I've heard about this game for years. Just beat it a couple days ago. Not bad, not bad. I like that they got Hamill and the other Batman guy to reprise Joker and Batman's voices, respectively. And Harley, who they fan serviced up. Probably other VAs too, idk.
Fighting engine's pretty good, but for the life of me, I can't land those critical strikes outside of luck. You're supposed to press the button just as Batman's fist/foot connects with the bad guy, right? Fuck. Ain't happening. I'm too lazy to extensively go in practice mode to perfect it, even though it'd probably make my life easier. I think the same studio made Shadows of Mordor, because the gameplay is super similar, to the point where it almost feels like a palate swap to capitalize on various franchises. Maybe it is.
I realized I fucking suck at video games now. I frequently press the wrong button (going into map vs detective mode, for instance), or forget which button I need to press is on which side of the controller. Guess I don't play enough games these days, but damn, you'd think by the end of the game, I'd have gotten the hang of it.
I kind of liked how I didn't have to feel compelled to look through every single damned nook and cranny to make sure I got everything I needed. Oh sure, you could get Riddler's trophies and shit, but it was kind of a relief to not feel pressured to scour for ammo, or that if you didn't find and exhaustively search every room, you'd miss cool things.
I just came off of playing the Bioshock Trilogy for the first time (maybe I'll write about that too), and I definitely felt it there. It's that damned gameplay rule of "go the wrong way and loop back around", which always leads me to questioning "which way is the wrong way" and trying to figure that out, going back and forth, no wait I think it's this way, ah fuck a cutscene, I hope I can go back
So it felt cool just to be batman and use cool batman gadgets and shit and get somewhat immersed into the experience instead of being aware that I was playing a game and had to do things. Batman's not really my favorite franchise, but I loved The Animated Series as a kid, so getting a proper game out of it feels nice.
It's kinda weird to be walking around as a bulky greek statue, though. Like it looks uncomfortable to have all those muscles, and unrealistic. I don't need that many muscles when battling giant plant tentacles and thwarting a plot to inject people full of a super steroid toxin that turns them into incredible hulks. Tone it down. Batman is OP. You can't be a super smart detective and inventor and body builder and ninja and psychologist and criminologist all at once. It doesn't work that way. That's like a team of people. Don't stretch my suspension of disbelief that far when I'm rumbling with a giant Joker dinosaur.
So I got the full trilogy for $15 on a deal that apparently only had a four day window. Sweet! Been hearing about these games for years, like I said. Onto Arkham City, with an interlude of Metroid Dread in the mean time. And maybe Silent Hill: Downpour, which my friend told me is the last good classic Silent Hill game.
An apology, but for going on over a decade now I've somehow managed to not notice a number of PMs directed specifically at me from various people here. Frustrating for me, frustrating to whoever sent them and got no response at all. I should notice them a bit more reliably now that there's a clear indicator.
In the spirit of a new era of true remakes instead of remasters, we get one of the best cart racers of the 32 bit era. I adore that true remakes have finally become relevant again. We had so many years of "HD remasters" just shoving out the same old game graphics and all, just with minor patching to operate at a higher rendering resolution and frame rate. Sometimes, if we were lucky, they'd improve the controls and the music. Then we have this. The Crash trilogy, the Spyro trilogy, this, and the Medi-evil remake are all amazing in their own rights (though I'll get into my issues with those trilogies another time), but here we're discussing a racing game.
I recently reviewed the original Playstation game, and so for this review I won't rehash what's already been said about that game. Suffice it to say it's a game that was worthy of a remake, and even the original still holds up. (Now give us Diddy Kong Racing remade on Switch!) Here I'll be covering the changes and how well they were done. The game is available on PS4, XBox One, Switch, and PC, but for this review I'll be covering the PS4 version. I'm only aware of one thing this version has the others don't.
Visuals: This is no mere resolution bump nor is it limited to higher resolution textures here and there. The ENTIRE game was remade from the ground up and it looks like a Playstation 4 game. They managed to avoid the mistakes of other remakes like Halo in that while the tracks are far more detailed, they keep those details off the track itself. Everything you need to pick out is still easy to distinguish from things that don't. Characters and their cars always stand apart from the tracks, as well as collectible items, traps, boost arrows and the like. The "boost meter" now rests beside the car you're driving instead of in the corner which makes it easier to keep an eye on while you're focusing on the race. Artistically, the added details to each level don't so much reimagine as recontextualize a number of levels. One of the tracks is a hovering road darting between airships, for example. Now, the airships are all part of a casino in the sky. That added bit of flavor is perfect considering who the level is meant to be for (a savvy weasel criminal mastermind). Every track received these overhauls, though in terms of gameplay none of the changes affect what matters. This is a positive simply due to how well designed the tracks were to begin with. Cut scenes have all been remastered as well and received expanded bits of slapstick and detail. I'm not exactly a fan of the added gags myself, but for the right age group I'm sure they'll get a laugh. All the cars have one little bit of detail removed. In the original, certain kinds of cars had totally unique controls, like a mind reading device or duel levers instead of a steering wheel. This time, they all have wheels. This may have been done to speed up the process of defining character animations since otherwise every single character would need a set of unique animations for each one of the control methods. That's a cute detail lost in translation, but in the end a worthwhile sacrifice for what we get in return, the ability to mix and match carts and racers!
The new version's frame rate is a locked 30FPS, matching the original but even more consistent. Unfortunately, they didn't go for 60FPS on a decades old game, and that programmatic lock also means that even if you play the game on newer hardware like the PS5, it is still locked at 30FPS. I suppose the only way to get improved performance is a PC version mod at this point. As before though, a consistent and decent frame rate are more than enough to keep the game running and feeling smooth.
Sound: All the game's voice acting, sound effects, and music have been completely redone. Music in particular is fully orchestrated lovingly accurate to the original (as opposed to the Secret of Mana remake which entirely reimagined every track to the point they often don't even have the same tone as the original). The voice acting manages to nail every character very well. The penguin with two developer test samples even got a strange homage to that glitch, in that now the voice actor cutely uses the proper voice to say "Penguin Yay 1!" in such a way that it comes off like an adorable claim that the penguin is number one. A few little changes were made as well. The alien no longer threatens to make everyone his "slaves" so much as his "minions". The end result is pretty much the same of course, everyone is enslaved working on a concrete earth, but perhaps referring so directly to slavery wasn't the most inclusive way to word things in the original. The change is fine. The sounds still resemble what they originally did, but have all been retuned in much higher quality.
Controls: They're as tight as they were in the original, with one exception. The original allowed you to use the right stick to accelerate and reverse instead of buttons, but the new one does not. This doesn't really affect the way I play, since I preferred using buttons for that anyway, but it's notable. Other than this, they've kept the handling and timing for boosts identical to the original which means performance on the tracks is also identical, with the exception of the brand new tracks which I'll get into later. All in all, this is the one area of complaint I had with the changes made to the Spyro and Crash trilogy collections, and it's good to see this team didn't make the same mistake here.
Gameplay: Every bit of the challenge found in the originals is still present and still as tough as before. Even the cute penguin is still unlocked with a password exclusively, which is a nice touch. That leaves the new additions to cover. Namely, they've really focused in on the "team" aspect of Crash Team Racing this time around. They've made full "teams" of characters, including the former "award ceremony girls" who are now full fledged racers all on their own team. New multiplayer modes allow you to race as a team rather than a pure focus on getting first just for yourself. This changes things up online especially and can really make it more engaging to group up with friends.
That's not all. They've made the alien boss playable as well, if nerfed. The penguin has also received quite a nerf but both these changes make sense just to keep those character competitive and not "easy mode". They even added numerous other characters and tracks, though unlike the ones already built into the game, these ones are unlocked in a... more modern way. I'll note that the PS4 exclusively has a "retro style" PS1 era track and Crash model to use.
Now, about one particular chunk of new tracks. There were two sequels to Crash Team Racing, neither made by Naughty Dog, and neither as good as the original. However, of the two Crash Nitro Kart came the closest. It's controls and poor inconsistent framerate were the biggest detriment, but it had solid track designs and another full story mode like CTR and Diddy Kong Racing. It was even the first game to implement "hover sections", parts of the track where your cart converts to a hover mode including "floaty" handling. You thought Mario Kart 8 was the first to do this? Think again. In recognition of this, we get the "Nitro-Fueled" part of the title finally explained. They put in every single track from Crash Nitro Kart, just as lovingly recreated but sadly missing their hover mechanics. They also included all the playable characters from that game. All that's missing is a recreation of that game's story mode and challenges, so you really only get to enjoy the new tracks in multiplayer. Now there's the elephant in the room. Like platformers, racing games are particularly sensitive to changes in their control mechanics. These tracks were designed with different mechanics in mind, so how do they play? Good news, these tracks received tiny tweaks here and there in their layout which add up to making them "feel" just right in the original game's mechanics. This is not a Crash/Spyro trilogy situation, I'm happy to say. They did just what needed to be done to make the tracks "work", and as a result they feel far better to play than even the original game. As I mentioned, the controls and mechanics of CTR were superior to what we got in Nitro Kart, so the level designs feel more "at home" here than they did in that game. I imagine if they did bring over the entire story mode from that game, they'd also have to relocate time crates, crystals, and other such things by a smidge here and there to account for mechanics differences, but such things would be appreciated.
Alright, it's about time I covered the biggest problem with this game. While all the original content is lovingly recreated and unlocked in that same classic way of accomplishing specific game challenges, that only serves to highlight the terrible "modern" way all the brand new characters and tracks are unlocked. First off, they have time limited events. I detest these with a passion. Don't get me wrong, I adore adding new cups and challenges over time, what I object to is limiting their availability to one month and then removing them forever. There's no reason at all they can't just leave every new cup available permanently and just add more to select from over time. This is meant as a trick- a method of selling us something after it's "no longer available" for "free". Then there's the other half. Doing these events doesn't unlock the new tracks and costumes from things like winning a cup, completing a time trial, or stuff like that. No, you have to grind up digital currency. The grind is... tediously slow. Once you manage to get enough together, THEN you can buy tracks and characters and carts and skins and the like. Compared to beating a challenge once to unlock something, well there is no comparison. One is rewarding, fun, and potentially quick; the other is tedious, monotonous, unsatisfying, and slow. This is the second part of their scam.
You see, when the game first came out, grinding coins up by racing was the ONLY way to get them. It was annoying and tedious, but it wasn't microtransactions, and thus all the reviews happily announced the game didn't have them. The rating they got from the ESRB also didn't need to state that. This was a trick, and I felt it coming. The mechanics felt exactly like a microtransaction system without the purchasing part. They fixed that the moment they added new DLC, the coins can now be BOUGHT! It's a convenient solution to the problem they themselves created in the first place. If you are paying real money in order to AVOID playing the game you bought, the game is badly designed. No one likes grinding stuff, and they know it. That's why they made it take such a long time instead of being possible to get all the coins you needed in a single pass of story mode or a few runs of the cups. People are only going to buy coins if they feel it's their only option. So, exchange real money for virtual money, then exchange the virtual money for time-limited items "before they're locked away again in the Disney Vault". Enough time has passed that "season one" of the game's events is now over. They've done us a favor everyone, they "unlocked" all the previous time limited rewards permanently! Sort of... you still have to "purchase" them. You still have to deal with their microtransaction ecosystem.
Oh, and there were exclusive preorder bonuses blah blah blah you can also purchase the preorder exclusive stuff for a tiny fee, that fun on-disc-DLC. It's bad, but hey it doesn't feel as bad as the other thing so it barely registers to me any more. The mosquito bite isn't so bad after the bee sting I guess.
I spent a LONG time discussing the microtransaction issue, and yes it ONLY affects the new content, not the old, but it's such a bad black eye on an otherwise excellent remake that it needs addressing. It's the worst part of the remake by far, and it's especially egregious because the original method of unlocking content still exists for the older stuff. Any player can SEE for themselves in real time the stark difference in how things used to be unlocked in games vs how they are now, and note just how bad we now have it compared to then. My advice? Buy the game on PC, download the latest patch, then MOD the dang thing to unlock all that content without going through their stupid coin grind. Screw them. Or, if you don't want to reward anyone who even dares adding this modern nonsense to classic games, just don't buy it at all. That's an option too.
Multiplayer: This game adds a fully functional online mode complete with team racing. It's amazing and fun and drastically adds to it's replayability especially today in covid times. They even regularly add new cups to race in (though they also regularly take them away, as noted above this is a terrible modern habit). They kept in four way split screen, so when the servers one day go down, the game's multiplayer will still be fully functional at least in one form. All in all, online mode is a flat improvement over the original made for a console that never had any sort of modem addon. (A shame Sony missed out on that chance, considering both the SNES and Genesis had online play a generation before thanks to XBand).
Overall, normally I'd highly recommend such a polished faithful and "Nitro Fueled" improvement over the original. In almost every way, this game is now the definitive version of the experience and would flat out replace the original...
Except...
There's the microtransactions. They mar the experience so deeply it's enough to make me reconsider my recommendation. At the very least, I'd say it warrants consideration, and if you are the sort with an addictive personality who may be vulnerable to the predatory behavior microtransactions feed on, I'd stay far away. The game isn't even being honest and up front that it has them in the first place, slyly holding them back until after the game's been rated and reviewed before springing them on the world, so let this review be your warning. Is it as bad as loot boxes? No, but it's still really bad.
Shortly before Naughty Dog lost the rights of their seminal series and Playstation's first "mascot", they had one last go with the character. Yes, at the time Crash and the gang were simply "yet another" mascot platformer, but in retrospect the series was one of the best of it's genre and a unique solution to the question "how do we make these games 3D?".
In the spirit of "me too", they followed up an amazing trilogy with a cart racer. By this time, Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing had both been out for a few years. This was nearing the end of the Playstation's life cycle. What could Naughty Dog bring to the genre that those other two didn't already accomplish? Was this merely a way to offer Playstation owners an alternative and cash in on the emerging genre's popularity?
(Note that this is exclusively a review of the Naughty Dog created original game, and NOT a review of any of the sequels made by other studios after Naughty Dog sold the IP. Personally, I'm not a fan of the later games and consider them inferior in many ways to what the original offered, right down to basic controls. If you prefer the sequels, there's some good news. The remake added in fan favorite levels and characters from the later games which I think brings in the best of both worlds, superior controls and overall design mixed with a greater set of tracks.)
As it turns out, Naughty Dog would prove they understood what made cart racing work. They didn't just toss it out, they gave it their all. The Mario Party inspired "Crash Bash" (not made by Naughty Dog) truly was a dull and by the numbers experience, but Crash Team Racing managed to set itself apart. Note that to get the most out of this game, you'll need an accessory. The Playstation 1, after all, only had two controller ports. Buy a multitap to bring out the most for this title. That unfortunately will have to be a mark against it, but a minor mark at best.
I'll be considering both the extensive single player mode and the multiplayer aspects, and try to consider the game both in comparison to it's contemporaries and on it's own merits. With any luck, I'll succeed. If not, god help us all. Signing out.
Visuals (Henceforth replacing the category "graphics" in my reviews): Compared to Mario Kart 64 and it's prerendered sprites, this game goes for in-engine renders much closer to Diddy Kong Racing, but without even that game's billboarded cart sprites. As a result, the visuals end up blockier, but their movement is smoother and more varied. Generally, as is often the case between these two consoles, models look a lot more "angular" and sharp than they do on N64. There's none of that smoothing the N64 used, but if you're used to that, it's a rather nostalgic look. Artistically, characters and tracks hold up well. All the model designs went for an unrealistic cartoony look with flashy colors. Games with such a style have aged far better, and so it is here. Colors are "brighter" than in Diddy Kong Racing, closer to the palette used in Mario Kart 64. The game's level design hews closer to Diddy Kong Racing however, with a higher focus on "island" locales than others, but not to their exclusive use. Visually, the game holds up. However, there's no arguing against the dramatic improvement seen in the PS4 era remake. That game even allows for a skin using "retro angular" Crash and that cart.
The game runs mostly smooth. Some of the cut scenes have lower FPS, but the racing itself manages a usually smooth 30 FPS. Considering the quality of the visuals and the limitations of the Playstation compared to N64, this is very impressive and more importantly, makes the game a joy to play. Consistent frame rates are critical for a game like this, and this one delivers. It isn't F-Zero X's 60FPS, but it's still smooth.
Sound Design: The game's sounds are clear and stand apart from each other, which makes it easy to make out just what's happening around and behind you. The sounds themselves are high quality, higher quality than what N64 sound samples tend to be which one would expect due to the higher capacity available to the game. Sounds are satisfying or crushing in just the right measure. A turbo boost is clear and powerful, though Mario Kart 64's mushroom boosts still make the most satisfying sound of the three games. Character voices are fitting, well acted, but don't overstay their welcome. There's no need to fiddle with options to disable commentary ala Mickey's Speedway USA. The game's music is exciting and energetic as fits a racing game. Every track has appropriate music fitting to the theme of the racetrack. However, outside of a few tracks, not as many "stand out" to me compared to Mario Kart 64 or Diddy Kong Racing. It's perhaps unfair to compare directly to those, since rare few composers in the industry compare to the legends behind those soundtracks, but the fact is in spite of that CTR's music holds up competitively with it. (Hilariously, one of the hidden characters, a penguin, has two voice samples that are clear developer placeholders delivered by an adult in dead pan. It's- it's just wonderful when they get triggered.) One added note for story mode. Diddy Kong Racing had voice samples, but limited it to typical race responses and that "brief sample" style of talking to characters. CTR has full voice acting for the entire story mode. This is hardly a requirement and in some cases I'd consider it a negative (Symphony of the Night is probably better without voice acting during dialog, and King's Quest V is absolutely superior in it's floppy disk text based version), but the voice acting is solid enough here that it pulls ahead thanks to that.
Gameplay Design: This game has taken some very clear inspiration from Diddy Kong Racing. Rather than merely having "cups" to race for, there's an overworld island setting with numerous challenges behind massive doors. There's places to explore, secrets on each track to find, and boss encounters finishing up each new zone. If I could offer a criticism, story mode doesn't allow you to change racers. Once you pick someone, you're stuck with them. This is partly justified in that the tiki mask aiding you through the campaign changes depending on whether you are playing a villain or a hero (and in one case, that same penguin, apparently there's a dark heart of evil behind that cute face because the dark tiki helps him out). However, story shouldn't get in the way of something like this I feel, and it holds back on experimentation when all you're trying to do is see if a different class of racer would help you win a particular challenge better. The game offers three difficulty levels at the start, affecting the standard cup speed. This does provide something over Diddy Kong Racing. You can accomplish all of story mode with a lower skill requirement if you just want to see it all, or you can really challenge yourself.
Diddy Kong Racing offered three vehicle types, and as a result it's going to have superior gameplay variety right out the gate. CTR makes up for this by expanding the number of additional challenges the game offers. Just like DKR, you'll have basic victory conditions, time trial races, and "collect all of X item around the level" challenges. Where it goes above and beyond is working in "cup challenges" similar to more traditional racers within the single player story mode and numerous additional mechanics. For example, it's time trial mode adds an extra wrinkle with "time crates". Break one and you get extra time added to your countdown. In a normal track, this presents interesting choices like whether it's better to make a sharper turn, or to go out of your way to break a crate and get a better time that way. The higher level time trials often require breaking every single box which sadly removes that strategic choice. But then, there's the "battle arena" time trials. They require breaking every box within a certain period of time and ignore "laps" since well, they're battle arenas. This presents a very unique sort of challenge where the goal is simply finding the most ideal and fastest way to break each crate. The freedom to tackle each one in the order you so choose really makes those levels stand out.
The game's maps are an interesting set. The very first map they ever made for that game was a beach level from Diddy Kong Racing ported directly to the engine just to test if the Playstation hardware could handle such design. This informs the guiding design elements you'll see often through the game, with basic concepts for tracks lifted right out of the N64 games. However, it's the execution where they really shine. Many tracks are large sprawling webs of alternative pathways and skill based shortcuts. It's far more than Mario Kart 64 and even improves upon what Diddy Kong Racing managed. You can race the same track a dozen times and not take the same pathway twice. Of course, variety isn't everything. The tracks are also honed to perfection around the specific capabilities of the racers, so that whatever speed or inertia your character may have, every turn is possible to make without breaking (outside of turbo boosting at the wrong time). This game is a copy of what Nintendo and Rare did, but it's a copy that learned and expanded on those ideas and the track layouts show this.
The powerups are the same set we all know. You've got rolling bombs which are basically green shells, homing missiles as red shells, a protective force bubble, splatty chemical beakers to set traps, a "turbo boost" item, and of course those "last place" power items which, this time around, aren't a guaranteed hit. Much like Super Mario Kart's coins and DKR's bananas, this game uses the Crash serie's staple "Wumpa fruit" as a minor speed booster, with a very interesting plus tied into it. Gather 10 fruit and not only do you max out your speed, you "power up" your powerup. In Diddy Kong Racing, you had to collect the exact same powerup twice to accomplish this. This could often be challenging or even impossible depending on circumstances outside your control, and one missed touch would reset the level of your powerup completely. Tying in item powerups to the fruit makes it far more reliable to pull off while still tying it to player skill. Again, it shows a mastery and knowledge of what they're imitating that they're able to improve upon existing ideas like this. When it comes to speed trials, every trial has three rankings of trophy, but 100% completion (by the game's reckoning) only requires the lowest level trophy.
So many of these things unlock new tracks, characters, and a few other things. There are also cheat codes you can input to unlock all of those things wihout even bothering with those challenges if you'd just prefer to jump into multiplayer and ignore single player entirely. Options like this are always appreciated, as I did when I found out F-Zero X offered such codes as an option. One character in particular, again the penguin, is unlocked exclusively by a button code. Go for it, it's not cheating in that specific case.
Controls: Here's where a racing game can completely fall to pieces. Controls in this game are sharp, smooth, and responsive. Now, I need to add a caveat. You will want to play this game with a duel shock controller. Racing games simply provide far more control with an analog stick than a d-pad. This is what I played mine with, and it's what I'm reviewing. Fortunately, they're rather easy to come by and when Sony made that transition to their revised controller, they invested heavily in getting as many out there and outright replacing the purely digital model as they could.
The game controls essentially like any other cart racer. Turning, breaking, accelerating, item usage, and "sliding". Like Mario Kart 64, the drift button is also a "hop" button, which allows for a brief moment to re-aim your cart just before the slide starts. It's something missing from DKR and Mickey's Speedway USA, but frankly it's a matter of personal taste which style you might prefer. The bigger difference comes from how drift turbos are accomplished. At the highest levels, you absolutely will need to master drifting and turbos in this game. This is a pretty standard requirement of both MK64 and DKR so many will be used to this skill requirement. Drift turbos now are activated on a button press rather than on letting go of the drift button. There is a bar on the bottom of the screen indicating how much "boost" you have. The game also indicates it with smoke and engine sounds much like the others, but this little bar is useful for a new reason. You can now prematurely trigger a boost. It won't last as long as a fully charged one, but for turns that involve much more shallow adjustments it can be hard to build it up all the way. It'll often be faster in those situations to trigger numerous smaller boosts rather than charging up a longer one. Further, drifting is no longer the only way to build turbo charge. You also get them off of jumps. This is also true in newer Mario Kart games, but this was the first I'm aware of to add this trick. Since the drift and jump turbos both tie into the same meter, you can forgo a drift in favor of hitting a small jump instead to get a turbo built up with a combination. This allows a lot of flexibility in how you approach challenges. Combined with how flexible track layouts are in this game, that all adds up to a high skill ceiling, and you'll need to work pretty high up there when it comes to the greatest challenges. The controls honestly manage to exceed both MK64 and DKR. While Mickey's Speedway USA manages to eek out a win in overall smoothness and responsiveness (especially in drifting), the expansive available tricks and the revised and what I consider an improved way to trigger those tricks nets CTR the gold.
Story: A kart racer doesn't typically need a story at all, but with the focus on an exploratory overworld, a bit of story helps as "connective tissue" to tie everything you're doing together. The basic plot of this game is Space Jam. An evil super competitive alien has invaded and challenged the entire world (using a giant megaphone of course) to a race. He wants to race and defeat the greatest racers on the planet, and if he wins or no one shows up, he'll turn the planet into a giant parking lot. It actually manages to make MORE sense than Space Jam because world domination isn't the alien's goal, the thrill of being the best racer is. So, the challenge and the threat follow naturally from the character in a way that Space Jam's doesn't. Like Space Jam though, the characters have the same reason to "go along" with the challenge, they're powerless to resist the alien's power otherwise. They have no choice. It's not like Naughty Dog needed to think it through. Heck, Mickey's Speedway USA has one of those most nonsensical plots I've ever seen. However, they did and I appreciate that little extra effort. For the record, yes this is essentially the plot of Diddy Kong Racing as well. There, Wizpig is motivated by just wanting to cause general "chaos", and the race element stems from the nature of the island's strange magics. It still works, but in a less direct and more abstract way. In any case, by the end they manage to uncover ancient power that lets them ultimately defeat the alien when he, naturally, refuses to accept his defeat and decides to end the world anyway. Fitting kid stuff that works well and serves as a lesson about being a sore loser and having good sportsmanship. All in all, while not needed at all and hardly deep or meaningful, for a game with this design it fits and helps connect the overall world design.
Multiplayer: Once again, this game requires a purchase that the N64 racers don't, and multitaps are harder to come by than controllers, but not prohibitively so. If you just want to buy it on the PS3 store, there's a trick apparently to getting that to work in 4 player mode. I'd recommend looking it up in that case, but I played it on original hardware. Still, the best way is probably to just get the remake on a modern console.
The game offers 4 player split screen, you and your friends racing with the same controls and on those same tracks from solo. As tight as the controls are combined with how expansive the tracks are, this can result in some very fun nights. Sadly, I didn't have this game at the height of it's popularity, but thanks to the remake I've enjoyed a number of online races. I can safely say this can eat up afternoons just as well as MK64 did back then. I'd say the multiplayer actually manages to give that vaunted old game a run for it's money, but since I'm talking about the remake it's more fair to compare it to Mario Kart 8, and in THAT case MK8 easily laps CTR.
Battle mode's tracks are well designed arenas with a focus on aerial advantage. There's so many ways to gain air and fly over your enemies that it's pretty much a requirement to think in 3D when competing with your opposition. Beyond that, it's standard fare battle mode. To this day, I still consider Super Mario Kart to have the best battle mode, but this one's no slouch.
Completion: There are so many extra tracks, challenge modes, characters and "cheats" to find that full completion will take some time. It'll also depend on what you consider full completion. The lowest time trials for each track (plus every other trophy and win in the game) are all that's needed for 100%. To get 101%, you need the "silver" trophy for every time trial. Getting the equivalent of "gold" (purple) doesn't net you an extra percentage at all, but it's still recognized so for true completion, it seems that will be needed. Even ignoring that though, the game offers so much that like Diddy Kong Racing you'll be busy for a while. There's FAR more to keep you coming back than any Mario Kart game will offer, at least for solo play. However, there's the issue of no character switching in story mode. This is still a problem, partly mitigated by an unlocked version of the time trials on the game's main menu. In this way, you can get those trophies with different characters rather than being stuck with the same one on every single track. This game is a completionist's dream.
Challenge: Hard. This game is hard, Rareware hard. You'll need a high degree of mastery to stand a chance at the highest challenges the game offers. However, as I mentioned earlier, there is so much flexibility both in controls and in how you approach most stages that it results in a rather high skill ceiling. This should allow you to clear challenges like they're a breeze once you reach a certain level of skill. It will just take a while to reach it. I know I have lots of room for growth myself in the game. It's a rewarding and "fair" sort of challenge for much of the game's trials, but the cup races are something else. There is a high degree of rubber banding the AI demonstrates in this game, and that's going to bite you in some rather unfair ways from time to time there.
Overall, my opinion of this game has only gone up over the years. From solid controls to excellent track design, this game felt like a natural evolution of what MK64 and DKR had started. I only wish cart racers had continued in this vein, but sadly most challengers would fade away leaving only Mario Kart, and Nintendo never felt the need to develop unique challenges and story modes in the way Rare and Naughty Dog did. It's a shame, since certain things like how powerups and boosting were handled were done both uniquely and in ways that better added to a player's flexibility in this one. (Maybe one day I'll finally sit down with Sonic All Star Racing and give that a try.) I highly recommend this game to anyone who passed over it as "just another Mario Kart clone". It's that, yes, but so much more.
Posted by: etoven - 11th October 2021, 6:08 PM - Forum: Ramble City
- No Replies
I got access, it's even better than the demo. The moment Sussex University finishes touchable humans i'm out of here. Pffffffft.
Expect to never see me again.
Donkey Kong 64 is somewhat notorious these days, and heck it was considered a bit much even when it first came out. However, I still remember when we all first started playing it, before the tedium kicked in, when we all were really enjoying ourselves. However, over time opinions on it soured. There's legitimate criticism to be had, but being one of the few that played this one before Banjo Kazooie, allow me to offer my opinions on this massive game that gave us 4MB of RAM to plug into our systems.
Graphics: Here's a little story you may have heard. "Donkey Kong 64 only used the expansion pak to get around a memory leak glitch and didn't actually need it otherwise." That's one that's popped in the past few years according to a Rare staffer. However, another Rare employee has recently come out in defense of the game. The story is a little more complicated it seems.
According to this interview, DK64 DID in fact have a memory leak issue, but that leak was apparently resolved before launch, and the decision to use the expansion pak was made long before that glitch turned up in any case. The game really does make use of the added RAM and couldn't be easily patched to rid itself of the requirement. Now, this doesn't stop other Rare employees from mocking them, as some of the developers behind Conker have been recorded stating their team was "just better" at optimizing their game than the DK64 team was. That may well be true, but at the very least, no, it doesn't seem like they spent money packing in a free accessory just to get around a game critical glitch.
The game's framerate averages around 30FPS, which is pretty good for this particular generation and very playable. Too many games on this system tried to push it a bit too far visually and framerate often suffered, especially coming off the SNES and NES generations which generally had 60FPS games (albeit with some slowdown issues at times). This one manages better frame rates than many, but it isn't a fully steady 30FPS, and there are a few busier areas where the frame rate dips. All in all though, unlike later Rareware games like Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day, the frame rate doesn't get in the way of enjoying the game.
Now where was I? Visually, DK64 still looks good, at least artistically. The "smoothness" of it's art design also manages to make it stand out from Rare's other platformers. It's a unique visual design to be sure, and it does stand out as one of the better looking N64 games. Bright colors, engaging animations, it has all it needs to make it easy to identify what you're looking at and what's important. There is one major tradeoff. The fade-in is strong. While the game doesn't have fog as bad as other games, it exchanges it for a trick where things like enemies items and special buildings and barrels don't actually appear until you get closer. They "grow" into place once you're close enough. On the plus side, you can still see the overall map design of a level from far away, but you'll be practically right on top of items of note before they actually appear. Compare this to Rare's other games and it's pretty noticeable. It's a better solution than level fog at least, and it won't hurt the game's playability too much.
Here's a little anecdote. The original design for the Kong's weapons were realisitic gun designs made of metal and everything. Miyamoto took one look at that, then drew a wooden gun complete with twigs and leaves growing out of it, the "coconut gun" was born. Thank goodness for that. Realistic guns have no place in a game with anthropomorphic cartoon animals. At least, not until Shadow the Hedgehog. It had to wait a few years!
Sound: Theeeey're finally here, performing for YOU! Grant Kirkhope once again wrote the soundtrack after his amazing success with Banjo Kazooie, and it shows. The music in this game still stands as some of the best on the system. It's hard to match the likes of Click Clock Wood, admittedly. That may well have been Grant's opus, but there's still a number of memorable tunes. They all however are overshadowed by the rather unexpected choice of an opening song, the DK Rap. Banjo opened with a musical hoe down, and so they originally intended to do something similar with the Kongs. That's the original source of their varied musical instruments. However, numerous people on the team started liking the thought of a silly rap song parodying this popular British single:
The result has gone done in infamy, with far too many people not really "getting" that it was always intended to be tongue in cheek. Nowadays it has a lot more fans of it as a "so bad it's good" tune that's far too catchy for it's own good, finally being appreciated in the manner it was originally intended.
My favorite tune has to be Fungi Forest- both day and night versions. It gets close to that Click Clock Wood vibe. Second to that would be crystal caverns. Sound design is also pretty well done, with the exception of "Sssssplat!" which seems to randomly trigger any time you get a little too close to a high ledge.
Controls: They packed in a LOT of abilities this time around. For the most part, the controls are pretty solid, but admittedly a lot of Kong actions feel a little... shallow. The instruments in particular are basically just a fancy way to press a button, and taking pictures of banana fairies is a rather limited function of a C button command. However, each Kong does have enough unique abilities to make them all fun to play as. Lanky may be my personal favorite thanks to how fun the handstand is. Chunky is... clunky.
Game design: Here's where it gets complicated. On the good side, this really is a vast and expansive game. Taking a page from previous collectathons on the system like Mario 64 and Rare's own Banjo Kazooie, this team also decided to use a large hub world. The combination of DK Island and K. Rool's floating fortress make for enough range to be a decently sized and varied hub world, but there's something a bit... lacking. The issue comes down to how DK Island itself most of your exploration to the thin strip of beach circling the island. Everything's so spread out beyond that that it doesn't feel like "much" even once every opening has been unlocked. The hub world doesn't feel as developed as it could be as a result. The locations each part of the hub world leads to also seem almost entirely unattached from where they are. It's just unpolished compared to Grunty's Lair or Peach's Castle, but there's still some memorable moments. Freeing K.Lumsy resulting to a rather drastic change to the hub, the way climbing up K.Rool's ship makes things feel suddenly dark and oppressive, things like that still stand out. There's a framework of something truly legendary here but not enough time was spent bringing it to that polish needed to really make it pop.
Bosses are numerous and unique full featured experiences expanding on what we got in Banjo Kazooie. I enjoy each of them, and I certainly appreciate that while some bosses are repeats later on, they change up the mechanics enough to keep each encounter interesting. The fake paper K.Rool is a standout in sheer ridiculousness. I also adore how well the final boss and that out of nowhere boxing match came together. Yes, I would have liked a little build up to that encounter to explain it just a tad better, but it was still great fun and each phase really comes together well.
The levels are expansive with numerous hidden items and challenges. Most of them are pretty varied, but a certain set of mini-games get recycled a bit too often over the length of the game. I don't mind harder versions of a mini-game but I prefer to get the harder versions completed in one go than to keep going back to the same pot again and again. However, there's still enough unique challenges to keep that particular complaint from standing out too much. Each one is is laid out sensibly with a warping system to speed up travel around it and numerous fun challenges throughout, and most have numerous notable landmarks to make navigation both easy and memorable. It hews a little closer to the huge layouts of Banjo Tooie than the more compact and "efficient" design of Kazooie. I think I prefer that compact design more, since it leads to every last inch being filled with wonderful things and almost no wasted space between challenges or collectibles, but if you prefer the Tooie design, this game does amazingly well... EXCEPT...
-The problems: We can't discuss the gameplay without talking about the game's biggest issue. First the complaint- "There's way too much to collect! It burned me out on collectathons!" Well, today we have Super Mario Odyssey and A Hat in Time, two collectathon games that managed to rekindle that obsession without burning players out (well mostly). Super Mario Odyssey has a simply ridiculous number of power moons to find. Now, what makes those two succeed where DK64 failed? I think that comes down to the real problem that made those collectibles stand out. Character switching...
Every level requires you to switch characters. It's not so bad in the first level, or the second, at least at first until you have to revisit them later on. But, soon you start to realize things. In order to switch characters, you need to find a barrel. In Banjo Kazooie, you can switch with a few button commands (or to be more accurate, Banjo and Kazooie are simply alternate moves on the same single "character".) In the DKC games, your other character is following you around at all times, and you just switch with the press of a button. This game? The moment you notice a change in banana color, back you go. You swap, you follow the trail, open a gate, and then there's a button. Time to head back! The constant switching wears on one's patience over time. I believe the game's massive list of collectibles would be far more tolerable if all that character swapping was streamlined or eliminated in some cases.
Here's two big fixes I'd suggest for any remake. One, all the bananas and coins should be collectible by every character. Leave them colored as they function as breadcrumb indicators of what sort of character challenge lies ahead, but let everyone pick them up. This alone will go a long way towards fixing the issue since so much of the character switching is just because a new trail in a different color showed up along the map path. Secondly, allow instant character switching just like the DKC series. Thirdly, lower the requirements to access the final boss and beat the game. Now, this will necessitate removing all the DK barrels from the game since they're all basically useless with this change, but have no fear. I submit that any time you continue your save file, you go "into the barrel" to pick the character you'll start your session with. That way, we keep the charming and funny interactions between the kongs on that character select screen.
Above I've linked a rom hack which accomplishes that. It does a few other things I disagree with (I don't mind needing to unlock each kong before I'm allowed to switch to them, for example), but the primary change of letting you switch kongs instantly is the major one. A little further work to add a cloud of smoke animation when switching and it would be perfect. This would massively streamline level progress. This is a rather popular mod right now and with good cause. It essentially "fixes" the game according to numerous reviews and highlights what DK64's real problem was all along. If you have an Everdrive 64, stick a modded ROM of DK64 and enjoy. It is, right now, the definitive way to enjoy the game.
Completion: Alright here it is. This is either going to make or break it for a lot of people even with the hack. The game has a pretty high completion ceiling before you're able to actually beat it and see the credits. Much like Jet Force Gemini, this frustrated a lot of people (such as reviewers) who may prefer to just enjoy the ride rather than feel compelled to find absolutely everything. It's that final door that ends up requiring a bit too much. I think if they dialed down the final gate requirements a lot more people wouldn't have complained at that juncture. From my perspective, I wouldn't have minded if most of the special items were optional to beat K.Rool "the first time". What I mean by that is I'd grown used to how DKC2 and DKC3 handled all their collectibles. Collecting all of them wasn't needed to "beat" the game, and get a decent ending. They were needed however to find out that there was a whole hidden section of levels and a hidden boss to defeat. DKC2 handled it best, and if they had some more time, I'd have loved to wonder what the point of getting those keys and coins and so on were only to find out that after defeating K.Rool in his boxing match, there was a hidden super secret level right at the back of the arena. That level would be especially challenging and dedicated to finding the very last few golden bananas combined with all the keys and special coins and blue prints from earlier in order to unlock the true ultimate final boss fight against... I dunno K.Rool piloting his own giant fortress that turns out to actually be a giant robot, while Kong and the gang "pilot" K.Lumsy.
Stop & Swop: Alright, it has to be said. There is very VERY tenuous evidence that they may have intended DK64 to be a "stopover" game in between BK and BT for unlocking stuff like the ice key. The only evidence is the name "ice key" still in the game's code, but that could very well be a leftover from BK still in the game. That said, it still could have been amazing if the three games had in fact linked up with each other. Nintendo of course put a stop to this rather famously. It wasn't so much that Nintendo DID change the hardware in a way that prevented the hardware trick from working, more that it was a distinct possibility, and the hack they were trying was such a rough and bodged thing in the first place that it wasn't exactly safe in the first place. Thing is, as much as we may wish that such a feature made it into the game, the sad truth is we only have Rare themselves to blame, specifically BK's development team. If they truly wanted to use old save game data in future games, they should have coded in N64 memory card support. That's all there is to it. Yes, some would be left out in the cold having to buy an additional memory card to do that save data transfer, but as it stands NO ONE gets to do that (outside the Xbox 360 versions), so it's clear in hindsight what would have been the better option. If you DO want to take advantage of Stoppy Swoppy, the XBox 360 versions of BK and BT make use of it, using Nuts & Bolts instead of DK64 as that interrim game.
Conclusion: Honestly I still love this game, but that backtracking had kept me from playing through it again until that new mod came along. That mod makes this game easily compete with Banjo Tooie, even if Banjo Kazooie over the years has slipped into a well deserved top of my N64 collectathon list. If you haven't played this game before because of the bad rep it's collecting gets, or even if you have but got burnt out because of it, I implore you to try it with that mod. You may find your opinion of it go up dramatically. For those who already loved the game, your opinion of it, like my own, will only go up further. There are still imperfections in this game of course, such as the rather lackluster hub world or the levels being perhaps a bit too expansive in the sense of not utilizing that vast space effectively, but Banjo Tooie is guilty of those issues as well and neither flaw holds it back from being one of the best games on the system. So pull this game out again and TAKE IT TO THE FRIDGE!
