Finding them all will require the kind of time, dedication and single-minded focus only possessed by pre-teen children and English Literature undergraduates.įor many people, finishing the game at all will be a challenge. Along with the traditional K-O-N-G letters there are hidden puzzle pieces to seek out. What savage Tory cuts? We're too busy being shot out of exploding barrels into the mouths of giant stone monkeys amongst showers of golden stars to care!Įvery location is packed with power-ups, collectables and secret bonus areas. As it turns out, these are painted in various shades of purple and populated by massive lilac bats. Good job there's also the odd rusting industrial power-plant and lake of boiling lava to provide a bit of balance.īut even the darker areas have been designed with a lighter touch. Lush jungles, sandy beaches, blue seas, pink dawns, golden sunsets, sparkling waterfalls, arching rainbows. It helps that the environments you get to explore are so picturesque. (Remember when the height of cutting-edge visual sophistication was snowflakes which went in different directions? Heady days.) This is undoubtedly the best-looking instalment in the series, and a strong contender for the title of prettiest Wii game released to date. Just as the old games did on the SNES, in fact. He's copied that stare from Nick off The Apprentice.ĭKC Returns, by comparison, looks beautifully detailed, smooth and polished. Know that they won't look nearly as pretty as you recall, but will appear to have been constructed out of thousands of small yet individually distinguishable LEGO bricks.

Remember that they weren't designed for the nice big widescreen LCD telly sitting in your lounge today. Presumably because Nintendo wants to remind us all that motion control makes for more immersive gaming, as if being a huge primate with the power to cause earthquakes feels just like shaking a small white plastic cuboid, and as if immersive is even a word.īut before you race off to download the old trio of DKC games, hold up. Old Donkey Kong Country games downloaded from the Virtual Console can be played with the Classic, so why can't this new one? Why not map the waggly moves to the shoulder buttons? And they'll probably write very strong letters to their MPs when they learn you can't play DKC Returns with a Classic Controller. The moves are easier to perform using the remote and nunchuck combo, but miserable purists who prefer good old d-pads to those new-fangled analogue sticks will no doubt whine about this.

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