donkey kong country returns - He's Finally Back

[Donut]

I agree with the general sentiment that this game's bosses are one of its weakest aspects, but I am happy to say that Tropical Freeze makes up for this and then some. That game had some truly memorable ones.

Also looking forward to world 4, which may be the biggest emblem of this game's identity to me, in all the best and worst ways.

[strongbadman]

I've n3ver been wild about the dkc bosses. Across the original trilogy, the only ones I'd say are really good are the final bosses in 2. Mostly they just take too many hits across the board.

[KobaBeach]

wasn't there a background in this game that had like a billy mitchell monument, where you could see a stars n stripes pattern tie in some mountain or something. i think that'd be really funny to look back on considering he's trying to ruin people's lives through suing rn, what a prima donna

anyway please do not put your ape in tight crevasses. monky is very fragile.. lots of crankies in this stage too

i also pondered about whether i should watch the entirety of the ape game 64 lp but that's just a bridge too far,

EDIT: standing up when you press run in a platformer that also has "duck to avoid a crusher ceiling" setups is also another example of late 00s-early 10s triple a devs not having a fucking clue wrt "retro" genre design. the amount of platformers that do "pressing run makes you stand for some unknown reason" on snes/tg16/md either can be counted on one hand or don't exist

[Bean]

His DK64 LP was pretty good aside from fighting the camera which is the norm. As a reminder, Squawks has two tells. The first is the "Start looking around..." deal and the other is "You're right on top of the thing!" scream.

[KobaBeach]

His DK64 LP was pretty good aside from fighting the camera which is the norm. As a reminder, Squawks has two tells. The first is the "Start looking around..." deal and the other is "You're right on top of the thing!" scream.

yeah im just extremely not ready to watch a long lp nothing against ronco or dong kong

fully against whomever at rare thought candy and teenaged!tiny were good designs i will gun them down in the streets of prague

[Grounder]

Really missing the unique bonus rooms from 2 & 3 at this point, personally.

[J. J. W. Mezun]

The real DKCR is ’bout to begin.

Also, I couldn’t help noticing the gross sound o’ DK’s spine snapping when you get squished.

I've n3ver been wild about the dkc bosses. Across the original trilogy, the only ones I'd say are really good are the final bosses in 2. Mostly they just take too many hits across the board.

I have such disdain for DKC bosses that I use the term “Rareware Boss” when describing these kind o’ endemic stop-&-go bosses where 1 phase you’re just passively dodging projectiles, the next phase you get 1 hit on the boss. As much as I love DKC2’s level design, I oft stop playing right before the final boss, ’cause just standing round in a small room dodging cannon balls only to get 1 hit on K. Rool every minute or so is Zzzzzzzz. Unfortunately, this is 1 thing the Returns games do right, but they make them e’en mo’ drawn-out. I dunno: I know bosses like Gnawty are lame, but a’least I can get them out o’ the way as soon as possible.

I think the 2D platformer with the best bosses was Cool Spot — which raocow should consider playing in the Not Sonics, as ’twas surprisingly good for a cash-in based on a soda mascot that nobody remembers.

fully against whomever at rare thought candy and teenaged!tiny were good designs i will gun them down in the streets of prague

Tiny is just an inferior bootleg o’ Dixie Kong.

[Bean]

Now that you've played more than one level in this world, I love the fact that they went with vehicles for the majority of your time in the Caves here. And they do enough variety between them as you've seen with the two different types of mine cart rides so far and what's going on in the levels themselves. It's an interesting idea that mostly works.

[KobaBeach]

cannae believe raocow got shiny gold

i wish they didn't make a world based entirely out of autoscrollers but at least bombs away's final set piece was neat

[strongbadman]

I just don't hate autoscrollers as much as a lot of people seem to. I enjoyed them i returns but the extra hit points are still greatly appreciated in tropical freeze.

[KobaBeach]

I just don't hate autoscrollers as much as a lot of people seem to. I enjoyed them i returns but the extra hit points are still greatly appreciated in tropical freeze.

autoscrollers aren't always bad as long as you're doing a lot of action, which is why most mario ones tend to be like, Athletic style levels. i just don't think solely cart and flappy bird levels can sustain a donkey kong world for me, but y'know people seem to enjoy it so woop

like yeah cave worlds tend to be super boring but this feels like the same weird misguided mindset that got us "no water levels ever". feels like instead of working on the bread n butter of mario style platformers they just went "let's make all the fun stuff people liked from the old games" which is not a bad idea on paper, but it feels like a lot of dessert and not enough main course for me, to borrow a three course meal analogy from hbomb's fallout 3 video

western devs are fucking weird and insecure y'all

[Paragraph]

DKC2 had absolutely excellent cart levels because they were just lenient enough that you could occasionally make a mistake, both because of jump timing/hitbox size and from having a basic "second hit". DKC1 and 3 both were just a little too tight with their timing imo and made the whole thing unfun to play, for me at least, because you have to glue your eyes to the right of the screen and concentrate super hard.

DKCR's have aspects of both good and bad, mostly because of the screen size - you see things coming from farther away, so it's not as heavy on the reflexes, but because everything on screen is smaller, you have to be more exact e.g. when jumping on enemies (or the carts themselves). Ultimately, you still have to concentrate hard in an imo unfun way because of the one-hit-death. That's the one thing they really had to fix imo and TF shows that it's a fair assessment.

[Bean]

Crowded Cavern's definitely a life sink the first time you go through it just because of the giant bat's laser shots. It's kind of ridiculous, but you're almost back to the normal platforming stuff again. World 4 is just here are a ton of vehicle levels all in a row. Have fun... or not. You seemed to either enjoy it well enough or deal with it though, so things are looking up! The K-level's pretty fun, and the boss can be.

[KobaBeach]

DKC1 and 3 both were just a little too tight with their timing imo and made the whole thing unfun to play, for me at least, because you have to glue your eyes to the right of the screen and concentrate super hard.

the first minecart level in dkc1 is shit. i said it

[J. J. W. Mezun]

autoscrollers aren't always bad as long as you're doing a lot of action, which is why most mario ones tend to be like, Athletic style levels. i just don't think solely cart and flappy bird levels can sustain a donkey kong world for me, but y'know people seem to enjoy it so woop

See, I feel the opposite: I actually don’t mind mine cart levels, as they a’least usually feel like you have to constantly move & do things, whereas I always found Mario autoscrollers to be the most boring things in the world. To add to the unpopular hot takes: I always thought the airship levels in Mario 3 were the most boring levels in the world, specially since they do the same thing o’er & o’er. & don’t get me started on “Donut Plains 2”, which you have to wait thru 1.5 times for the secret exit.

I also preferred the mine cart levels in DKC1, as they felt mo’ fair. In this game, the game outright changes the track as you’re moving on it, which in some cases can screw you o’er without any way to stop it, as, for example, in “Bombs Away” a hole can be blown after you’ve already jumped & are now going to land right into it. Sometimes this hole is placed right where you would land after jumping right before an earlier hole, where you’d logically think to jump. DKC1, on the other hand, is perfectly fair & intuitive ­— no tricks or sleight o’ hands: you just have to time the jump button before the obstacle.

That said, I agree that having so many mine cart levels is a flaw. It goes back to my point that DKCR seems to only focus on the popular, surface-level aspects o’ DKC. “Everyone remembers that DKC mine cart level, so lets put 5 o’ them in our game”, e’en tho DKC1 only had 2. There’s a reason most gimmicks in the classic games are 1 level only — do them too many times & they lose the freshness that made them interesting in the 1st place. Same goes for the rocket barrel levels, which I do like, but ’gain, 2 times in a row is silly.

Also, the 1-hit kill aspect seriously hurts this game’s difficulty balance as it causes world 4 to be a major difficulty spike compared to e’en later worlds.

[Donut]

The way I see it, Donkey Kong Country Returns was marketed towards people who grew up on Donkey Kong Country 1, and by that I mean those that obsessively played the first 2.5 worlds, got stuck on Minecart Madness, and have vague memories of watching their older sibling beat the rest of the game once. For better or for worse, it is the most Donkey Kong Country game in the franchise - more than the actual DKC1 ever was, if that makes sense. I can't say it was necessarily the best choice, but it is kind of amazing a game like it exists.

[MonkeyShrapnel]

Unfortunately Tropical Freeze kinda does the same thing that they did here,
just that they changed it from a vehicle world to a

water

world.

[Scarfley]

The stages raocow played today were among my favourites in the whole game, so it's great to see that raocow seemed to enjoy playing both of them (especially the temple).

The boss of world 4 is super satisfying to speedrun (It's one of the only instances in the game where I think doing time attack is actually pretty fun and it made me appreciate the stage in question more since most players probably only find out about how to skip entire phases of the battle through attempting time trial, making the stage really dynamic instead of it being a simple autoscroller.)

The world 4 temple is just really well designed and has the right balance between being challenging and fun. It has a super neat gimmick as well and I really like the way how the enemies pressing the buttons indicates when one of those smashers moves. Easily one of the best stages in the game! I'm glad raocow liked it as well!

[Heavy Sigh]

When raocow decides it is time for an ape death, nothing will stop him from accomplishing it.

Also that vine level was really cool.

[Bean]

Yeah, I keep laughing at the jumping into pits routine, too. The one today with falling off of three consecutive platforms was probably the best one in the series so far. It's normally not that kind of game where there's something way down below, but every now and then, they'll pull that old trick out.

[KobaBeach]

"oh, Squawks™ the Parrot, you don't know??

there's a new trend going around online called... Kinning

my body is reforming to suit your own

soon i will be 100% Squawks™ and there's nothing you can do to stop me

let me get a good smell of you, little boy..." - raocow after accosting SquawksTParrot at his local anime convention

[Bean]

These levels have been pretty vine. Is kind of funny to see this and Legends back-to-back in the day since they both keep pulling the same kind of hidden tricks throughout.

[ano0maly]

I really like the aesthetic and graphical effects in the third dimension and how the level shifts to background/foreground (like 5-5 Longshot Launch yesterday where you blast through hollowed out logs), although I get the thought that it would have been additionally interesting to have actual game mechanics that can interact with another such layer, even if you move in a plane.

And I'm surprised that the teeth at the end sequence of that level kill you in one shot, since you normally recover from getting crushed. I guess the rules of recovery would be complicated there when you're flying across without landing or contact.

[MonkeyShrapnel]

Those Munchers aren't technically spiders since they don't have eight legs.

(Muncher Warning )

Still creepy looking though.

[Bean]

Take that, Uncharted 3! DKCR beat you to the punch by having spiders chasing after you by a whole year.