I’ll start with the positives. The level design in this game is legendary! Going through these stages, it really feels like each platform, collectable, and enemy is placed with the utmost purpose and care. The levels contain a bunch of secrets that encourage exploration, and I found myself replaying some of these levels several times even though I wasn’t going for 100%. Each world contains a “challenge stage” of sorts, and while I haven’t beaten them all yet, they are a ton of fun to play and slowly improve at while losing a bunch of lives.

I love playing as Dixie and Cranky Kong. Their unique abilities shake up the way you play the game. I honestly feel like Diddy Kong didn’t need to be in this game since he is so similar to Dixie. The movement in this game took me a while to get used to. Your jumps are floaty and the roll-jump is a tricky maneuver to master.

I like that this game gives you the option to either play on the TV or the Wii U gamepad. I found myself switching between the two depending on the situation. The menus in this game leave much to be desired. The game asks you “Are you sure you want to do that?” before pretty much anything you ever do. You cannot even go to your inventory menu to look at your items and then exit without answering an “Are you sure you want to exit the inventory menu?” prompt.

I did not hate the music in this game, however I did find it underwhelming. After getting a feel for each song, I often found myself muting the game so that I could put on my own music (I do this with a lot of video games, but I thought it was worth mentioning).

The boss fights were kind of lame. Most of them revolve around jumping on the boss as they are charging at you (Which can be annoying to time since the jumps in this game are so floaty). The final boss didn’t feel special to me, and the finale passed like it was just another boss battle.

Overall, this was a fabulous game that provided me with hours of platforming fun. I do not see myself going for 100%, but I do want to finish the “challenge stages” and perhaps replay some of this game’s awesome stages to discover what cool secrets I missed.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is an overlooked masterpiece. The exact same attention to detail that defined Talon IV into Donkey Kong Island while also completely nailing what was an entirely new genre in the process. It was validating to see my favorite genre handled with such care. With such mindfulness for it’s strengths while also seeing the potential it had going forward. The idea that they should take a less thorough approach than with Metroid because they were dealing with a lesser genre never seemed to cross their mind.It showed that 2D platformers are worthy of AAA art and animation teams. They did still have room to improve despite how thoroughly “solved” they felt. I’d already been validated, but I was still hungry for more.

And I mean, yeah, Tropical Freeze is the ultimate definition of more. More locations. More characters each housing their own movement options. More mechanics. More details. More music.

More usually doesn’t mean better in game, but that’s probably Tropical Freeze’s greatest achievement. It had a deep understanding of what worked about the last game(all of it) and just sought to expand without cramming in any needless fluff. It sticks to its commitments as far as Kongs working purely as extensions of DK and working with original bad guys, which was surprising on release but I think it was the right choice overall. These games stick out in my head a little more for the sake of wiping the slate clean each game, Miyamoto driven directive or not.

The story isn’t really much to write home about, but the game still has a lot of moments that touched me just because of how aesthetically pleasing they were. It trusted me to just appreciate these beautiful vistas mid-game instead of drawing overt attention to them like a naughty dog title would.

Mario often get’s a lot of ways for the way it navigates introducing new mechanics, but it’s always felt a little lackluster from the perspective of someone who had played games for a long time. Back in the old days it was trial by fire, and while that didn’t always feel fair, it was always exciting.

Nintendo opted around 2006 to make a sort of “lead in” a core fixture of their design. The mechanic is introduced in a safe environment and then the challenge gradually ramps up before the level is over. This is all well and good, but make the lead in too lengthy and it starts to feel like. As much as I like Mario 3D World, this softball approach makes it hard for it to hook me for the first half or so. Sometimes by the time the tension ramps up to something more stimulating than a dentist office the level is already over.

Tropical Freeze understands that the danger is part of the thrill. Sometimes you’re expected to react to a mechanic on the fly. Sometimes you’ll juggle two or three different types of recently introduced types of obstacles through an extremely lethal platforming segment. Sometimes your raw observational skills are the only heads-up you get with no telegraphing camera angles or flashing lights.

The funny thing is, that old trial by fire problem where it sometimes feels like you got hit with some bullshit doesn’t really exist in this game. I can think of maybe 2 times it happened in this last playthrough and in both cases it was bosses. There’s just enough telegraphing for you to pick up on what’s coming without ruining the excitement. .


Nintendo has been doing a great job of making their games feel less condescending over the years, but Donkey Kong coming out hot off the heels of Skyward Sword and 3D world felt like someone was cutting through the shit and speaking directly to me. Overly lengthy tutorial sequences are nonsense and so are gimmicks like motion controls and touch screens.This is a game for our fans that have been with us through it all. It was an evolution on their tried and true design angles that trimmed most of the fat.

This all seems like your typical whiney gamer difficulty screed but I do think the lack of interruptions affects the atmosphere in a strong way too. The world, largely, speaks for itself in all it’s beauty, humor, and lethality. The game is crammed with lively motion and blink-or you’ll miss it details in it’s backgrounds. It’s an initiative that’s arguably wasteful given the madness on the foreground, but it also means the game trusts you to stop and take a look at your leisure which feels that much more immersive. From the disturbing frequency of crashed planes in Lost Mangroves to the theme of ascension in Autumn Hghts to the literal step by step popsicle machine later in the game.

This world design reaches it’s peak at the end though, where the game takes advantage of it’s premise and crafts an entire world around a DK Island that’s been destroyed by the snowmads. The livelyness that defined the original game has been crushed flat by snow and ice. The game never goes as far as to reuse assets or level geometry from the first game, instead painstaking detail is put into the backgrounds and the design to function like a greatest-hits take on every world from the first game, minecart not included. At one point you pass one of the most annoying bosses from the first game frozen solid in a block of ice. He sees you charging after the snowmads and smiles, happy to see you busting the heads of much bigger fish. Maybe going with a victory lap over giving the original trilogy more reverence seems self indulgent, but can you really blame them for having high self esteem at this point? Seriously.

Retro is a masterclass game developer, and Tropical Freeze is comparable to Metroid Prime for the title of their magnum opus. Everything that makes Metroid Prime great has been smoothly transitioned to a new genre with careful considerations for that genre’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s everything that makes Nintendo and gaming great embodied.

It's a little odd how Returns changed the style of Donkey Kong Country from two individual characters to Donkey Kong and his friend/ power up. I don't think it's a bad way to go about the series, but I'll be honest when I say I miss the older Country games play style. Aside from that hiccup tho? Honestly Tropical Freeze delivers more Donkey Kong Country goodness than the original did.
Tropical Freeze is oozing with far more flavor and charm than the majority of the country games did, and compared to Returns, does far far better with it's stylish backgrounds and levels. Not to knock Returns, as honestly it was a great return to the Donkey Kong Country series; Tropical Freeze just improves on everything that Returns did. Add that together with Dixie and Cranky in the mix, and the amount of new areas and platforming that you can do is pretty amazing.
On top of all this improvement, they also made Tropical Freeze far more challenging than any other game before. Honestly the game's difficulty curve is so smooth and the deaths just feel so fair that it really should be a testament at how to make difficulty in game making classes. Add that with a bunch of resources for a player to access more life's or use a super version of Donkey Kong that will make the game easier, and it really does feel like they thought of everything when it comes to the hurdles of platforming skill.
Really Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is one of the best Country games out there. The platforming is great, the atmosphere is great, and the unlockables are abundant. There is so much to do and see in Tropical Freeze that makes it well worth retail price.