Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was, shall we say, a bit of a surprise in that I don’t think anyone expected Retro’s next big thing to be more Donkey Kong. But who can argue with more of some of the greatest platforming action of the last generation?
The demo offered a small variety of levels, from traditional left to right platforming to a mine cart stage and a boss battle. The game play is as pitch perfect as its predecessor, and adds a few new tweaks, such as the ability to swim and pick up enemies when stunned.
This time, the development team seemed to focus much less on the foreground/background play of the original Wii game, and more on shifting perspective as you move through a level. This is mostly seen during some of the “barrel blast” sections and mine cart stage. For example, as you blast from barrel to barrel around a tree, the camera will spin in a swirling fashion until it concludes in a “down the sights” perspective as if you are looking down the barrel of a gun. While a neat visual change to a platformer, I didn’t get the sense that this really adds much variety to the game play, despite what the press information about this “dynamic camera” feature tries to imply.
The visuals are a bump up (and to me that’s about it), but what stands out a bit more is the enemy designs and animations. They look more like a Pixar cartoon. This was even more apparent during a boss battle with a seal that would slide up and down a half pipe flipping and flapping about with a great level of animation.
While this may not be what was expected of Rare’s next title, it’s hard to pass up platforming perfection, so the re-release of Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D will just have to tide me over for now until November.
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