12/12/2023 0 Comments Tera federation supply travel journal![]() ![]() Platform: Wii U Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, a 3D platformer released the Wii U in February 2014, is a direct sequel to 2010’s Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii. Retro Studios gained some notoriety after the announcement that the developer would be working on the next DK, which many consider one of Nintendo’s “B” franchises. Though DK does not attract a fanbase as ravenous as the Metroid franchise, it is encouraging to see that Nintendo has committed itself to publish something for the majority of its intellectual properties on the Wii U. Story As I have said in my review of Rayman Legends, the plot of a platformer is generally perfunctory. Donkey Kong is celebrating his birthday with Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky as a balloon escapes out of the window. The camera trails it out into the sea where an armada approaches the island. ![]() DK naturally becomes enraged, but the entire crew is blown away as the dragon freezes the entire island.Īboard one of the vessels, a dark ominous figure calls for a giant enchanted horn and blows into it, summoning a magical ice dragon that initiates the arctic assault with a single snowflake that interrupts DK’s candle-blowing by descending upon and extinguishing the flame. Of course, the object of the game is to defeat the invaders, the Snowmads. ![]() The shifts in perspective add a challenging flair to an otherwise routine rail sequence. Most power-ups can be acquired from Funky Kong shops between worlds, activated before entering a stage. Within stages themselves, they are manifested through DK’s sidekicks, Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky Kong, with each augmenting DK with an extra ability. Diddy reprises the brief “float” animation from DKCR Cranky Kong uses his cane as a pogo stick like Scrooge McDuck, allowing DK to bounce on spikes without damage and defeat enemies that DK could not on his own Dixie Kong twirls her hair helicopter-style for a small double-jump. Cranky has his uses for those interested in completing the time attack stages because his bounce does not cause DK to lose momentum, unlike Diddy and Dixie’s abilities. Unfortunately, there is no practical use for Diddy that Dixie can’t do better since she also floats slightly before her slight ascent. Each Kong also provides DK a super tag-team move that transforms all enemies on the screen into items: banana coins for Cranky, 1-up balloons for Diddy, and golden hearts for Dixie. The hearts created through the latter character fill DK’s health meter beyond the standard of four hearts up to eight. Combined with her double-jump, her heart generation inadvertently highlights the inadequacies of the other characters, resulting in a stale paring of almost always Dixie and DK unless players are willing to sacrifice efficiency for aesthetics. The tradition of the collect-a-thon persists here. 100 bananas grant players a 1-up in addition to single red balloons. One can find the letters K-O-N-G in every stage alongside puzzle pieces for unlocking extras like art and music. If all of this sounds routine, that is because DKCTF is just that. Far too often in my reviews and write-ups of platform games, I almost always devote a section to my ennui, particularly for the earlier sections of Rayman Origins or New Super Mario Bros Wii U. That is not exactly the case with DKCTF, which is actually more difficult than its predecessor, DKCR. However, I still found myself rushing through the game just to finish it, unmoved by alternate and secret paths or the significantly augmented difficulty offered through the levels unlocked by surreptitiously completing the K-O-N-G puzzles. There is no new core gameplay mechanic to be seen here. Retro simply applied a polished sheen on the formula Nintendo established on the SNES and revived on the Wii. What elevated NSMBWU above NSMBW (and even Mario 3 and SMW on the SNES) in my mind are the little details like the contiguous nature of its world map. That “polished sheen” is some high-grade stuff.ĭKCR used such a map, but DKCTF reverted to a map that segments the worlds on different screens. One of the most ruinous critiques of NSMBWU is that Nintendo “mailed in” the majority of its backgrounds, and the music was rehashed and generic. No such slanderous things concerning DKCTF can be said in earnest. ![]() High definition does the game’s body good, illustrating the subtle animations of the Kongs and Snowmads with that familiar Nintendo vibrancy. Did that walking bush just roundhouse kick me when I died? Yes, yes it did. ![]()
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