Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

One of Rare's crowning achievements and pure poetry to the 2D platforming genre. Donkey Kong Country 2 took every aspect of the original Donkey Kong Country and improved upon it greatly! Starring Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie, a tag team much more dynamic than Donkey Kong and Diddy. Dixie's gliding hair mechanic adds an extra layer of complexity to the controls and Rare designed each level with this in mind so that it could not be exploited to make the game easier. I still preferred to play as Diddy because he was much quicker and had more precise controls, his roll attack in particular had impressive range and if used off of a ledge it would allow for longer more impressive jumps. In this game Donkey Kong actually gets kidnapped by King K Rool, errrr..... Captain K. Rool..... I can't remember if they were the same person or brothers..... But anyway, DK is held hostage atop the very menacing Crocodile Island and it's Diddy and Dixie's job to scale the island and save Donkey!

Crocodile Island is a pretty large contrast to that of DK Island from the first game. This pirate dystopia is very much like a theme park, fit with large pirate ships, volcanoes, roller coasters, haunted houses, and dangerous bee colonies. Everything about this world is heavily inspired, from the interesting array of locations you visit to the hilariously awesome enemies you battle. There's pirates with swords, hooks, cannons! Floating goblins, rabid cats, kamikaze dudes wearing explosive barrels! The bosses are great too; from a giant pirate crow to a ghostly inanimate sword, to the epic-ness that is the battle with captain K. Rool. The game also introduces two of the coolest animal buddies in the series, Rattly the rattlesnake (with his crazy jumping abilities!) and Squitter the Spider (who can create platforms using his webs). The animal buddies are used much more frequently in this game and are actually integral for completing many levels, like....... Web Woods 0_o ........

Ahem, the level designs are very much on point and creative. I noticed that Rare experimented with levels that have a greater sense of vertical to them. Again the enemy assortment and emphasis on buddies added lots of variety but Rare also added level specific obstacles that kept things very fresh, like throwing in strong winds to f*** with your directional control, hot air balloons that sink unless kept full of air, toxic waters that slowing rise and chase you (........Toxic Tower 0_o .........) just to name a few. As a result of these additions, Donkey Kong Country 2 is notorious for being a very challenging game, and I would absolutely agree that this is the hardest of the original DKC trilogy! But it's a very fair challenge and one that allots an enormous amount of satisfaction once you've completed it! It's also one of the longer games at 7 areas (including the lost world where you must find all of the game's hidden DK coins to advance in). So it's quite the value package!

Also noteworthy is the game's famous soundtrack, handled entirely by David Wise. This very passionate, tuneful, and emotional soundtrack suited the ambience and themes of the game's world incredibly well. This music is often very immersive with its weather and environmental sound effects. Just listen to classics like the emotional Stickerbrush Symphony, the mystical Forest Interlude, the very percussive Mining Melancholy, and the triumphantly menacing Krook's March, and it might not be hard to see why this is such a heavily regarded soundtrack and my personal favourite videogame soundtrack of all time! :3

This is a truly magnificent game in nearly every regard, and it'll go down as one of Rare's finest games. This is a must own for any platforming fanatic, a classic in every sense of the word! ;D