Donkey Kong 64 is well known as a veritable disaster, and as such this might be the most redundant review I will ever write. That said, journaling is cathartic, and this is the only way I can think of to exorcise the demons currently plaguing me. In the case of DK64, that's a lot of doin', so let's "jump" right in.
The first problem to rear its head occurs right in the tutorial and first minutes in the game: the imprecision of the controls and platforming. Rare was smart to give each kong a mid-air attack that grants some hovering, as course correction for every meaningful jump is necessary. Two things exacerbate this issue: the camera and the game's hitboxes. The former ensures that whatever the player's target is will never actually be visible to them when they need it most, and the latter makes touching barrels and collectibles are frustrating affair.
For a platformer, Donkey Kong 64 just feels very unsatisfying to grapple with. Movement isn't smooth. Jumps are fraught with peril for all the wrong reasons. Combat is extremely basic and plagued with the issue that it's impossible to call out the attack you want on demand. (Want to do a running attack? Enjoy randomly stopping dead in your tracks a quarter of the time.)
Perhaps the problem with the basic control of the game is why Rare decided to largely center it around a variety of "fun" minigames. Each of these takes the player out of the level and shoves them into a dystopian barrel world. It's actually quite an impressive degree of immersion-shattering that I've yet to see replicated. These minigames range from trivial, to frustrating, to bugged. Not a single one of them is a worthwhile experience, and the fact that they make up so much of the game's runtime is embarrassing.
The existence of the minigames has the knock-on effect of trivializing level design. Instead of building unique objectives into the landscape of the level, as other platformers do, Donkey Kong 64 is content to build countless little houses each with five little doors that each house a fun little minigame. This schema is returned to again and again, all the way up to the absolute nadir of the game's level design, Crystal Cave, that features two of them in close proximity to one another. Add in the fact that one of the kongs' objectives each stage is to kill a basic enemy and you wind up with quite the uninspired objective list.
The true objective of the game, though, is the mental calculus of routing an efficient path through the levels to minimize one's time with the game. The true joy of Donkey Kong 64 is that this efficient path does not exist. All levels essentially have to be traversed five times, as the developers were keen to put kong-specific collectibles in dead-end rooms that serve no purpose other than reward a different kong for finishing a minigame or some other bullshit. The mental burden is on the player, then, to make the best of a bad situation.
Put another way, Donkey Kong 64 is the ultimate Traveling Salesman Problem Simulator, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that at least a little bit.
It's very clear that Donkey Kong 64's grasp falls short of its reach. They wanted eight unique levels, but couldn't find compelling designs for all of them. They wanted 200 bananas to mog Mario 64 but couldn't think of unique objectives. They wanted to include unlockable powerups but most of them fall in the bucket of "You can now ground pound a different colored switch." They wanted boss fights but half of them are recycled. They wanted five kongs but they play identically.
It's tough to categorize Donkey Kong 64 as anything but a total failure with so many unrealized goals. I don't think that's a particularly saucy opinion, but then again who needed a review of Donkey Kong 64 in the year 2023?
The first problem to rear its head occurs right in the tutorial and first minutes in the game: the imprecision of the controls and platforming. Rare was smart to give each kong a mid-air attack that grants some hovering, as course correction for every meaningful jump is necessary. Two things exacerbate this issue: the camera and the game's hitboxes. The former ensures that whatever the player's target is will never actually be visible to them when they need it most, and the latter makes touching barrels and collectibles are frustrating affair.
For a platformer, Donkey Kong 64 just feels very unsatisfying to grapple with. Movement isn't smooth. Jumps are fraught with peril for all the wrong reasons. Combat is extremely basic and plagued with the issue that it's impossible to call out the attack you want on demand. (Want to do a running attack? Enjoy randomly stopping dead in your tracks a quarter of the time.)
Perhaps the problem with the basic control of the game is why Rare decided to largely center it around a variety of "fun" minigames. Each of these takes the player out of the level and shoves them into a dystopian barrel world. It's actually quite an impressive degree of immersion-shattering that I've yet to see replicated. These minigames range from trivial, to frustrating, to bugged. Not a single one of them is a worthwhile experience, and the fact that they make up so much of the game's runtime is embarrassing.
The existence of the minigames has the knock-on effect of trivializing level design. Instead of building unique objectives into the landscape of the level, as other platformers do, Donkey Kong 64 is content to build countless little houses each with five little doors that each house a fun little minigame. This schema is returned to again and again, all the way up to the absolute nadir of the game's level design, Crystal Cave, that features two of them in close proximity to one another. Add in the fact that one of the kongs' objectives each stage is to kill a basic enemy and you wind up with quite the uninspired objective list.
The true objective of the game, though, is the mental calculus of routing an efficient path through the levels to minimize one's time with the game. The true joy of Donkey Kong 64 is that this efficient path does not exist. All levels essentially have to be traversed five times, as the developers were keen to put kong-specific collectibles in dead-end rooms that serve no purpose other than reward a different kong for finishing a minigame or some other bullshit. The mental burden is on the player, then, to make the best of a bad situation.
Put another way, Donkey Kong 64 is the ultimate Traveling Salesman Problem Simulator, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that at least a little bit.
It's very clear that Donkey Kong 64's grasp falls short of its reach. They wanted eight unique levels, but couldn't find compelling designs for all of them. They wanted 200 bananas to mog Mario 64 but couldn't think of unique objectives. They wanted to include unlockable powerups but most of them fall in the bucket of "You can now ground pound a different colored switch." They wanted boss fights but half of them are recycled. They wanted five kongs but they play identically.
It's tough to categorize Donkey Kong 64 as anything but a total failure with so many unrealized goals. I don't think that's a particularly saucy opinion, but then again who needed a review of Donkey Kong 64 in the year 2023?