As one of Nintendo’s earliest flagship video game franchises, Donkey Kong has been through quite a few phases over the decades. The franchise has had several eras and iterations, from the 1980s arcade days to the bongo-beating Donkey Konga era of the Gamecube, but perhaps the most truly cherished period was Rare’s highly successful Donkey Kong Country trilogy of 2D platformers for the Super Nintendo. Nearly a decade and a half after Country 3 concluded the SNES trilogy, Retro Studios (of Metroid Prime fame) took their own swing at bringing the Kong back to his side-scrolling roots with Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii. Another decade and a half later, we now get the chance to revisit Donkey Kong’s triumphant homecoming with Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, courtesy of Forever Entertainment who has brought it to the Switch and remastered it in the Unity engine.
He’s Finally Back To Kick Some Tail (Again)
Donkey Kong’s gotta clear out a bunch of evil tiki-looking fellows shaped like instruments trying to take over his island. Other than a very small number of cinematics (which are amusing enough and match the series’s patented sense of humor), this game is pretty much entirely about the gameplay experience. Donkey and his pal Diddy Kong must roll, jump, climb, and ride their way through eight worlds of levels to clear out this menace messing with Donkey’s island.
Donkey’s toolkit for movement is fairly simple yet effective. He can jump, slam the ground, roll forward for a burst of speed (jumping out of a roll being very effective for platforming), crouch, and even blow on things when he needs to. Along the way, he can grab barrels and throw them, including specially marked barrels that contain his pal Diddy. The addition of Diddy Kong grants the player additional health points, the ability to infinitely chain together rolls, and the ability to hover in the air briefly while holding the jump button. Donkey is fun to move around with, although it’s significantly more fun to play the game when Diddy is tagging along than when not, and he has to be rescued any time the pair take too much damage or fall to their death…which is alas quite common.
Cry Out For Mummy
Donkey Kong Country as a series developed a reputation for its high difficulty, and while I wouldn’t describe Donkey Kong Country Returns HD as an especially difficult game (thanks to a few features), it is one where failure is quite frequent. While you can play in the “Original Mode” for something closer to the Wii experience (minus the motion controls), this remaster includes the “Modern Mode” from Returns’s 3DS version. This mode grants the Kongs each an additional health point, adds a few additional useful items in Cranky’s Shop, reduces the prices of items, and allows the player to bring more of them into each stage.
One of these items, the DK Barrel, summons Diddy from anywhere at the press of a button. This is borderline game-breaking against bosses because this fully refreshes your health at the press of a button, so I opted to not buy it very often. The extra hit point was somewhat nice to have while playing on Modern Mode, but frankly it’s not very relevant for most of the game because most of my deaths in stages happened irrespective of my health count. Most of what drained my pool of lives involved falling into one of the game’s innumerable bottomless pits or colliding with an object during the game’s cart or rocket riding levels (which is an insta-kill). For that reason, most of what I bought in the shop with the banana coins were extra lives, something I had an abundance of at all times (and would have likely still had even on Original Mode given how easy they are to stockpile). So while the punishment for failure during my playthrough was low, the frequency of failure was quite high.
Float Through the Air and Climb Up Trees
Mechanically, Donkey Kong is fairly fun to control, especially when you have Diddy enabling the infinite roll which offers quite a sense of speed. Bouncing off enemies is satisfying, especially if you can chain together bounces. There’s quite a variety of stages to play through across the game’s eight worlds, and there are some highlight levels throughout.
Alas, while Donkey Kong’s toolkit is fun to use in allowing you to jump, swing, and climb across obstacles, there are definitely some elements of this game that feel a touch safe and stick rather close to the series conventions that were established by the original trilogy. While the core mechanics are solid, The level design can sometimes get kind of repetitive as there isn’t a whole lot to really change things up moment-to-moment. Given that the already excellent Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was re-released on Switch before Returns was, the improvements the former made in terms of gameplay and varied level ideas definitely stick out more when playing the remaster of the older game now. Still, there are a couple of standout levels in each world, and levels are oozing with little secrets to uncover, which can be rewarding in and of itself. This makes for a generally fun experience overall, if occasionally frustrating or repetitious and not as fully realized as follow-up titles are by comparison.
It’s Gonna Hurt
Like every Donkey Kong Country game, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD has plenty of auto-scrolling levels between the rocket and minecart levels. These are and have always been my least favorite levels across the series, mainly because you die in one hit to everything and they often have some really annoying jumps that feel like trial-and-error knowledge checks rather than enjoyable skill tests. This is further exacerbated by how easy it is to miss collectables scattered across each level like the puzzle pieces and KONG tiles (which are required to unlock bonus/postgame levels). This can make it feel more like a chore where failure just makes me intentionally die to try again.
My other main point of contention with this game is its boss battles. While I don’t think the Country games on SNES had many good ones, Tropical Freeze had enough solid and memorable bosses to prove Retro Studios was at least capable of making them fun. Alas, I don’t think they really cooked up anything worth writing home about in Returns. Several of them are exceedingly easy to solve, featuring uninteresting patterns and sometimes very simple means to cheese.
Just Digs This Tune
Presentation has always been one of the strong suits of the Donkey Kong Country series, and while I feel like Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is a well-presented game, it does have a couple of caveats. The original score is generally pretty solid, with catchy tunes that fit each level’s aesthetic and give the game a vibe. The one minor issue here is that a lot of the score is rearrangements from the scores of the original Country trilogy. And while the tracks of David Wise and Eveline Novakovic for those games are among the all-time greats of video game music, and the arrangements in this game are excellent, it does play into that feeling of this game playing it a bit safe with how much it relies on existing iconic music instead of building a unique musical identity. Returns felt designed to be something of a nostalgia trip when it released, and while it could more easily get away with doing that in 2010, its effect diminishes somewhat when playing the game yet again over a decade later on its second rerelease.
Donkey Kong Country Returns has always had rather strong art direction and visual indication. Most aspects are visually communicated well to the player and easy to understand, and the few things that are obscured are done so by design for the player to uncover secrets. Stages have enough aesthetic variety to make each world have its own visual identity, and several stages have eye-catching concepts and layouts. This is where I need to address the rhinoceros in the room.
Performing For You
So what did Forever Entertainment do to remaster this version of the game? Well, they did polish up the visuals of Donkey Kong Country Returns enough for it to look somewhere between fine to good on Switch generally. Stages and icons look pretty clean and consistent throughout, and the original game’s solid art design meant that there wasn’t a lot that needed cleaning up to begin with. There are certain spots (especially in the cutscenes) that make it noticeable that this was originally a Wii game, so it’s not what I’d call a stunning makeover, but it’s not something I have many complaints about by itself. The game runs mostly at a smooth 60FPS, which is definitely one of the highlight aspects of Returns HD since that’s not always a given for a Switch game. The game also controls well here too, though it still takes some getting used to how DK’s roll works if you’re not used to it.
In most other regards, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD unfortunately makes for an incredibly unspectacular remaster. Despite my having a digital copy of the game, it has significantly slower load times per level than even the original Wii disc had. It noticeably slows the pacing of the game, especially when retrying levels for time attack, which is something of a pity given how much fun the game’s mechanics make speedrunning levels and grinding out those fast times. Speaking of which, there currently is no online leaderboard to compare times to others with or to watch replays, something which Tropical Freeze had. There are also some other minor annoyances in this specific version of Returns, such as input lag on menus and the inability to move Donkey Kong before the spinning banana load transition disappears at the start of each level.
There’s a noticeable absence of any additional content to spice this release up. Tropical Freeze’s Switch port added an entire playable character in the form of Funky Kong, and even though he was generally meant to be a beginner character, he offered a meaningful difference in gameplay for the player to mess around with. Comparatively, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is a very by-the-numbers remaster with extremely little to sweeten the deal. Considering that this is the third release of this game and that it carries a 60$/£50 price tag, this makes for a rather underwhelming release, especially if you already own the game elsewhere.
Verdict (Ahh Yeah!)
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD makes for an okay way to play a pretty decent and generally fun (if perhaps conservative) platformer, especially if you haven’t already played Donkey Kong Country Returns before. Otherwise, it’s a pretty unremarkable remaster which lacks many meaningful improvements and has a share of minor-yet-noticeable downsides, which is a bit of a letdown for its price tag on release. While ultimately a charming and enjoyable game with some pretty good levels at spots, I find it to be just a touch on the safe side and not as dense with ideas or moments that blew me away, especially when compared to the game that followed which received much better treatment on its move to the Switch by comparison.
DONKEY KONG COUNTRY RETURNS HD IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another Nintendo game, you might want to check out our review of last year’s The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.
Many thanks go to Nintendo for a Nintendo Switch review code for Donkey Kong Country Returns HD.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
