Games I Hate: Donkey Kong 64

Games I Hate: Donkey Kong 64

Kill them. Kill them all.

Until the release of the technically fantastic, utterly huge, and gloriously lovely to look at Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64, I was a big fan of Rare’s stuff. Or at least, I thought I was.

I mean, I did really, really, enjoy Banjo Kazooie. So much so that I almost completed it many times (the end boss proving too much), and even got the XBLA remake – finally 100%ing it. But looking back at their other titles, I’m not sure I was that big a fan.

Donkey Kong Country was a horrible, fantastic looking, impossible platformer. Its two sequels were too. All three I had some fun with, before realising they weren’t really very good and were more flash than actually enjoyable. The Donkey Kong Land Game Boy games were even worse, being just as rubbish but also impossible to see on the low-res, blurry GB LCD display. Mmm, smeary.

Even Banjo Tooie, the follow-up to Banjo Kazooie was pants. Yeah, it was more of the same, literally following on from the first game, but with a larger, more irritating to navigate main “hub” – which the game’s design forced you to traipse all over after almost every jiggy was obtained. Lots of pointless backtracking over the same areas over and over and over again does not a fun game make, so every attempt to play it just resulted in frustration, boredom, or a complete loss as to what needed to be done next.

Donkey Kong 64 then. To all intents and purposes, it’s Banjo Kazooie again with more characters and different levels. It all starts off fun, collecting bananas and reaching level goals, but then new characters are unlocked and you find you have to redo the levels again, albeit sometimes differently, collecting different bananas. And the next character? Same level, more bananas. And again. And again. AND AGAIN. 100 for each character in each level. Seven levels, five apes. 3500 bananas to collect. “Fun”.

You can even see the bananas each character can collect when playing as other characters. But can you pick them up? No. It isn’t just bananas either. There are also character-specific Golden Bananas and coins. Then there’s boss keys, ammo (different for each ape), Crystal Coconuts, special coins and banana medals. Joy.

It became a slog. Levels went from amazing and exciting the first time round to dull and oh-so-bloody-tedious on the third run through,  let alone the fourth or fifth. And that’s assuming you don’t have to redo the level yet more times because you missed stuff. Oh, the merriment of trudging through the jungle for the nth time and spotting some missed bananas, only to realise you’re the wrong Kong and have to go back in as the right one and do it all again to get to them. Even the masochists can’t enjoy that, surely?

Most of all, I hate Donkey Kong 64 for what it marked the start of – a terrible downturn in the playability (not the technical quality) of Rare games. Starfox Adventures. Grabbed by the Ghoulies. The GBA Sabre Wulf game that wasn’t anything to do with Sabre Wulf. Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts – all far from the glorious days of old. I’ll give you two exceptions – Viva Pinata and its sequel – but even they are less game and more gardening/zoo simulators.

And what of Rare now? Creating Xbox 360 avatar clothes, aren’t they? Horrific.

0 Comments

  1. Never played DK64, but yep, Rare seem to have gone a long way downhill in a surprisingly short time. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (their last full-price game, I think) is awful. Not, as you say, technically poor, just not anything like as much fun as it thinks it is.

    Perfect Dark Zero deserves a second chance, though. I played it again after the XBLA release of the original, and honestly struggled to recall what I hated about it. Apart from Joanna being a totally different person, of course. And the stupid achievements. And the wonky controls (although, again, they didn’t seem quite as wonky on my second attempt). Okay, so it’s not the top-notch “AAA title” (God, I hate that term) it should have been, it’s aged so poorly that it almost feels like you’re playing a PS2 game, and it isn’t a worthy sequel to the magnificent original, but it’s certainly worth the 99p you can probably pick it up for these days.

    Yes, damning with faint praise, I suppose. Oh Ultimate, how did it come to this?

    Duncan Snowden
  2. You obviously don’t understand how Donkey Kong 64 functions, even on a basic level. You don’t HAVE to pick up the regular color coded bananas, just enough to unlock the boss (which Kong’s bananas, it matters not). There are 5 golden bananas each level for every character, so you don’t need to collect the bogus 3500 sum you mentioned. No Kong’s objectives are the same, so I don’t see the “chore” it takes to go back to a level and get the later characters’ golden bananas, you’re not even coming close to doing the same things over again. Hell, you typically NEED the later characters to unlock blocked off portions of the level. Where is the chore of returning to a level, when if you go back you see something new?! And if you’re going through a level with a certain Kong and getting their golden bananas, you practically trip over ALL of the regular bananas/coins you can get. Also the ammo and crystal coconuts can be picked up by every Kong, as can the special coins and banana medals (the later two of which aren’t even needed). It’s not even close to being the repetitive scavenger hunt you make it out to be. You’re hardly accurate. Great game.

    Jacob
  3. I have been scavenging for articles like this. I believe, from reading quite a bit of information on some of these older games I played, from reviews, to user ratings, and from personal experience- that a lot of these games have aged so badly that they can no longer be considered functional. I recall having that itch in the back of my brain when I was younger when it came to Banjo Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, and of course, Donkey Kong 64. The niggling feeling that it was tedious, but I was too young to understand how to formulate that feeling.

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