Egnomca's Classic Video Game Review Donkey Kong 64

egnomac Egnomac here again to do another classic video game review for this review I will be doing Donkey Kong 64 released on the Nintendo 64 in North America on November 22,1999 and world wide in December, DK64 was the first N64 game to require an extension pack to play.

As you can already guess Donkey Kong 64 is a 3-D platform collect-a-thon similar to Banjo-Kazooie which was released the year prior. The Game's main story revolves around King K. Rool and his Kremling army who invade DK Island and once again have stolen Donkey Kong's golden banana's, kidnapped his friends and plans on destroying the island with his Blast-O-Matic weapon. You begin the game as Donkey Kong and must rescue the other Kongs who are being held captive in various worlds, once you free them you can play as them by entering the tag barrel and selecting them. Each of the Kongs have their own set of moves which you acquire by visiting Cranky Kong in his lab and paying him with coins that you collect throughout the game for his potions that will allow you to use their abilities each Kong have three special moves with two of them allowing you to use pads with the characters faces on them or allowed access to a barrel with their faces on it.

Each character have their own set of moves which include

  • Donkey Kong: The Ability to Pull Levers, can get launched in the air when standing on a pad to be taken to a section in the game where you blast from one barrel to another to get a golden banana or unlock a section in the game, the barrel allows for D.K. to become invincible to cross dangerous areas without taking damage
  • Diddy Kong: Can perform a charge attack, use the barrel to launch himself in the air and reach hard to reach places or complete a task, with the pad launch high in the air to reach high places
  • Lanky Kong: Can hand stand to walk up steep slopes, while on a pad blow up like a balloon to collect items in the air, the barrel allows Lanky to run faster
  • Tiny Kong: Can use her pig tails to fly through the air which is necessary for one of the boss battles, the pad allows Tiny to warp to another location, and her barrel item shrinks her to enter areas that would normally be impossible to enter.
  • Chunky Kong: Can perform a powerful punch to knock down or destroy obstacles in his way, his barrel allows him to become giant and his pad turns him invisible though his clothes are still visible
Aside from moves each Kong also can purchase weapons from Funky Kong and musical instruments from Candy Kong and of course each of them have their own weapon or instrument. In each of the worlds there are 25 golden bananas with each Kong having 5 to find with one of them you collect for returning a piece of the blue print of the Blast-O-Matic to Snide a former technician for King K. Rool for which we will get to later. Aside from bananas their are also colored coins which are uses for buying weapons, instruments, abilities and upgrades and most importantly colored banana's which are needed to unlock the boss door as each Kong is assigned to a specific color Donkey Kong is Yellow, Diddy red, Tiny purple, Lanky blue, and Chunky green. In order to move on the next level you must defeat the boss and acquire a key and visit K Lumsy a giant and friendly kremling who is being held captive by K. Rool who will unlock the next area. To actually face the boss you have to pay up a certain amount of colored bananas then you will be able to unlock the door to confront the boss of that level with whatever character the door says. The boss battles for the most part are pretty simple and fun to play with some exception and like Donkey Kong Country their are at least two bosses who you face twice though they do add something new to the battles the best boss in my opinion is Dagadon in Fungi Forest where after you hit him three times he'll ground pound the platform you are as it begins sinking in the lava and you have to defeat it before the platform completely sinks and you die, the most frustrating boss battles are the Mad Jack battle from Frantic Factory as you have to constantly keep moving around the platforms with Tiny while avoid being hit by Mad Jack and from falling and there's the Puffloss boss battle from Gloomy Galleon where you ride around in a boat while passing through each of the D.K. stars to damage it while avoiding any obstetrical the puffer fish throws at you which are really hard to dodge some times as the camera angle makes it hard to see where the other stars are at or when you need to jump to avoid the puffer fish when he ground pounds. The most unique boss battles are the Cut Out K. Rool boss in Creepy Castle where you use a cannon to hit the giant cut out of K. Rool and there's the final boss which is the most unique of all as each of the Kongs has a turn in fighting King K. Rool in an actually boxing ring.

The game plays really great and its really lengthy but its not all great, for starters you constantly have to get in and out of the tag barrel to get the Kong you need to progress in the game and collect an item which gets annoying really fast. Another issue is the annoying camera which can really be a pain to use as you can almost never position it in the way you need it to be to see where you need to go this is especially harder when playing it on the Wii U virtual console. Some of the golden banana's can be very frustrating to get like Diddy's cabin gauntlets in Crystal caves where you have to defeat all the enemies in the cabin in a short amount of time and you can't just use Diddy's guitar to wipe them all out at once as the game blocks you from doing so. Another feature in the game is once you visit the banana fairy's island and she gives you the camera to take pictures of the lost banana fairies which will help unlock bonus items in the main menu and increase the amount of certain items you can carry while filling up everything the problem is most of the banana fairies are very difficult to capture on film as they never stay still and are constantly moving around the area making it difficult to take a good photo of them too many times you'll miss them as they will move out of the way as you soon as your try to take their photo then have to retry. Some the golden banana's can be acquired by completing certain objectives while others require you to play a mini game while it starts off fun it gets very repetitive very fast and their really annoying to do and you will likely be forced to play the same mini game multiple times with a lot of them becoming much harder to beat as the game progresses.

One of the final areas of the game before facing King K. Rool in the final battle is Hideout Helm where the Kongs are in a race against time to shut down the machine before it becomes active again, the amount of time you are given depends on how many of the blueprints you found and give to Snide, the more blueprints you give him the more time you get and you will need all the time you can get in order to shut down the machine as you not only need to get to the main area of the level but have to complete two challenges for each of the Kongs and the time is always ticking even when using the tag barrel. After reaching the final section of the level there's a door which can only be open once you acquire both the Nintendo and Rareware coin which are found by playing the Donkey Kong arcade game in Frantic Factory and playing Jetpack in Cranky's lab. While getting 100% or higher in the game isn't necessary for beating the game its still worth doing for the extra bonus following the credits.

The game does bring back two of the ride able animals from the Donkey Kong Country Rambi the rhino and Enguarde the swordfish however they are only playable for one level though you can play their bonus stages in extra mode where you earn points either beating as many enemies or by swimming through rings before time runs out. Speaking of extra mode collecting banana fairies will unlock other things like the ability to re-watch cut scenes , replay boss battles play the Donkey Kong arcade game and Jetpack games, the ability to switch Krusha on during vs mode, and cheats. One last thing before I end this post is the game does feature multiplayer mode where its mostly free for all battles other then that there's not much else to say about it.

Final verdict
Donkey Kong 64 is an amazing game for the N64 though it does get very repetitive very fast but that's not really much of an issue as its still fun to play even to this day and while it does have its faults its sill a solid game.

I give it an 8 out of 10

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