Donkey Kong Country Returns HD Review – Apes Hit

Donkey Kong has always been the more brutal, off-putting relative to the affable, approachable Mario brothers. Both Donkey Kong Country and the Super Marios are classic side-scrolling platformers at their core, but DKC has been known less for joyful leaping and more for clenching your jaw. Now as the Nintendo Switch approaches its eighth year and Nintendo is increasingly reaching into its back catalog for ports, DKC Returns is back with a package that combines all the features of the Wii and 3DS versions–including some assists and visual enhancements–but still feels tough-as-nails in a way that could push away more casual platformer fans.

DKC Returns HD does retain the tweaks made to the 2013 3DS port, including a Modern mode (originally called New mode in the 3DS version) with additional items in Cranky’s shop and an extra pip of health. The items in Cranky’s shop are especially tuned to let you selectively tweak the difficulty, since the banana coins currency are so plentiful that you’ll almost always have enough to spare on an item or two. Those items range from help finding collectible puzzle pieces to temporary invincibility. You can always opt for the original mode to play with the original Wii difficulty, if that’s more your flavor. And it does look nicely polished on Switch, especially on the OLED screen. That said, the character models look relatively simplistic compared to Tropical Freeze, a 2014 Wii U game that was already ported to Switch in 2018.

The Modern mode is meant to sand off the edges of the notoriously punishing game and make it more approachable, but make no mistake: This is still a brutally difficult game. Even with three hearts instead of the original two, it’s very easy to lose multiple lives (or near the end, tens of lives) in a single stage as you learn its rhythms and assorted traps. And the difficulty in DKC Returns is true to its roots, which centers heavily on memorization. The game frequently introduces threats too quickly to react to the first time, and DK himself feels stiff and heavy compared to the acrobatic Mario. Trickier stages will even give the appearance of one type of obstacle and then frustratingly punish you for reacting to the fake-out.

The level design is where DKC Returns stands out the most, with a wide variety of biomes that introduce unique mechanics and visual flourishes that may only be used once or twice. One stage might have you riding the rails while the next could put you in silhouette with only DK’s bright red tie as a splash of color. One of my favorites is set against a massive storm creating continuous tsunamis, making each moment a mad dash to the next wall that will protect you. And the stages make excellent use of the space to hide secrets, usually tied to pulling off an extra-stylish move. You can simply jump on an enemy, for example, but if you hit A at the perfect time, you’ll get a boost and jump higher into a hidden platform that leads to a bonus area. Those nooks and crannies create lots of replay value if you want to uncover everything DKC Returns has to offer.

If you die multiple times in a stage, a helpful pig will appear to offer you the Super Guide, but I’m not sure I understand the point of it. As the prompt notes, it doesn’t actually count towards completion, so you can’t just tag in the AI assistant to finish a level for you. It also pointedly doesn’t even attempt to grab collectibles, even when they’re generally on the path it’s already using. That means it doesn’t show you the locations of secrets, so you can’t use it to scope out an optimal path to grab all the optional K-O-N-G letters or puzzle pieces. It essentially just shows you how to get through a stage, and even though it gives you a pretty good rundown, simply being shown the layout still leaves you to execute with perfect precision.

Like any platformer, the difficulty has peaks and valleys, and some stages you can nail on the first run. It’s a very satisfying feeling, especially when you suddenly find yourself catching your breath upon reaching the end goal. Difficulty spikes can sneak up on you, though, and it’s sometimes hard to tell if a stage will be unusually difficult until after you’ve spent several lives reaching a checkpoint. At that point, it’s a tough choice between quitting to buy some helpful items from Cranky’s shop or brute-forcing your way through the rest of the stage.

Even if you do make a pit stop at his shop, Cranky’s items take some trial and error to learn their intricacies. For example, despite the name, the invincibility item doesn’t actually make you invincible–you’re still susceptible to spikes, crashes, and falls. The invincibility item effectively just adds five more pips to your health and gives DK a golden sheen, and once those are spent you go back to your regular lifebar. Graciously, this effect lasts through multiple lives, so if you lose one pip during a stage you’ll start again with four. But the game doesn’t explain that. If you want to be truly invincible, you’ll need to own several items, stacking them to have multiple effects at once. Any that you don’t use get returned to you so you’re not wasting resources experimenting, alleviating some of the irritation of figuring out which items you need to stack to get the effect you want.

While most of the mechanics feels appropriately in-line with modern platformers, one unwelcome holdover from other DKC games confusingly continues to persist. One button is mapped to both the roll and a ground-pound, as was the case in Tropical Freeze, with the only difference being whether you’re moving in a direction when you press it. Functionally, that means you need to make sure you’re standing absolutely still to ground pound, or you’ll just roll off in a direction instead. I died several times trying to ground-pound a button and instead rolling right off a ledge, and at least once trying to roll out of the way of an obstacle and ground-pounding instead.

But DK’s weighty controls help to accentuate one of the game’s best power-ups, Diddy Kong. Picking up a Diddy barrel effectively doubles your health bar and gives you the power to glide with Diddy’s rocket pack, and he leaves when you lose his share of hearts. It’s enough to dramatically alter the dynamic of the game, which makes it that much more punishing when you lose him. This is especially noticeable in some boss fights, including the final boss, when you can enter the battle with Diddy, lose him on the first life, and then have to go without Diddy for every subsequent attempt. It creates a certain snowball effect–if you were already struggling with the relatively maneuverable Diddy in tow, it only gets harder when he’s gone.

The classic DK-and-Diddy buddy dynamic is the clearest example of referencing the original Donkey Kong Country, especially since this one doesn’t include fellow companion characters Dixie or Kiddy Kong. Rambi the rhino makes an appearance in some stages, but the game graciously forgoes underwater stages and so there isn’t any room for Engarde the swordfish. And the villains of the game, a band of evil living totems, is a far cry from the iconic status of the stoutly crocodile King K. Rool.

All that is to say, Donkey Kong Country Returns is a throwback through and through. It’s a little less novel than it was when it first appeared on Wii and was the first DKC game in more than a decade, and at this point a lot of its refinements and clever level ideas have been surpassed by the later Tropical Freeze. It’s the best way to play DKC Returns and to revisit some truly top-class level design, though. The visual overhaul looks nice on modern displays and it encompasses the improvements made to the 3DS port. Just be warned: Given the sharp and sometimes frustrating difficulty spikes, only the most dedicated ape enthusiasts need apply.