Diddy Kong Racing is a wild kart-racing adventure that goes way beyond Mario Kart! Zipping around in cars, boats, and planes adds a ton of variety to the races, and the single-player Adventure mode is surprisingly packed with boss battles and secrets. Some of the tracks are a bit unfair with their difficulty spikes though, and the rubber-banding AI can be frustrating. Still, if you're looking for a nostalgic challenge with a unique twist, Diddy Kong Racing is a blast from the past.
This review contains spoilers
dkr crept up on me. i revisited it with the intention to feel some nostalgia & see what the single player was really about. at first, i was all over the place.
so many things interupted my enjoyment. 1) turning feels like it shifts you along the x axis, often times setting up for awkward positioning that feels frustrating. 2) if you bump into something, you are sent god knows where, facing whichever direction. even further, maybe you get only somewhat close to an obstacle whilst flying. might as well reset because you're hitting that obstacle & falling straight down. 3) rockets feel pretty useless, as hitting enemies (most bosses included) with projectiles literally does nothing to slow them down. 4) trying to hit taj the genie to switch vehicles? well he's doing everything in his power to prevent you from doing so. he'll turn at the last second, stop moving when you anticipate him to move, and, when you've finally bumped him, you have to hope that the game registers it as a prompt to start dialogue, because it seldom will. 5) not making clear how trophies are expected to be earned within an adventure save if progress is to be saved. this could've just been a me thing, but it was frustrating to have completed all 4 trophies to progress the story only to learn that, because i was in the track mode, none of it mattered.
BUT. then i unlocked drumstick. i started getting a hang of combining drifting & breaking to get around best. I learned how to use zippers in the most efficient way possible. i discovered the last world. it all came together when i played star city for the first time. i understood why people loved this game. that feeling of darting around, perfectly maneuvering around a level, was incredible. on top of that, of course, the music, art direction, and track/world design are all as outstanding as they are distinct from others in their genre.
and its got tip tup. what else is there to want. wake me up when mario kart puts in jungle falls, frosty village, pirate lagoon, greenwood village, and anything from future fun land.
so many things interupted my enjoyment. 1) turning feels like it shifts you along the x axis, often times setting up for awkward positioning that feels frustrating. 2) if you bump into something, you are sent god knows where, facing whichever direction. even further, maybe you get only somewhat close to an obstacle whilst flying. might as well reset because you're hitting that obstacle & falling straight down. 3) rockets feel pretty useless, as hitting enemies (most bosses included) with projectiles literally does nothing to slow them down. 4) trying to hit taj the genie to switch vehicles? well he's doing everything in his power to prevent you from doing so. he'll turn at the last second, stop moving when you anticipate him to move, and, when you've finally bumped him, you have to hope that the game registers it as a prompt to start dialogue, because it seldom will. 5) not making clear how trophies are expected to be earned within an adventure save if progress is to be saved. this could've just been a me thing, but it was frustrating to have completed all 4 trophies to progress the story only to learn that, because i was in the track mode, none of it mattered.
BUT. then i unlocked drumstick. i started getting a hang of combining drifting & breaking to get around best. I learned how to use zippers in the most efficient way possible. i discovered the last world. it all came together when i played star city for the first time. i understood why people loved this game. that feeling of darting around, perfectly maneuvering around a level, was incredible. on top of that, of course, the music, art direction, and track/world design are all as outstanding as they are distinct from others in their genre.
and its got tip tup. what else is there to want. wake me up when mario kart puts in jungle falls, frosty village, pirate lagoon, greenwood village, and anything from future fun land.