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Platform: Gameboy
Advance
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Donkey Kong Country 3Score: 7.0/10
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Pros: - Looks good - Controls well - Plenty to do - Good level design
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Cons: - What was new and fresh when this game first came out is beginning to get stale now
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Related Articles: Review: Donkey Kong Country 2 (GBA)
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"...it is a little bit long in the tooth. It’s worth picking up, but recommended to wait and see if the price comes down a bit first."
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Whenever
a game gets re-released for a new platform there’s a couple of things
that need to be kept in mind. First
there’s the question as to whether the game is still as relevant as it
was years ago when it was initially released on its first system.
On top of that, one has to figure out if the game is worth buying
again if they happened to have gotten it when it first came out.
Is it so good that it’s worth snatching the new, portable
version? Now, how does
Donkey Kong Country 3 (DKC3) factor into these criteria?
In terms of relevancy, the game holds up pretty well, although
it’s tough to recommend buying the game if you already bought the SNES
version of the game. After
all these years, the GBA version of the game is a decent platformer, but
not something to kick the doors down to get.
It’s one of those titles that’s worth picking up if you can
find it for around $20, but not much more.
Just
like previous installments in the series, Donkey Kong’s kin find
themselves fighting the nefarious King K. Rool, who is an evil genius
with a pension for trying to take over the chain of islands these
sapiens call home. This
time around, players take control of both Dixie Kong, and her baby
cousin, Kiddy Kong. The two work as a tag team where one can take the lead,
jumping, smashing, and dodging enemies, swapping out with their partners
as players please. The two
can also work together to perform special attacks, or get into hard to
reach places. This dynamic
was also seen in Donkey Kong Country 2, and holds up just as well now.
The controls are solid, but getting the apes to crouch and
crawl under tight spaces did feel a little awkward.
Once players get up to speed on the controls, they’ll find themselves bouncing, running, and whacking their way through the game's various thematic chains of islands, each with bosses peppered along the way. The level design is quite well done. There are a lot of opportunities to explore, and there’s a fair number of contraptions to fiddle with along the |
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way. The boss fights themselves are refreshingly challenging.
I found myself having to do a lot more work to beat these guys
than a lot of the other bosses found in games of the genre.
There’s definitely a lot of dexterity required here, and it’s
most welcome.
Just
like the Donkey Kong Country games that came before, this third installment
has some very nice 16-bit-esque visuals.
Everything is quite crisp with a nice use of colors, and the
character designs are memorable, as are many of the animations.
On top of the various standards in DKC3, there are plenty of |
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extras,
like unlockable goodies, and tons of things to collect.
The problem with collecting is that despite it being fun, and
novel in the platformer genre years ago when the whole thing was new,
we’ve been beaten over the head with this thing over the last few
years. Yes, this is a
re-release of an older game, and it’s taking something that was fresh back in the day and redoing it on a portable, but that in no way negates
the fact that the genre has moved forward a lot in the last few years.
Collecting is just beating the dead horse in terms of overly used
features in platformers nowadays.
At
the end of the day, this is a solid platformer.
It has all the features that one would expect from such a game,
and does them well. However,
DKC3 does suffer from being a remake of an older title, and because of
that it is a little bit long in the tooth.
It’s worth picking up, but recommended to wait and see if the
price comes down a bit first. As
of this writing, the game is retailing for around $30US at most stores,
which feels a little expensive for what the game provides.
One would be better off waiting until the title comes down to
about $20. It’s a good game, but at full price one would be better off
buying one of the newer, more up to date platformers on the market.
Mr. Nash (January 3, 2005) Search for Related Topics: ...More GameBoy Advance Game Reviews... |
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