Donkey Kong Country Returns Tropical Freeze

[Cronozilla]

Outside of the nostalgia for the first Donkey Kong Country, I will say, unequivicably, Tropical Freeze is the best Donkey Kong platformer Nintendo has released to date. The losses from a new team taking on the Donkey Kong mantle are far fewer in importance than the gains.

The Super Nintendo games have a lot of problems. Glaring, modernly unacceptable problems. Sloppy control, slippery characters, absolutely obtuse secrets, and bosses that are not only unfair, but are also really lazy. And most of all, the DKC games rely on cheap structural design to act as their main form of challenge (save point locations, doesn't save lives, etc).

Tropical Freeze, at the least, fixes a lot of that. The character controls are extremely tight, there is no slippin' and sliding to be had or delayed response due to animation cycles, the bosses are exceedingly unique (like you'd expect for a modern platformer) and all have unique patterns and style. The cheap design is gone, when you make progress, it's recorded. People are complaining about replying some section of a long level, but forget that in DKC2 if you're three levels in from a save point and you lose all your lives, you have to replay multiple levels.

The difficulty in Tropical Freeze, and it is difficult, easily harder than any other Donkey Kong game, is from requiring your skills to be up to the task and not cheap and lazy design that punish you for where you died.

So what are the problems with the game? They lost the charm the levels had in the SNES series. The Rare games are defined by having weird labyrinths of doom and a lot of up vertical platforming. And this is more noticeably absent in Returns. However, in Tropical Freeze, they've really spruced things up, to the point that it's a fundamentally different experience. The water levels are not exclusive, you go in and out of water regularly. The enemies change far more often than in any of the SNES games (those games have like 13 enemies total, per game) and they're all defined by an attack pattern, rather than "it takes this many hits to kill them so it's red" stuff. The game's length expansion comes from finding collectibles, rather than honest to goodness secrets, this could be a positive or a negative depending on how deeply tinted those nostalgia goggles are.

Also, I adore that you grab stuff out of the ground.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Outside of the nostalgia for the first Donkey Kong Country, I will say, unequivicably, Tropical Freeze is the best Donkey Kong platformer Nintendo has released to date. The losses from a new team taking on the Donkey Kong mantle are far fewer in importance than the gains.

The Super Nintendo games have a lot of problems. Glaring, modernly unacceptable problems. Sloppy control, slippery characters, absolutely obtuse secrets, and bosses that are not only unfair, but are also really lazy. And most of all, the DKC games rely on cheap structural design to act as their main form of challenge (save point locations, doesn't save lives, etc).

Tropical Freeze, at the least, fixes a lot of that. The character controls are extremely tight, there is no slippin' and sliding to be had or delayed response due to animation cycles, the bosses are exceedingly unique (like you'd expect for a modern platformer) and all have unique patterns and style. The cheap design is gone, when you make progress, it's recorded. People are complaining about replying some section of a long level, but forget that in DKC2 if you're three levels in from a save point and you lose all your lives, you have to replay multiple levels.

The difficulty in Tropical Freeze, and it is difficult, easily harder than any other Donkey Kong game, is from requiring your skills to be up to the task and not cheap and lazy design that punish you for where you died.

So what are the problems with the game? They lost the charm the levels had in the SNES series. The Rare games are defined by having weird labyrinths of doom and a lot of up vertical platforming. And this is more noticeably absent in Returns. However, in Tropical Freeze, they've really spruced things up, to the point that it's a fundamentally different experience. The water levels are not exclusive, you go in and out of water regularly. The enemies change far more often than in any of the SNES games (those games have like 13 enemies total, per game) and they're all defined by an attack pattern, rather than "it takes this many hits to kill them so it's red" stuff. The game's length expansion comes from finding collectibles, rather than honest to goodness secrets, this could be a positive or a negative depending on how deeply tinted those nostalgia goggles are.

Also, I adore that you grab stuff out of the ground.

You summed this up perfectly. Last year I beat the original Donkey Kong Country for the first time and came across those same issues as an unbiased perspective. I had zero nostalgia goggles on and even though I enjoyed the experience, I did feel that the boss fights seemed redundant and dull and the controls/hit detection to be a bit slippery and odd. Game was still challenging and fun!

[ZeroAX]

Tanooki, you never played tropical freeze if you think they used the gamepad touch screen for things. The screen is blank unless you select off tv play. There are zero touch screen features.

Reread his post, he's talking about Mario (I'm guessing New Super Mario Bross Wii U), which if I remember correctly does have touch pad functions.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Tanooki, you never played tropical freeze if you think they used the gamepad touch screen for things. The screen is blank unless you select off tv play. There are zero touch screen features.

Reread his post, he's talking about Mario (I'm guessing New Super Mario Bross Wii U), which if I remember correctly does have touch pad functions.

If that is the case, he is wrong again. The touch screen in that is for boost mode, a completely unnecessary feature that can be used to help people in multi-player.

[Cronozilla]

The only Nintendo published Wii U games I know of that require the GamePad are Nintendo Land and Super Mario Maker. A game that was launched with the system and packed in to be used with the GamePad and a game that would be painfully terrible without a touch screen.

Splatoon is heavily focused towards the GamePad, but isn't absolutely required.

New Super Mario Bros. U and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze are 100% Pro controller playable. You can play those games with a Wii remote if you want, NES style. One thing people can't bitch about is Nintendo control options, most games have 5+ styles to choose from. They're being extremely accommodating.

[Tanooki]

Tanooki, you never played tropical freeze if you think they used the gamepad touch screen for things. The screen is blank unless you select off tv play. There are zero touch screen features.

Reread his post, he's talking about Mario (I'm guessing New Super Mario Bross Wii U), which if I remember correctly does have touch pad functions.

Yes I was, some individuals here like to get personal with me over any post I make and whip out the jump to conclusions mat before reading. The only thing I really hated about the Mario games I had on WiiU was the forced use of the touch pad where you had to use the finger or stylus to pull out blocks to jump on while playing and they were timed too. You'd have to set the controller down, fiddle with it in your lap, then pick it up and run up to the top before they'd retract. Thankfully few stages used it, and otherwise a really fantastic experience.

As far as DK goes old style or modern, it's about taste, not design deficiencies. They're entirely different titles using the same generalize mascot and rudimentary stage concepts. The old focused minimally so on collection other than really just 1ups with letters or bananas, the modern makes it part of the game so much to add length. If you're someone who can't stand collection games, it's a turn off, and if you love that stuff, you'll eat it up. If you prefer shorter stages in a platformer the old titles will work for you while the new games will just feel dragged out on a per stage basis. Other than a few basic shared moves even comparing them control wise isn't good, they're different, and again will come down to the style you prefer.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Whatever.

I love how you say that the original has shorter stages...but you need to save at checkpoints so you have to play series of stages to get to that point. Tropical Freeze can be saved at any point on the map. Tropical Freeze isn't a collect-a-thon. There is nothing you need to collect to continue through the stage. This isn't Banjo Kazooie we are talking about here.

I for one would love to watch a video of you playing New Super Mario World and watching you fumble with the most basic of design choices like moving a finger from a thumbstick to a touch screen. Move your finger a fraction of an inch? Can't do that!

[Reprise]

Completely off topic, but I actually thought New Super Mario Bros U was the best NSMB game. I don't remember any awkward touch screen bits, but I haven't played it in a couple or years.

[Cronozilla]

Completely off topic, but I actually thought New Super Mario Bros U was the best NSMB game. I don't remember any awkward touch screen bits, but I haven't played it in a couple or years.

I agree 100%.

Easily the best side scrolling Mario since World on SNES (Not counting Yoshi's Island, of course)

[Xeogred]

Completely off topic, but I actually thought New Super Mario Bros U was the best NSMB game. I don't remember any awkward touch screen bits, but I haven't played it in a couple or years.

I agree 100%.

Easily the best side scrolling Mario since World on SNES (Not counting Yoshi's Island, of course)

+2

I played the DS one and the Wii one... they were okay, I didn't care to finish them though.

Had a blast with the U game though and the Luigi expansion. They were excellent. But the DKCR games destroy it.