Renzatic on 9/3/2020 at 05:49
I just fired up the original DKC in BSNES. You could gain extra air by rolling off a ledge, and jumping just a split second after you leave the ground. Thing is, you had to roll. If you just walked off, you wouldn't be able to jump midair.
Anarchic Fox on 10/3/2020 at 19:33
A great deal of care and passion has been put into the scenes of Donkey Kong punching boss animals.
Aja on 11/3/2020 at 15:00
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Glad you like it! :D
Quick protip: if you want to see all the levels in the game, the only collectibles you need to worry about are the KONG letters. The puzzle pieces are just for the 100%'ers who want to get all the action figures and fill the art gallery.
That is a good tip! I've had this game for maybe a year now but haven't gotten very far in it, partly because, well, it's difficult, but also because it feels like there's an overwhelming number of collectibles. I'll focus on the KONG letters now.
Renzatic on 12/3/2020 at 03:22
Glad to be of help. :D
Anarchic Fox on 23/3/2020 at 05:52
The owl was a long, tense ride. Somehow I beat it my first try, yet felt as drained as I do after a Dark Souls boss.
Now, three monkeys are kicking my ass. It's Sekiro all over again.
Anarchic Fox on 25/3/2020 at 03:53
I beat the monkey. Ahem.
At first, I thought the recent 2D Mario games compared unfavorably to this one in every way. I see an exception now. There are many places in DKCTF where you will die if you simply do not press a button long enough -- the autoscroller sections come to mind. In many other places, death is only one mistake away. This never happens in the Mario games, where every death requires multiple mistakes in succession. This makes the Mario games easier in general, but it does hold for their harder parts too, and it's a way in which the 2D Marios are superior to DKCTF.
Anarchic Fox on 16/4/2020 at 13:21
There's a truism that water levels are bad. Or at best, they're worse than the remainder. The exceptions that come to my mind are games that are entirely water levels, like Aquaria and Subnautica.
DKCTF has an entire world of water levels. What the hell. Then it has a water level boss. I had to set the game down for long intervals, but thankfully I'm now through. Anyway, I'm not going to go for secret levels, just the main ending, so that means I can stop stressing out over KONG.
Anarchic Fox on 12/5/2020 at 04:36
World five down. Its theme was delightful, and the boss fight was very fun, though I admit Donkey Kong was in the wrong.
The companion system is... kinda terrible. You grab a barrel near the start of the level, and now you have twice the health plus an extra ability. Then, you die at a checkpoint with no barrel, and the level becomes more than twice as hard. It's making me wonder whether the entire notion of temporary powerups in platformers is a vestige of the early days of console gaming, better off discarded.
In most games I can't achieve a state of flow, but platformers are an exception. I'd characterize the best hardcore platformers, like Super Meat Boy, Jumper and Celeste, as ones which require you to achieve a state of flow in order to advance. After the first two worlds, DKCTF became a game that punishes me for feeling flow. Every time I stop proceeding cautiously through a level and start to feel like I can improvise responses to its hazards, I die. Then I'm back at a checkpoint (likely without a companion), having to creep through the level to beat it.
I have no doubt that there's a level of skill beyond which flow becomes possible again, but I'm not willing to invest the effort to attain it, when the middling skill level is so painful.
Renzatic on 12/5/2020 at 21:14
I liked the water levels alright. They weren't the best in the game, but they were a helluva lot better than most water levels you see in other games.
Anarchic Fox on 14/5/2020 at 15:39
That's true.
Anyway, something strange happened: I'm having nearly as much fun on World 6 as I did on the first ones. Partly it's because the level design improved, and partly because I quite like levels that force you to keep moving. I may have also passed a skill threshold while grinding World 5, and realizing that Dixie Kong's L+R golden hearts stack (up to eight hearts!) made play much easier. So, my final opinion won't be nearly as negative as I thought.
That being said, World 6's autoscroller is miserable garbage.
