The game uses an old password save file system so there are no stats. That being said, the main game wouldn’t have had any either since there are no collectibles or anything like that.
I finally went and played a few Toad Rallies so now this game is set for the review. As you may know, you have to actually pay the 10 dollars in order to play the full Mario Run game. I’m not going to call that a ripoff because then you should just consider it like any other game. I suppose 10 dollars isn’t all that much, but I’m not willing to pay that at the moment so this review is of the free content. I acknowledge that the full game would probably be closer to the next level.
Well, this game’s a free runner so there isn’t much to say about the gameplay. You’re always running and you’ll automatically jump over enemies so you just have to focus on not falling into any holes. The game is super easy at the moment, but all Mario games have an easy World 1. It’s to build you up to what is to come. You can practice your tricks on the enemies and at least rack up the experience points. You are able to play the first three levels under the free form of the game. The other main thing to do is to play the Toad Rallies. Basically, they are time trials against other players and the winner is the one who gets the most coins. Grabbing Toads through cool tricks are a must if you want to win these. I’ve won a few battles and it’s fun to get the extra Toads, but it is a bit of a gambling game as you can also lose toads when you lose. That part will probably get annoying as you face tougher levels.
The graphics are sharp as you would expect them to be. The Mario characters all look good and it is clear that this is in the Super Mario Bros series. They even have the nice spin to get you some extra air distance. The music wasn’t working for me at first, but got better later on. It’s Mario so the musical themes and the sound effects are on point as you would expect. On a technical level, this game certainly does not disappoint at all. There is very little content under the free version so there isn’t much replay value at all, but the full game should give you a good amount for the 10 dollars, not to mention all of the extra characters that you’ll unlock.
You can also earn some My Nintendo Points here, which you can use for musical themes for your 3DS or even the occasional download game once every few months. What holds this game back a little is the Free Runner format. Honestly, I’d prefer to control Mario myself as this style could get a little annoying after a while. The extra challenge should definitely help with that though. I don’t see this becoming as big of a phenomenon as Candy Crush or Pokemon Go, but it is a nice entry to the Mobile Market for Nintendo. I hope to see them continue to participate, but I also want them to give us some epic games on the Switch. They have a lot of good series under their belt so they have to make the most of them.
Overall, I’d recommend Super Mario Run. It’s a fun little title and this game is probably worth the 10 dollars more than some other games. However, don’t expect too much out of the gameplay and there are other Free Runners that you could play for free…just throwing that out there. The game isn’t for Android yet and unfortunately, it appears that this may be the case for quite a while thanks to security concerns. Don’t worry, you guys aren’t missing a whole lot. I’ll probably play this game a little longer, but then it’s time to put it on the shelf. I don’t really play mobile games all that much anyway. For the most part, I like to just stick to 2 of them at a time and I already have Pokemon Go and Marvel’s Contest of Champions on the front. The latter is just about done though so I’ll probably have a review for that one up soon as well. Now I’m set for that Switch Mario game coming out soon.
Overall 7/10
After all these years, I finally got to play Country 3. While the DK series never got quite as popular as Mario or Kirby, it turned into a decently large series in its own right. The games are always fun and they are pretty consistent. This one may be the weakest in the trilogy, but it’s still a good game that has a solid amount of replay value and the campaign length is fair.
There’s no real plot to this game unless you read the booklet. You just start off on the adventure as Dixie Kong and her partner Kiddy Kong. The two of them blast away at bosses as they go through each world. Eventually, you defeat the last boss and find Diddy Kong and Donkey Kong. It turns out that they were kidnapped while they had been dreaming about bananas. It’s a pretty big twist since it turns out that they were also controlling one of the many murder bots that had been chasing the heroes for a while. I don’t think DK will be able to talk his way out of this one!
You can’t really call spoilers on this considering that there is virtually no plot. The gameplay is why you’re playing a DK game anyway. It has the standard jumping and avoiding obstacles as well as some extra features. Dixie Kong can glide which you can use to cheese quite a few levels. Kiddy Kong can perform a roll which knocks out most enemies. Various animal friends will also come out to play. You can transform into a bird which lets you fly or into an elephant which can be pretty neat. Unfortunately, the elephant is afraid of mice so prepare for a lot of stopping. It’s usually better not to use the elephant, but you aren’t always given a choice.
There is something about the gameplay that does make it less engaging that the average side scroller. Granted, Mario and Sonic set the bar rather high. I think it is due to the fact that the DK levels are typically a little more slow paced. You can blast through the ones that are horizontal, but the vertical levels must be taken at a slow pace or you will hit enemies before they even show up on the map. That definitely wouldn’t be any fun now would it? Unlike Mario where you just jump along and hope for the best, you must use some more strategy and carefully decide what to do. If you lose, prepare yourself for the long climb back up at times since there are periods where you must wait.
Still, it’s definitely fun and the game does have a good difficulty curve. It starts off rather easy and by the end it gets a little harder. It never gets too insane though and ends up having a nice balance of “fun” and “tough”. The bosses are usually tough until you figure out what you are supposed to be doing. Once you figure that part out, they get quite a bit easier to deal with. The final boss definitely took me a few tries as I would beat one phase, but then die on the next. I did this again and again until I finally conquered all 5 phases. It was a well made boss fight.
For replay value, there are a lot of coins to collect. You’ll want to focus on the DK coins and the Gold Coins since the silver ones appear to be unlimited. The DK coins are obtained by defeating the shield wearing Kremlins. You must throw a barrel behind them in order to defeat this minion. It usually involves a fun puzzle. The Gold Coins are obtained by completing the B Barrel challenges. They are fairly quick, but mess up and you’ll have to replay the level again to give it another whirl. One unfortunate part about collecting these things is that there is no way to check which levels you have already done. That means you have to manually check them out and complete the challenge again to see if the Gold Coin is still around. This can be a little tedious if you plan to grab them all so you should have a notepad on hand.
Also, beware of the boat guy. He builds you a new boat after every few worlds so that you can travel to new ones. On the final expedition, he’ll ask for 50 Gold Coins. It may seems like you need to get them to make it to the final world, but you can actually go up the waterfall with your other vehicle. I’m sure that it’s a fun post-game vehicle, but you should at least be aware of the fact that it is optional. That’s probably a good thing since grabbing 50 Gold Coins would take a very long time.
Graphically, the game holds up well. Kranky Kong taking out his sunglasses at the end was pretty intense and all of the level designs look decently good. I do wish that more of the levels took place outside though. The best looking ones were the early beach levels. I didn’t care for the factory ones quite as much since the dark backgrounds and colors made everything a little harder to see. The brighter levels had a tendency of looking a lot sharper. As for the soundtrack, it was all right. Unfortunately, I can’t say that any tunes were memorable, or even all that good to be honest. It is certainly not ready to go to Mario levels of awesome quite yet in this regard.
Overall, Donkey Kong Country 3 is a decent way to end the trilogy. It’s a fun game, but I don’t think that the gimmicks worked all that well. The fundamentals were sound though. I would have preferred to have DK be the main character and we could have just had Dixie replace Diddy. Based on the dialogue, Dixie may actually be a little more intense than Diddy Kong. She got some good burns in on King K Krool. (I don’t see why the guy is a fan favorite. I never cared for him all that much as a villain) Diddy Kong basically spent the game being starstruck so he didn’t do much. I didn’t like Kiddy Kong at all, hopefully he’ll be better once he grows up a bit. More of a plot would have been fun to flesh out the characters…or at least an opening cutscene to show DK being kidnapped. The bosses are nice and imaginative and the game has a good amount of replay value. If you don’t have this game yet then I definitely recommend it. You don’t need to compare it to the other side scrollers and you can just enjoy it for what it is. A fun little game that help beef up your Nintendo collection and DK knowledge. Now I’m one step closer to being caught up with the series.
Overall 7/10
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