DONKEY KONG 64 REVIEW

Donkey Kong had been absent for too long prior to the release of Donkey Kong 64. But hes' back: he’s in 3-D and has never looked better. K. Rool, an evil lizard king, has captured Donkey Kong’s four monkey friends, Diddy Kong, Tiny Kong, Lanky Kong, and Chunky Kong, and  has stolen all of the Kongs’ treasured golden bananas (gasp!). Your quest is to free the Kongs, reclaim all 200 golden bananas, beat a bunch of level bosses, and finally defeat K. Rool. Along the way, you’ll have to obtain special powers, find secret blueprints, smash houses with a rhino, shoot guns, play the guitar and even a freaking triangle.

Donkey Kong 64 is a platformer, and instead of playing from Donkey Kong’s point-of-view, you’ll follow along from a floating camera tracking the gorilla’s every move. The control takes a little getting used to if you are not familiar with these types of games, because the camera’s orientation swings rapidly while you are moving your monkey around. If you are used to platformers, you’ll have no problem at all.

You start the game as Donkey Kong. After completing some simple training screens, you venture to eight different worlds to rescue the four other Kongs and collect all the golden bananas. Once you free one of the Kongs, you can play as him or her. You’ll have to do that, as each level has 5 golden bananas to be collected by each Kong. Donkey, Diddy, Lanky, Tiny, and Chunky each have different talents, different quests to complete, and different personalities.



DK64 is huge. 200 bananas is a lot of bananas, folks. Expect to toss 40 hours into this game the first time through. Nothing wrong with that, right?
You’ll spend a lot of time exploring the worlds to unlock other parts of the game. There is a lot of variety: you can speed along in a mine cart, race down a water-slide, swim through plenty of rivers and lakes, explore Aztec temples, fly a jet-pack, and even play the original Donkey Kong arcade game (which is hard as crap!). There isn’t too much fighting to do, as the easy-to-beat monsters are relatively sparse.

The graphics are one the best I’ve seen on Nintendo 64, partly due to the included expansion ram which boosts your N64 up to 8MB. The free expansion ram is a nice bonus for sure. DK64 will only run if you have the expansion ram; that might make it difficult to share the game with other N64 owners, unfortunately. Not too much of a problem if you ask me, at least not anymore.

If you get tired of reclaiming golden bananas by yourself, DK64 includes some multiplayer fighting mini-games to play with your friends. Once you rescue a Kong, up to four people can fight each other in a variety of small mazes. It’s a bit like Goldeneye, but a lot simpler. The multiplayer game didn’t entertain me for very long, but then again, that isn't really my style to begin with.
Boss battles have an interesting dynamic in DK 64. Most of the time, you dodge fireballs and throw a conveniently-placed barrel of TNT at them and after three hits, they're toast. Where's the ingenuity in that? That said, though, Rare was never really known for their "boss" battles. In Banjo Kazooie, the only boss in the entire game is Gruntilda the witch...AFTER the credits rolled. While most of the boss battles are the typical Rare easy-peezy lemon-squeezy kind of fights, two in particular stand out in DK 64. Mad Jack, as you SHOULD already know, made our list (barely) of Top 10 Boss Fights. This fight is completely different than all of the other bosses in the game. There's a video of the fight on our article page for our TOP 10 BOSS FIGHTS...EVER

The second boss worth a mention is King K.Rool himself! This fight goes through multiple rounds, and you must win each round with a different Kong! This is by far the hardest challenge in the game, and it is not made any easier by the increasing difficulty of each round. AND, he get freaking boxing gear!

Seems like a long fight, right? This is only PART 1!

Moving on, perhaps my biggest complaints with DK64 are the lack of an interesting story and the requirement to watch all the mini-movies every time you enter a new level. There isn’t too much to learn from the mini-movies other than that K. Rool is a bad (ass) dude. Unfortunately, you have to watch them, even if you’ve seen them before. I prefer it when games allow you to hit a button to skip the intro movies after having viewed them already. That said, neither of these nitpicks detract from the overall "funness" of the game by any means. I still will play this game over and over and over again...it's just that fun!

SCORING

GRAPHICS: 9.0   Awesome graphics for a Nintendo 64 game, rivals even some Playstation games that were out at the time. The requirement of the expansion pack is a small drawback.

AUDIO: 8.5   The soundtrack feels like it gets a bit repetitive at times, but the real winner here is listening to the same screeches/groans when you defeat K. Rool's minions!

GAMEPLAY: 8.0   Yet another superb platformer, at a time where Nintendo was running rampant with them. The difference between DK 64 and perfection may very well be that there are 200 bananas to collect. While that may leave completionists and DK fanboys salivating, the average, casual gamer does NOT want to wander around aimlessly searching for literally hundreds of bananas. The plot is lacking as noted before, but not necessarily a detractment from the enjoyable nature of the game as a whole. A lot of fantastic pieces here, but not ALL of them fit together.

DIFFICULTY: 9.0   The enemies are especially easy to defeat throughout nearly the entire adventure. However, in order to complete the game, the 200 golden banana scramble makes DK 64 a challenge in its own league.

MULTIPLAYER/ONLINE PLAY: 7.0   Lackluster multiplayer at best, though DK 64 was never intent on making the multiplayer an integral portion of its gameplay to begin with. Decent for some laughs and giggles (for a little while), but the real draw is the adventure.

MISCELLANEOUS:  9.0   No real glitches to speak of here, just some good old fashioned fun.


OVERALL 8.4

Yep, this is a monkey rap, featuring a monkey with an afro.

No question about it, Donkey Kong 64 is one of the best platforming games to date. It has the difficulty, the adventure, and the longevity to contend with Banjo Kazooie and Super Mario 64.

It has its drawbacks, the likes of which affect the game on a level equivalent to the preference of the gamer. For some, the downsides push this DK entry into the OK range, the "Mehh" area where if asked their opinion of the game, they would say "Pretty good." For others, DK 64 defined an era. Their childhood was defined largely from the countless hours in search of the treasured golden bananas. And, anyone who says this isn't the "best game ever made, period" is an infidel and shalt be destroyedeth or burnedeth at the staketh. Needless to say, we are the first group. Eth.