Donkey Kong 64 was one of the several noteworthy games that remained in my backlog for over 10 years. Because of that, I would say this game and a handful of others that I have and haven't reviewed yet were all a part of the key reason I made my Backloggd account. In my previous playthrough, I made it all the way up to the final world in K. Rool's lair where you were the amount of time you had to beat it depended on the amount of blueprints you collected. By the time I wanted to tackle it, I somehow forgot how to do all of the kongs' moves. Ultimately, it lead to me dropping the game. I did try to start over from scratch a few times, but I never was able to commit until I decided to beat it this year. I enjoyed it, but compared to Rare's other collect-a-thons, this one probably has the most issues.

It plays like all of Rare's other platformers where your purpose in playing is to collect a plethora of different items spread across 8 different worlds, but some of the collectibles have slightly different functions compared to Banjo-Kazooie. The golden bananas are just like your jiggys or stars, but the different colored bananas scattered around the level serve as a means to access the boss for each world which also plays a necessary role in getting to the next world alongside the golden bananas since you get a key for defeating each boss. It all sounds pretty simple, but the problem is that you aren't just playing as one character like Mario or Banjo. In Donkey Kong 64, you play 5 different characters including DK, Diddy, Tiny, Lanky, and Chunky Kong. In most cases, it's pretty cool to have a roster that big in a platformer. However, the approach Rare took in adding more characters is what is this game's biggest flaw, bloat.

Each and every kong have their own colored bananas to collect and objectives to do. The placement of a lot of where these collectibles are located will lead to a copious amount of backtracking. Another big issue that also amplifies the backtracking problem is that most of the worlds are just too big. It's fairly easy to get lost and even with teleportation pads, getting to some locations can still be rather time-consuming. Speaking of time-consuming, getting 100% in this game requires double the amount of golden bananas needed to regularly beat the game. Given how much you have to backtrack for the colored bananas and numerous golden bananas I would never do it since I'm not a madman. I salute those bold enough to 100% this game.

Personally, I still enjoyed the game a lot despite it being very flawed and straight-up inferior in comparison to Rare's other platformers. Their ambitions with this title were pretty expansive, but ultimately they bit off a little more than they could chew in some areas. If you're a diehard collect-a-thon fan and willing to put up with the repetitive parts of the game I'd still recommend it. If DK64 seems like too much, then I'd stick to something shorter and better-paced like Banjo-Kazooie.

This game is very poorly designed. The progression and the mini games make this a very tedious collectathon experience. It almost feels like the developers were playing a practical joke with its game design. One of the mini games is broken to the point of being nearly impossible and it is repeated at least four times. To top it off there is a very easy to activate softlock that can gate 101% completion from you at the very end of the game. This all makes it hard to recommend to people. It's like a full time job of a video game.

To me this game design actually holds value. It makes for a game that's so over the top that it turns around and becomes compelling. You enter these giant collectathon sandboxes and it's so overwhelming, but slowly working out the ins and outs of the levels and achieving that 100% felt really satisfying in a way banjo never really got for me. A lot of people rightfully criticize the way it handles playable characters, but I think that limitation of having to find them was another step in this big puzzle of navigating the labrynthine collectathon loop the levels present. DK64 was always pushing me and testing me in all these ways that kept me engaged the entire time. I don't think there will ever be another game like it. Like what game has five variations of most of the collectibles in a level? It's just so insane to me and I find it endearing.

This is all held together by phenomenal presentation. I think this game values and understands the vibes of Donkey Kong Country more than people have you believe. Banjo is full of whimsy and a cozy feel to it. DK64 has a heavier emphasis on atmosphere, with the later levels going for moody foreboding stuff that you would see in the country games, it's great, and I think it compliments the daunting collectathon challenge it presents. I feel the same way about the music and I think it's easily Grant Kirkhopes best score. It's a surprisingly varied soundtrack and I often felt that it was going for the same kind of natural ambience David Wise goes for in the country games. I really don't understand the complaint that it just sounds like Banjo, they are definitely going for different things.

I wasn't sure I wanted to give this game as high of a rating as I did, but what cemented it for me was Hideout Helm and the final fight with K. Rool. It's an incredible finale and it's almost worth all the crap the game puts you through. Hideout Helm is a tight timed gauntlet that puts your knowledge of all the Kongs to the test with this incredible track that really puts the pressure on. And the K. Rool fight is this incredibly ambitious 5 round minimum boxing match where you have to use each kong's unique abilities to take him down. Legit one of my favorite bosses of all time, it's a masterwork in puzzle focused boss design.

I think one of the reasons I loved this game as much as I did was because it felt like a culmination of rareware at Nintendo. For better and worse it's this swan song collectathon where they just put all their eggs in a basket and went crazy with it. The fact you play Donkey Kong arcade and Rarewares Jetpac for mandatory progression only cements this idea. It's a celebratory experience that you have to really work at to get it's bombastic payoff. I don't think it's a game I'd casually play, but it was a challenge I set for myself that I found really fruitful at the end of the day.

"It's bloated"

"It's too long"

"Fate/stay night is a good videogame"

Keep talking, we are not listening. This game is good because you will die before you see all the content in it

this game ain't nearly as bad as some people will try and tell you it is, i get the impression someone just said "yeah this game is endless and bloated" and people took that at face value without actually playing the game for themselves - sure it's got quite a lot of fat and even the developers of the game have said if they could go back they'd do things slightly differently, but that's ok, that doesn't mean the game is unplayable today, far from it.

donkey kong 64 is actually a pretty fun 3D platformer and it certainly didn't "kill the collecathon" genre, those existed on 6th generation consoles too lol. gaming simply shifted away from those and this so happens to be one of the later games in that genre.

so, should you play it if you haven't before? well, it's not as good as any of the original DKC games in my opinion but it slightly takes the edge on DKCR. if you don't care about DKC games, then let me compare it to another game that is very similar to DK64, banjo-kazooie. that game is basically the same game but with a smaller scope, with only 1 playable character, banjo-kazooie is definitely more digestible but i actually found myself way more burned out by the end of banjo-kazooie than i did with DK64. DK64 in my opinion, has waaaay more fun and memorable levels, whilst being designed almost identically to banjo-kazooie in structure and layout, the atmosphere of DK64 is unmatched, it is potentially my favorite atmosphere captured on the N64, supported by the fact the game famously uses vertex/dynamic lighting which really provides a pretty look for a game on one of the ugliest systems ever. (sorry)

despite the praise, the collectables ARE overwhelming, even if you're not going for 101%. i didn't go for 101% and ended my playthrough with 129 bananas, 25 hours, and 61% overall completion, that's quite a lot just to beat the game, and the requirement of the nintendo coin and the rareware coin was just pushing it man, i don't wanna have to beat 2 arcade games, 1 of them twice, just to beat the main game i'm tryna play, that ain't fun; but yeah, the bananas are placed poorly, everyone knows that, and it's not exactly fun to backtrack and stuff, even if people do greatly over-exaggerate just how much backtracking is required - i mean, seriously, there are tag barrels around every corner - the collectables still aren't excusable and underneath all of those collectables is a way better game.

the level-designs/themes are by far the strongest part of this game for me, and the characters and whatnot are all really fun too, lanky being my favorite. if i were to rank the levels from most favorite to least favorite, i'd do:

-frantic factory (such a fun concept)
-crystal caves
-jungle japes
-creepy castle
-fungi forest
-angry aztec (i just hate desert themes, dude)
-gloomy galleon (only thing worse than deserts is water...)

i guess DK isles and hideout helm count as their own levels, but i just wanted to count the main levels with collectables. DK isles and hideout helm are good in their own right though, i guess (although DK isles is probably my least favorite hub world in any N64 game).

overall, a pretty good with some big flaws, but still nowhere near as large as people like to make them out to be. play DK64 if you enjoy 3D-platformers. also the music's phenomenal, grant killed it once again. :)

I played this with mods to enable quick Kong swapping (and randomized, DK64-ized music from other games). The music was a fun twist, but the Kong swap shortcut changes this game immensely. It doesn't fix all of the issues, far from it, but it makes the game a LOT more pleasant to traverse.

I had a fun time blasting through this game this way, and it was nice to revisit it without it being nearly the slog it would be otherwise. I highly recommend that mod for anyone else who wants to play this game.

This game will make you eerily feel like a banana.

The one and only time mainline DK has been 3D.. Despite how slow, unfair, and horribly tedious it is I can't get myself to rate it any lower. It's so charming and both ironically and unironically funny in every way that made the experience feel far more bearable then it might realistically be. Everything from the music to the environments and the animations are so filled with life it's kind of shocking how its even able to work on the N64. This game deserves a full remake or a sequel for sure.

I do not know how to feel about this game. At all. I fully completed it and I still have no idea how to feel about it. It's an absolutely bloated mess that frequently has collectibles scattered about in seemingly random fashion. The list of things to pick up is absolutely never-ending, by the time any of its contemporaries would have finished you'll probably only be 1/3 of the way done with this game. There are challenges scattered about that will make you absolutely tear your hair out (Rabbit race, anyone? Also anything that makes you use Diddy's jetpack under a time limit. That thing controls like trying to swim through mayonnaise) and sometimes the game just makes you walk back and forth switching Kongs to get through one gate. You'll run into hallways that lead you down them with Tiny only to make you swap to DK to hit a switch.

However, despite all that, I find myself.... absolutely loving my time with the game? I love the sheer amount of things to pick up. The game is positively bursting at the seams with personality, watching the animations of any Kong is an absolute joy. The music and visuals are also some of the best on the system, this game truly pushes the N64 as far as it can and it remains one of my favorite looking games on the system. The abilities each Kong has are super fun, stuff like Lanky running on his hands or Chunky growing absolutely massive are so cool and I find them really enjoyable. The boss fights are also awesome, even if a couple bosses are reused it's fun to fight them with different Kongs/abilities. The scale of the game is honestly great, it feels like a truly massive adventure and having K. Rool's ship constantly looming in the hub world really gives things a sense of urgency. Overall I feel like the game's strengths outweigh its weaknesses but it's still an absolute mess at points and definitely hasn't aged as well as Rare's other offerings from the time period. I'd still recommend it if you like Collectathons but just be fully prepared to deal with the game's quirks.

Also, this isn't really related to my final score, but you can absolutely destroy this game with glitches if you want. You won't encounter said glitches unintentionally which is nice, but you can entirely ruin the intended order of things if you really want to which I think is neat.

overall game sucks dick. i love it with my whole heart

I want to start by defending Donkey Kong 64 against one accusation that is completly ridicoulous imo.

It is not responsible for the death of the 3D platform genre. 3D platformers were in a very good place during the PS2 era. If you're talking about the specific Collectathon subgenre, then again, this isn't DK64's fault. Collecthathons were designed how they were because the early 3D platforms couldnt allow for huge worlds, so creating small worlds dense with collectibles was the solution to that problem, once that problem went away, there was no need to continue that trend, as this was never really the ideal scenario. Beyond that, for DK64 to have actually influenced the industry in such a negative way, it would have had to have been poorly received, and unlike what it might seem today, DK64 was one of Nintendo's biggest hit of that generation, comercially and critically.

All that being said, Donkey Kong 64 is a good game that had very noble aspirations, that being becoming the biggest, most content rich 3D platformer on the 64. As such, it did what was thought best, and it filled its world with an absurd amount of collectibles. This was the best they could have done at the time, but this means DK64 has very poorly aged.

The 5 different characters are a great idea in theory, they allow you to see the world with a different moveset and therefore, find new and interesting stuff to do. Some say that the problem is backtracking, but I disagree that a game of this style with multiple characters is wrong to have backtracking. No the actual problem is that the characters are almost the same. Their movesets dont feel different enough beyond one traversal option and barred codes. This coupled with the fact that most of the time, backtracking isnt done in a way to interact with more of the world, but rather just to pick up what you couldnt otherwise with the appropriate Kong. You're not exploring, you're doing busywork.

I want to make clear, I think there's something unfair about how reviewers always seem to 100% this game specifically when they wouldnt do so otherwise. Every game, including the best ones, are a chore to 100%. But thats the thing. My playthrough was a minimalist one, I got 102 Golden Bananas, only got as much colored bananas as I needded. I got 4 battle arenas. And yet I am still exhausted and I dont want to go back to this game.

So what is good about the game? Well......the game itself? Like under all of that, you still got a pretty damn good exploration-platformer. But.....it's not as good as Banjo Kazooie. Like, even beyond the absolutely shitty way it handles its content. Banjo Kazooie is a more tightly designed game, with more memorable levels, better humour, better soundtrack etc. So it will unfortunately live in its shadow.

So.....good game, yeah.....but it has a lot going against it, despite me understanding why the game is how it is and respecting the dev's aspiration, I can't pretend its super compelling to play today.

this is it

the best collectathon platformer

doesn't get any better than this

I struggle to give this game a concrete star rating. I could easily complain about a lot of this game's pacing and design...But dang it, Rare knew how to present Donkey Kong. I could easily understand why some would find it archaic and boring, with the constant Kong switching back and forth. Levels are huge and you'll be walking across the same ground over and over again with really slow movespeed. Not a whole lot of platforming. Bosses are good but two of them get reused. Challenge ranges from nonexistent to absolutely obnoxious.

Realistically, it's very flawed, way moreso than the 2 Banjos on 64. But, I like the sound it makes when you pick up banana. There are a lot of bananas. Ergo, I like this game. Every single little corner of this game is packed with charm and personality and every sound along with the masterful score by Grant Kirkhope drives me forward. Can't even pause the game and press "save" without something unique to this game happening. Gonna tell me the game that opens with the DK rap ISN'T inherently lovable at all times?

Despite the legitimate design issues, it's got a lot of fun bonus barrel minigames or challenges using character abilities that are a nice change of pace. These are where the gameplay is actually engaging. It has a bad rep for having so many collectables but I never really understood this complaint. Like, ammo to use your items, coins to buy stuff, hidden fairies to increase inventory limits, and everything else feeding into a golden banana count of 200 (only 100 of which are needed to beat the game). Nothing really too excessive or annoying to deal with there imo. The atmosphere is genuinely weirdly good in this game in a way that holds up to this day. Some areas are still a bit uncomfortable and scary, love it. Of course aided again by Grant Kirkhope's genious. Despite a few reused bosses I really like all the fights.

Call it a guilty pleasure or nostalgia or anything you want, but I think this game is a testimate to how much a good soundtrack, sound effects, and aesthetic design, can really carry an experience. If you can stomach some pacing issues between challenge rooms, there's a lot to love here.

DKC Returns review up next!