Donkey Kong Country review by Tyson

Overall

Buy

Donkey Kong Country is an awesome example of an SNES game. The level design is good, its fun to play, and it looks and sounds awesome.

Gameplay

     Donkey Kong Country starts out with Donkey Kong’s banana stash being stolen and its up to him and Diddy Kong to defeat the Kremlings and get back his bananas. The core game is very similar to games like Super Mario World. You mainly move from the left to the right and do dangerous jumps, smashing enemies, collecting items, riding platforms or mine carts, and find a huge amount of secrets. I came away really liking Donkey Kong Country and I Found the level designs to be fun and have a lot of variety to them. The only issue I found in the level design was that sometimes the camera didn’t keep up as fast as it should in certain situations.

     Though my favorite aspect of the game has to be its secret rooms. Just about every stage in the game has various secret rooms that you can access. These rooms will have you doing some sort of event or playing some sot of minigame. You generally will collect bananas, animal tokens, or extra lives in these rooms. I had a lot of fun with the secrets and it’s a main reason why I like the game so much. Also collecting 3 animal tokens will let you play a animal level where you can collect tons of extra guys. It’s a lot of fun.

     I found the game to have a very unique aspect with how Donkey Kong and Diddy are played into the game. In single player you will control both of them although only one will be the active one. Though you can switch between what Kong is active by using a tag move. Both Kongs have their own uniqueness as well. Donkey Kong is good at smashing the bigger bad guys while Diddy has the small size and speed. If you get hit by an enemy or object the current Kong will run off and get hit again and you will lose a life. In multiplayer each player will control Donkey Kong or Diddy and one player will have control at a time. You can switch who is in control by doing a tag move. The damage and life situation works just like it does in single player.

Control

I found the control be flawless in Donkey Kong Country. You have a good setup where the Directional Pad moves and the other buttons are using to jump, run, and tag in the other Kong.

Graphics

Wow just wow. This game has to be one of the best looking SNES games that I have ever seen. The computer generated graphics just look awesome. Everything animates smoothly and just plainly looks good. My only complaint is there can be some slowdown and a few stages are too dark.

Sound

I came away impressed with the sound about as much as I did with the graphics. I loved the theme music and everything has a nice sound effect to it.