Once again, the strongest emotion evoked by playing games from my childhood is not nostalgia, but a sense of amazement at how I ever beat them without reading ANYTHING EVER. ALL of the dialogue is always so unfamiliar, I can distinctly remember even skipping over it all the time, too. Props to babby me for having the patience to just brute force his way through games X3
This is the first time I've played this game in quiiite a few years, and this time I was, at the outset, going for 100%. I quickly realized I didn't have the patience to do that, though, and just went for "as much as I can stand" x3. I ended up around 16.5 hours and 185 golden bananas, and all but one fairy, crown, and medal (and an assortment of a little over 100 bananas). I have no idea how the average time on HLTB is over 30 hours. That's a bit insane to be given that you only need 100 bananas to beat the game. Maybe it's people just having a hard time finding things like the Rare or N64 coins?
This is definitely the 2nd worst of the Rare platformers (with Conker of course taking the bottom spot, Banjo 2-E at first and Banjo 1-E at 2nd). The design philosophy around switching kongs REALLY extenuates the "theme park" approach to level design, and makes the levels feel much less alive and more planned out than something like Banjo, especially 2-E. This game definitely has some mechanical problems as well.
Compared to something like Banjo or Mario 64, the kongs do control a little slippery (a complaint I have heard about the game before, but only now have really come to realize). It's not game breaking by any extent, but it can be aggravating and off-putting at first with how much momentum the kongs seem to carry. It definitely takes a little getting used to. A LOT of the bonus games too are fuckin' shit and I hate 'em. Some, some are just annoying, like the ones that rely on reaction time to shoot the banana when the lights go on and off, but the beaver-herding one especially just does not fucking work. The beavers always run into the side of the hole, as if it weren't a hole but a wall, and given that there are not one but TWO instance of the hardest version of that game, I just said fuck it after a half an hour of trying.
The framerate is really inconsistent as well. They were clearly really pushing the hardware in terms of how many objects could be on screen at once, because some areas in particular (World 7 boss, llama temple, a couple others) just had the framerate dipping aaaall the time. Again, it wasn't anything game breaking, but it was still very noticeable.
The game still has such good style though. It's not quite as funny as Banjo 2-E or as memorable as Conker's, but it's still good. The music fantastic of course, and the kongs really all feel like they have their own personalities, even though they never talk. Their idle animations especially would always make me chuckle X3
Verdict: Recommended. If you like collectathon 3D platformers, you'll probably enjoy DK64. It's not the best on the system by any means, but it's still a good game. Kong switching isn't the most fluid or well implemented thing in the world, but DK64 certainly flows and feels better than a really tedious cluster-fuck like Earthworm Jim 3D.
This is the first time I've played this game in quiiite a few years, and this time I was, at the outset, going for 100%. I quickly realized I didn't have the patience to do that, though, and just went for "as much as I can stand" x3. I ended up around 16.5 hours and 185 golden bananas, and all but one fairy, crown, and medal (and an assortment of a little over 100 bananas). I have no idea how the average time on HLTB is over 30 hours. That's a bit insane to be given that you only need 100 bananas to beat the game. Maybe it's people just having a hard time finding things like the Rare or N64 coins?
This is definitely the 2nd worst of the Rare platformers (with Conker of course taking the bottom spot, Banjo 2-E at first and Banjo 1-E at 2nd). The design philosophy around switching kongs REALLY extenuates the "theme park" approach to level design, and makes the levels feel much less alive and more planned out than something like Banjo, especially 2-E. This game definitely has some mechanical problems as well.
Compared to something like Banjo or Mario 64, the kongs do control a little slippery (a complaint I have heard about the game before, but only now have really come to realize). It's not game breaking by any extent, but it can be aggravating and off-putting at first with how much momentum the kongs seem to carry. It definitely takes a little getting used to. A LOT of the bonus games too are fuckin' shit and I hate 'em. Some, some are just annoying, like the ones that rely on reaction time to shoot the banana when the lights go on and off, but the beaver-herding one especially just does not fucking work. The beavers always run into the side of the hole, as if it weren't a hole but a wall, and given that there are not one but TWO instance of the hardest version of that game, I just said fuck it after a half an hour of trying.
The framerate is really inconsistent as well. They were clearly really pushing the hardware in terms of how many objects could be on screen at once, because some areas in particular (World 7 boss, llama temple, a couple others) just had the framerate dipping aaaall the time. Again, it wasn't anything game breaking, but it was still very noticeable.
The game still has such good style though. It's not quite as funny as Banjo 2-E or as memorable as Conker's, but it's still good. The music fantastic of course, and the kongs really all feel like they have their own personalities, even though they never talk. Their idle animations especially would always make me chuckle X3
Verdict: Recommended. If you like collectathon 3D platformers, you'll probably enjoy DK64. It's not the best on the system by any means, but it's still a good game. Kong switching isn't the most fluid or well implemented thing in the world, but DK64 certainly flows and feels better than a really tedious cluster-fuck like Earthworm Jim 3D.