 1080p, Nintendo’s first steps in HD game design prove they could have hung with Microsoft and Sony back in 2006. Fell in a bottomless pit. This is a classic, obviously, but as is true with all Donkey Kong Country games, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith in order to find a bonus room or a hidden stash of bananas. More often than not I fell to my death, but that shouldn’t discourage anyone from following visual clues wherever they may take you. Tropical Freeze is riddled with "well, if I had jumped there I would have grabbed that" moments. Wii U owners have had a steady diet of platform games since launch, so they should be well trained to spot the goodies hiding in DK’s jungle. Crushed in a mine-cart crash. Pretty obvious, right? From what I played it seems like there’s at least one mine-cart level in every world, in addition to Rocket Barrel levels, and other fun twists to DKC gameplay. If this were a list of eight ways I died in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Rocket Barrel explosion would have made it. Split by a buzzsaw. Mine-cart levels are cool and all, but my favorite was one where DK, Diddy, and I were thrown from a mine-cart and into a sawmill. DK got his own version of splash mountain, but maybe with a closer trim of his newly high-definition jungle fuzz. Wow, that sounded pretty dirty. DK and whichever partner he’s roped into have to dodge massive, moving blades in the sawmill, while watching what water you have available to ride on closely. When you play this level yourself, you’ll see how Retro have made massive set pieces into difficult and often deadly platforming sequences. The log ride itself is just like the mine cart with two hit points (whereas DK and a partner have four hit points between them) and you can also buy items for it like you would the mine cart or the rocket barrel. I made it through, but losing five or six lives at the same point of DK’s log ride was frustrating. Stabbed by a feather. Seriously. I hated that owl bosshellip; at least until I beat him. After that I kind of loved him. The stage actually proceeds upwards vertically, meaning you have a few different methods of beating him quickly. If you play aggressively enough, you can toss tons of his own baddies at him, not unlike the North American version of Super Mario Bros. 2. Donkey Kong and his cooperative partners can jump on an enemy's head and then pick that enemy up either to throw at another minion or at a world boss like our owl "friend."

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