It’s time to play a very infamous DK game from a long while back. This is one of those games that you either love for how ambitious it is or it quickly begins to feel overwhelming. I’m not often a big fan of these old Rare titles but this one was actually pretty good. I definitely get how switching between characters so often feels unnecessary, but the character points are close together. Ultimately the fun gameplay and smooth controls helped to make up for some quality of life features that were not present.

The game starts with he DK crew being kidnapped by the powerful King K. Rool. DK will now have to save his friends and put a stop to all of the madness. He will need to gather 100 Golden Bananas along with a host of other items. It won’t be easy but DK is not the kind of guy to back down from a fight. King K. also has many minions at his disposal so fighting through all of them won’t be easy.

The gameplay is that of your classic 3D platformer. You will run through various worlds looking for collectibles. Each world has a set formula. There are 25 Golden Bananas in a world, each Kong can get up to 5 of them. Each Kong can also get up to 100 normal bananas, reaching 75 of them gets you a medal. You need 15 medals to unlock a sci-fi game that you have to beat in order to get a coin that lets you complete the game. So this title is definitely not shying away from its genre of being a true collectathon. Of course that was never really in doubt.

What this game does well is not force you to come anywhere close to 100% in order to beat the game. That should always be reserved for people who really want to do that and you can reward them with a secret ending or something. For example you only need 100/200 Golden Bananas and 15/35 Gold Medals in order to clear the game. I like those odds pretty well so I never felt like I had to be really exhaustive when playing through the game.

That said, I did manage to beat most of the opening worlds because in a way you save some time there. You are already familiar with the layouts after all so you may as well just finish them off right? Then for the final worlds I could go a lot faster and ignore most of the Golden Bananas as I raced to the boss. It’s just a really good balance and it’s clear that a lot of time and effort was put into these level designs.

Naturally I liked some worlds more than others but that will probably vary based on the player. For example my least favorite world was easily the underwater one. Swimming just takes too long and it’s really hard to tell where you are going. Then my favorite world was either the forest or the haunted house. There was a lot going on there but it never felt too overwhelming. In short it was the perfect balance for what the game was trying to do here.

One quality of life feature I would switch is how the power ups worked. So basically each Kong gets a power up or two in every level. You have to find the huts and get stronger. Then when you recruit a new Kong, you have to go back to the old worlds and get the power ups. Once you are in the final worlds then you can do this at one time but this did require a lot of back tracking throughout the game.

In some ways I guess you could call it a Metroidvania in that sense. Again, the game was pretty good about this. Backtracking doesn’t feel as bad as it could have since there are a lot of quick travel points. The game also does a good job of pointing out where you haven’t been yet. It’s not perfect as some mechanics are really not explained well but you can’t win them all. On the whole the game does a lot more things right than wrong.

The difficulty is fairly high though. Without rewind you can actually expect to lose quite a few times. Specifically the minigames are really unforgiving. You have to complete several tasks under a strict time limit and I dare say that I would have lost at least half of them on my first try. The final level is also intense with another strict time limit. The more blue prints you unlock ahead of time, the easier this will be. Each one unlocks another minute which is handy. You’ll likely get a ton of them just from playing the game normally though.

On the technical aspects the game holds up really well too. The graphics are colorful and really pop out at you. These were the Kongs in their ultimate designs. The levels are really colorful and this title must have pushed the Nintendo 64 to its limits back in the day. The soundtrack is also far better than I expected. I have to be honest and say that I was not expecting much. The DK games tend to sound okay but usually don’t have too many stand out themes. This one actually sounds really good throughout. Additionally even the jingles are really catchy. So yeh I was definitely very impressed with this one all the way through.

Naturally there is a lot of replay value here. I beat the main game in under 20 hours but getting the rest of the collectibles will likely double the playtime. This is the kind of game that gives you a lot of bang for your buck so you definitely wouldn’t want to miss out on it. If you’re worried about the backtracking and all, just know that it is considerably less time consuming than the Bano-Kazooie game. It’s also just really lenient with how low the game completion requirements are.

Overall, Donkey Kong 64 is a reminder that some of these older games have really withstood the test of time. It may be no Bananza, but it can hold its own with most of the other DK games. It was also nice to see a full fledged story with some actual voice acting. It’s not like the story is ultra deep or anything but honestly it’s just something that I can’t help but appreciate because it’s really not a guarantee in the present day. I look forward to seeing what other gams Nintendo adds to the online service.

Overall 7/10