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Donkey Kong 64 - Dark Jaguar - 9th October 2021
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.
https://tcrf.net/Prerelease:Donkey_Kong_64#Expansion_Issues
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/feature_donkey_kong_64_devs_on_bugs_boxing_and_20_years_of_the_dk_rap
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.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4961/
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!
RE: Donkey Kong 64 - A Black Falcon - 15th October 2021
I think we all know I love this game. I still consider it one of the best 3d platformers ever made and I'm sticking to that. It's high on my list of the best in the genre. Top ten certainly, maybe higher. On the subject of the mod which lets you switch characters though, I have never used it but my big problem with it conceptually is that having to get back to those points with the other characters' powers is a major element of the game, and getting rid of that would gut huge elements of the game entirely out of existence! Sure it'd make the game a lot shorter, but it'd also make it less interesting and, I would say, worse. Sure, sometimes it's just 'walk down this corridor with everyone', but a lot of the time each characters' abilities are necessary to get back to that point and I'd never think that the game would be removed by getting rid of all of that in favor of just being able to get everything outright. No way.
As for criticism though, I do have one: the four player splitscreen third person shooter style versus battle mode is... not great. It's serviceable at best and isn't really worth playing over the many better shooters on the system.
RE: Donkey Kong 64 - Dark Jaguar - 16th October 2021
The multiplayer shooter is so "blah" I forgot it even existed. Just like the same mode in Banjo Tooie, it exists but doesn't help the game.
Oh, and I think you oversell the "using unique abilities" thing when it comes to backtracking. Most of the time, the kongs are just walking around the levels to get from one challenge to the next. The specific kong abilities you actually need to get certain things are still put to the test if you can just switch right there. There's a better argument to be made for that with Mumbo's transformations in BK and BT, where navigating as a bee or whatever really does completely alter how you approach a level. Sorry, but I don't feel the same way as you do about character switching.
RE: Donkey Kong 64 - A Black Falcon - 16th October 2021
Quote:The specific kong abilities you actually need to get certain things are still put to the test if you can just switch right there.That's often not true though! There are plenty of areas with something for another Kong that isn't straightforward to get for them because of figuring out how to get back there with the other character. I know this annoys a lot of people because they just want to go to each place once, but I don't agree, I think it adds to the challenge of the game in a nice way. It made me want to keep exploring the game in a way you wouldn't have to at all otherwise. The character switching is a key part of the game and removing it would make the game worse.
As for the Banjo games, the N64 version of B-K is the most frustrating to play of the bunch (of Rare N64 3d platformers) in this regard by far because it doesn't save the basic collectible and you usually can't get all of them with the powers you initially enter a level with. This means that until you get all the powers, collecting those is a total waste of your time and you will have to redo all of that again, which I hate! DK64's design is much improved over that all around. I know the 360 version of B-K fixes this issue and that's great. As for B-T, it's a good game for sure but I like the DK characters more and never did stick with that game like I did, and have, DK64.
RE: Donkey Kong 64 - Dark Jaguar - 17th October 2021
The "high score for this run is what matters" part of note collecting in Banjo Kazooie was, in retrospect, a weakness of it's design. You're right. The XBox 360 version, which fixes that oversight, is thus the superior version of the game. Now, I do wish that it left "shadows" of already collected notes around when you reenter the level on the 360 version, and allowed you to set "single run" high scores for notes just to recreate that particular challenge for players that wanted it, but other than that it's a change for the better. At this point, the 360 version has been out longer than the N64 version had been out before that version's launch. Yes, we're old, but my point is it's been out so long at this point that it's well established by now as the "definitive" version and it's also the version included in Rare Replay. Heck, Stop & Swop is finally properly functioning between it and Banjo Tooie in that version. I can't say it's completely perfect, but the few criticisms I have are tiny nitpicks (things like the flow of the opening scenes being thrown off by the absence of the big N's logo spinning around at the start) compared to the overall improvement. The full 60 FPS is also a dramatic improvement, especially to Tooie (and outside platformers, HUGELY welcome in Perfect Dark's case). The high resolution? I'd say for N64 graphics, it works pretty nice since N64 graphics tend to be a lot smoother thanks to antialiasing. In the case of Playstation games it kinda throws off their "retro" look to boost the rendering resolution too much.
Generally speaking in the case of DK64, you often have to switch to different kongs to experience their unique ways of getting through areas anyway, thanks to the banana colors. They clearly indicate which kong's abilities are suited to this or that path, so just by swapping to whoever's bananas you need to pick up, you're in a situation where you want to just go ahead and take on each section with their skills anyway. It really doesn't take away as much as you'd think and I urge you to give the game another playthrough with this mod at least once for yourself. You may like it.