Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

i thought the original trilogy couldn't be matched... i was wrong

This is a tough and annoying platformer, that happens to be highly enjoyable. The levels are expertly designed, allowing you to zip through them or sometimes play at a methodical pace. A nice touch is all of the levels can be completed without the aid of another Kong.

Donkey Kong’s move set is minimal and the challenge mostly comes from the platforming itself. As tough as the game is, it is fair. The classic vehicle levels adds variety, but the highlights are the “relic” levels. These are unlockable, extended levels with numerous obstacles that will test your skills, patience, and reflexes to the limit. They must be finished in one go or you restart from the beginning, but are immensely satisfying once completed.

This game was slightly too long and will often drive you crazy. But, it is rewarding, has a lot of charm, a nice soundtrack, and challenging platforming that shouldn’t be missed.

Tropical Freeze is the latest instalment in the Country series, succeeding one of the best games on the Wii. Hailing from the North sea, Snowmads have frozen Donkey Kong Island and seek to claim it as their own. Despite the story and name, the game doesn't limit itself just to snow themes. As well as snow, you have Jungle, Desert, Mountain, and Ocean themes.

Despite looking like a child friendly game, it is fiendishly tough, and even though it's frustrating at times; it is highly addictive and you come back for more. The levels are crammed full of danger, with moving platforms, crumbling platforms, swinging vines, and plenty of enemies. With a bit of practice and patience, levels can be completed and will provide a huge sense of achievement.

Throughout the levels, there is plenty to collect and many secret areas to look out for. In general, you can take your time since there is no time-limit, although some sections hurry you along with imminent danger, so you must make haste to avoid death.

Bananas are the basic item and 100 of them provides an extra life. Banana Coins act as currency and allow you to purchase items. Puzzle Pieces and Kong Letters are part of your overall aim if you want the unlockable images in the gallery and experience the bonus levels to fully complete the game. To collect these, you will have to carefully look out for them and potentially risk your life to attain them. To collect all Kong letters, they must be done in one attempt of a level whereas Puzzle Pieces only need to be collected once. Even if you pass a checkpoint, collect the piece, and then die; you still do not have to collect it again. Usually, there's at least one bonus area in the level which rewards you with a puzzle piece. These end up being re-used quite a bit so end up being one of the least enjoyable parts of the game.

Three items can be taken into the level. If you find the game hard, these are good optional assists, as long as you have the Banana Coins to purchase them from Funky Kong. There are extra lives to be purchases, heart boosts, temporary invincibility, balloons to save you from pitfalls. Squawks the parrot helps locate the puzzle pieces.

In addition to the standard platform levels, there are two other types. In the Mine Cart levels; you ride along a set track, jumping over broken tracks and dodging enemies until you reach the end. In the Jet Barrel levels, you can increase your altitude but have to let gravity bring you down in the vein of currently popular Flappy Birds. Trouble is, there are plenty of hazards to dodge so sometimes requires trial and error to find the correct path through the dangers.

The levels are wonderfully designed with each level offering something new. Like Country Returns, there's a lot of dynamically changing levels with objects falling from the background into the foreground, and objects collapsing to form new platforms in front of you, providing visual flair as well as a sense of urgency.

At the end of each world lies the boss level. A few of them seemed pretty easy to me, but some of them can be extremely tough. I found the second world boss to be hardest of them all with his multiple stages and harsh attacks.

In single-player, you play as Donkey Kong (DK) throughout, although you gain a companion after smashing a Kong Barrel. DK has 2 hearts to represent his health. When you have a partner they also have 2 hearts. If you get hit, the partner takes damage, and they will disappear if their health is lost. If DK loses his hearts, a life is lost, and you have to restart from the checkpoint. Falling off the screen is instant death to both DK and his companion. The rolling ability can be chained for a continuous roll which is more helpful in time-trial mode where it can be used for enhanced speed. You also have the ability to use your Kong Power (once the meter is full) which defeats all on-screen enemies and turns them into bananas, coins or balloons. Each companion adds a different control mechanic. If Diddy is in play, you can use his jet pack to hover in the air adding extra distance to your jumps, or allowing you to stall mid-air and avoid danger. Cranky can use his cane to achieve great heights as well as easily cross spikes or thorny patches. Dixie can spin her long ponytail to propel herself into the air, acting as a double-jump. Rambi the rhino makes a return in a handful of levels and can brute force his way through rocks and enemies.

There's plenty of control schemes available; Remote and Nunchuk, Remote on its side, GamePad, or Pro Controller. You can crouch, jump, roll, grab/pull, ground pound, swim and whilst underwater; corkscrew attack. The GamePad's screen isn't used at all, and switches off during the main loading screen.

If you have enough patience and want a challenge, Tropical Freeze is a must own and a worthy sequel to Country Returns. Although it may not seem as difficult and has smaller content, it has high replay value if you want to collect all the Kong Letters and Puzzle Pieces, and can also aim for the medals in time-trial mode and compete on the leaderboards. If I have to go out of my way to criticise the game, I'd have to say I wasn't impressed with the long loading times and jerky animation during the loading screen. But when your biggest criticism is the loading screen, you know you are playing a great game.

Tropical Freeze is easily one of the best platformers since the early 2000s. It has some pretty damn good design and it controls really smooth. I liked almost all the levels in this and the boss fights were decent enough, actually they were a slight improvement on the previous Kong game boss fights. In this you get 3 partners, you can choose between Dixie, Diddy, and Cranky, which is a decent variety compared to the one you were forced in the previous games. Also in this you an get items that save you from things like taking damage or falling, which are huge life savers in some of the later levels, although these items do end up being a bit too useful and make some challenges in this game trivial. Despite it making improvements, I still find it not quite as good as DKC 2. It comes close at times and it may control smoother, but the level design of this isn't quite on par with that game, plus this game just feels a bit short to me. The levels in this game feel like they are over real quick, I think I beat most levels in this within 5 minutes. I know this game is longer than the first three games, but it still feels short for a game that came out in 2014.

Plus there are some annoying underwater and railcart levels. I did enjoy the cart levels in this game, but there are a few that have some annoying segments you have to perfectly time, and there are some annoying segments as well. Plus the whole animal buddy thing is mostly done away with, all you get in this is a rhino you ride on occasionally, and thats in like 5 levels total. The game does reward you for collecting all the KONG letters, which in previous games the reward was never worth the effort. You unlock one bonus level in each World that is extremely difficult and has no checkpoints and by beating this difficult level in all 6 Worlds, you unlock a bonus World, but to be honest this was one of the biggest disappointments to me. The bonus World only has 3 levels, which are fairly difficult and have no checkpoints, but also these 3 levels are nowhere near as hard as most of the other bonus levels, hell I had way more trouble on the first World's bonus level than I did any of these 3 ones. And these levels all felt pretty damn short, and its a shame because I spent all that extra time, probably at least an additional 10 hours to collect all these hidden letters and thats all I got, so while its a better reward than past games, I would have preferred an entire island of like 6-8 levels and additional boss fight.

But still, its a pretty fun game and like most Kong games, its a lot better with a friend. And even if its not as good as the 2nd game, it still has some good level design and easily some of the best controls in the series. Now if Nintendo could remake the original DKC trilogy with modern graphics and the controls of this game, along with maybe add an extra World or boss for collecting all the letters and Nintendo could really have a goldmine. Unfortunately they aren't quite as good at Sony when it comes to remaking their older franchises.

Maybe the best 2D platformer ever. I mean, this one gets everything right—challenging but approachable gameplay, loads of unlockables, gorgeous music, responsive controls, colorful graphics, and consistently diverse level design. It's just a joy to play. Can't recommend this one highly enough.

When Retro Studios released Donkey Kong Country Returns back in 2010 they showcased to me their ability to meet an incredibly high standard of quality despite genre hopping. Much like with the Metroid Prime Trilogy, Retro took over the reins of the Donkey Kong Country series and created pure platforming poetry. The intense difficulty, tight mobile controls, and masterfully designed levels were all series standards that had all been well met, but Retro stepped further by introducing outrageous level hazards, highly destructible environments, interacting planes, and dynamic bosses. With Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze Retro is noticeably attempting to take some creative steps further than Returns; Dixie Kong and Cranky Kong have now joined the cast of playable characters, the classic underwater levels are back, and the game touts more thoughtful aesthetics and even bolder obstacles for you to encounter.

The story in this game is pretty simple, the Kong family gets expelled from their home island by an army of arctic themed animals, and they must travel through several themed islands in order to return to their home and recapture it. So the big new feature here are the two new buddies you have at your disposal, Dixie and Cranky. When Dixie is equipped she can use her hair to briefly hover and lift Donkey Kong up slightly, she is also able to shoot bubblegum pellets at enemies to stun them and use her hair as a propeller underwater. Cranky uses his cane as an enhanced jumping ability (just like that of Scrooge McDuck) and can use his cane to attack enemies underwater. Both characters are fun to switch between however Dixie Kong's advanced hover ability kinda renders Diddy Kong completely useless, it would have been nice if Diddy had more of a trump card over the other buddy Kongs. It's so much fun using these different Kongs that I also wish you had the ability to play solo as each of them outside of hard mode...

Let's talk about level design now; as I'd mentioned earlier Retro makes more attempts to up the wow factor in this game. Nearly every level in this game presents a very cool and unique idea and a lot of the time they're blood pumping; like navigating through saws in a woodmill, escaping an F5 tornado in the middle of a thunder storm, or scaling a mountain during a massive avalanche, these are only just a fraction of the insane obstacles you'll face in Tropical Freeze! There is a greater attention to aesthetics in this game as well. Instead of the very basic motifs presented in DKC Returns (i.e. "Beach World", "Forest World", Factory World", etc.) This game puts you in more thoughtful environments like a mountainous Nordic colony, an African style savanna, and an entire island dedicated to fruit processing lol!!! The boss battles are also a highlight in this game, you'll encounter everything from phantom ninja monkeys to a giant sledge hammer wielding polar bear!!! And these fights are quite dynamic and challenging.

There really aren't many things I can complain about with this game with the exception of a few design inconsistencies. You already heard me talk about Diddy's uselessness, but there's also some imbalances within the game's difficulty curve as well. The difficulty curve from Donkey Kong Country Returns was a textbook example of a smooth incline, but Tropical Freeze's curve is a tad bit off. You'll occasionally encounter incredibly long and ruthless stages followed by relatively short and easy ones. There are some incredibly challenging levels presented within the first half of the game and a few levels that were insultingly easy in the later half. There are "hidden exits" and alternate routes that would act as work arounds for some of the game's harder levels, but a few of these hidden paths were pointless at times. Even if some levels like the Jelly Jamboree or Bramble Scramble felt way too easy I still have to give the developers credit for presenting fun ideas in nearly every level regardless of it's difficulty. And overall the game presents a very stiff challenge that only the most seasoned of 2D-platformer fans can tough out.

Presentation wise this game does pretty well. The graphics are colourful and inoffensive, but the real story here is that legendary video game music producer David Wise returns to the series that made him such an icon and delivers this game's soundtrack. It's jazzy at times, epic, mystical, and tons of fun! Here's just a snippet of what Wise brings to the table for this marvellous soundtrack!

So there you have it, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is yet another grand entry into this stellar series. It builds off of the foundation Retro Studios laid down with their last title and achieves success in nearly every way possible. This game will give you some of the toughest challenges and intense moments you'll ever encounter in a 2D-platformer, I guarantee you that! And with such a great emphasis on design boldness and creativity this is easily one of the WiiU's best titles. Please DO NOT sleep on this game!