Donkey Kong 64 is a huge game developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64 in 1999 before they decided to shit all over themselves.  It was the first game for the system to take advantage of the new RAM expansion pack.  In fact, the game required it to be played.  And it shows.  This game is absolutely massive for the time, setting a Guinness World Record for most collectables in a platforming game.  With 5 characters to play as, each with unique abilities and personalities, this is a classic collectathon platformer.  Coming hot off the heels of Banjo Kazooie, will this game solidify Rare as the king of the genre?  Does its quality live up to its quantity?  Let’s find out in my mighty review of… Donkey Kong 64!

The story pretty much picks up where Donkey Kong Country 3 left off.  King K Rool is back and ready to make life for our simian hero a living hell once again.  After stealing the golden bananas and kidnapping DK’s friends, K Rool sends his minions out onto DK Island to prevent DK from stopping his evil plan of blowing it up.  After a quick tutorial with Cranky Kong (who mysteriously didn’t get captured), DK heads out on his journey to retrieve the golden bananas, rescue his friends, and stop King K Rool.

Overall, it’s a standard platformer story.  Bad guy collects the things and puts them behind a wall of soldiers, good guy blasts through that wall to get the thing and beats the bad guy.  In this game, K Rool is more like a Bowser than a Grunty though.  He just kinda sits in his chair and is only used as a boss.  He doesn’t constantly make quips or qualms or actively try to stop the Kong family.

Along for the ride with DK are his friends Diddy Kong, Lanky Kong, Tiny Kong, and Chunky Kong.  Each of which have their own personalities and special abilities.  And they tend to suit each other very well.  DK is an all around character, allowing for a mix of platforming and brute strength.  Diddy is all over the place with his fun attitude which matches his rock themed soundtrack and jet pack.  Lanky is a goofball and so his abilities to pump up like a balloon and stretch his arms out make for a good compliment.  Meanwhile, tiny and Chunky have personalities that contrast their sizes and abilities.  Tiny is a go-getter with a fighting spirit, and Chunky… well…

In addition to this, the characters also have their own versions of the game’s soundtrack influenced by the instrument they play in the game.  DK has bongos, Diddy has an electric guitar, Lanky has the trombone, Tiny’s got a Saxophone, and Chunky has… A triangle.  Seriously I love Chunky so much.  The music also suits their characters very well and is composed by the always fantastic Grant Kirkhope.  And of course, I can’t talk about this game without mentioning the DK Rap.  It’s actually the first rap song I ever learned all the lyrics to as a kid.  It’s dumb, it’s goofy, and it tells you the Kongs’ abilities way too early, but I still love it.  And if it weren’t for this song, I might not have gotten into rap music as early as I did, so I can appreciate the song for that at least.

The graphics are pretty much just more of what you liked in Banjo-Kazooie, but on a larger scale.  The worlds are nice to look at, but pretty uninspired.  You have a jungle level, desert level, water level, et cetera, et cetera.  In general, the game’s presentation is serviceable and has character, but doesn’t really measure up to the magic of Banjo-Kazooie or their later games.  None of the characters talk, so we have to get to know them through things like their idle animations, which are fun, but don’t quite get a rise out of me like Banjo and Kazooie’s banter did.  And the side characters are just kinda there.  Candy Kong upgrades your instruments, Snide gives you golden bananas for every blueprint you give him, Cranky gives you new abilities with his potions, and Funky upgrades your guns.  None of them are very interesting, except maybe Cranky with his meta humor, but he can also just be a complete dick most of the time.

Finally, my biggest problem with the game’s presentation is how long the cutscenes are.  Seriously, everything in this game takes soooo long that it’s agonizing. Given how long collecting everything and playing the game takes, these cutscenes just seem excessive.  Still, at least you get a close up of dat monkey ass along the way.

As I said in the intro, DK64 is a HUGE game.  So let’s break this down.  In the game, there are 8 worlds, each with 5 golden bananas, 100 regular bananas, 10-15 banana coins, a banana medal, and a blueprint to collect PER CHARACTER! Each level also has 2-4 fairies, some upgrades from Funky, Candy, and Cranky, and a battle crown!  So with all this stuff, the game should feel really full, right?  Well, it does and doesn’t.  

It’s true, no matter where you go you’ll find something to do or collect, but most of the collectables require a specific character, so you’ll often find a barrel, switch to a character, get to a point where you need a different character, go BACK to the barrel, and then return to collect whatever it is you’re after.  This is super tedious and leaves many places feeling empty when you’re going through with the last character to clean things up.  

Why?  Why make the bananas different colors for each character?  If any character could pick them up it would have been way more fun.  Or at least better than forcing the player to backtrack for no real reason.  It takes away any puzzle element of figuring out which character to use to collect something when the color of the item tells you.  

Rare definitely got cocky thinking that they had designed the levels so well that players would enjoy the walk to and from different collectables.  Well I didn’t.  Especially not since the level is so damn huge and mostly empty.  The characters are slower than you’d expect and unlike Banjo-Kazooie where you could speed things up with a talon trot, you’re shit outta luck here.  All the characters walk everywhere with no way to speed them up.  

In a platformer this is a problem because you’re not supposed to take your time to get everywhere.  Having movement feel satisfying and responsive is the first priority in a platformer, and while the controls are certainly responsive, they’re definitely not satisfying.  On the bright side, there are teleportation pads to get from one place to the next within levels, though it would have been nice to see one that takes you to the start of each level instead of these five outside in the overworld.

Onto the characters themselves.  In addition to their regular moves stated earlier, each character gets a musical instrument, individual abilities, and a gun. The instruments are all the same in that you just go to a music pad, play the instrument, and something happens. Also all the enemies die that are near you.  There are also Cranky barrels and pads that give you abilities.  DK is invincible and gets a barrel blast mini game, Diddy gets his jetpack and can bounce high, Lanky floats like a balloon and go really fast, Tiny shrinks and teleports, and Chunky takes steroids and becomes invisible.  

These are alright abilities and the game has some fun ways to use them, but it would have been nice to use multiple Kongs in one room at the same time.  In fact, being able to switch Kongs on the fly might have made this game a much more enjoyable experience. The guns are boring.  Every character’s gun performs the same despite the different ammo and weapon type.  The aiming is atrocious. Hip-fire is pointless since you usually only take your gun out to fire at targets and your fists do a much better job.  When aiming down the sights they become super sensitive and make it nearly impossible to hit a tiny target from across the room.

Oh, and you can also use two of DK’s animal friends from previous games to help out.  You can transform into Rambi once.  In the whole game, just once.  And I’m gonna show you all the exciting gameplay that comes with bringing Rambi into the 3rd dimension. Yyyyyup.  Oh, and Enguarde the fish is here too.  Lanky is the only character that can transform into him for some reason and he can… break treasure chests and press buttons.  The way these guys are handled is pretty sad, but I guess if you just consider them a nod to the older games, they don’t take anything away per se.

Overall, I think Tiny is my favorite to play as. She’s quick and can float with her hair to make travel in this giant world much faster.  DK, Chunky, and Lanky are alright.  DK makes the game a standard platformer, Chunky can make you feel badass at certain points, and Lanky can be funny (although I think I only walked on my hands twice in my entire playthrough).  Diddy is okay on the ground, but as soon as he’s in that jetpack the game is impossible.  The controls are insanely touchy and difficult to maneuver, and shooting is unbelievably frustrating.  On top of that, if you touch the ground even a tiny bit you lose your jetpack completely!

Each level also has a bunch of mini games that range from stupid easy to impossibly hard to completely broken.  I know other reviewers have brought this up before, but holy SHIT the beaver bash levels don’t work.  This little crocodile you’re controlling is supposed to scare the beavers into the hole, only the beavers don’t run from him in a straight line.  They run at a curve, meaning when you get behind them they don’t move.  This makes it especially difficult to get them into a round hole and is really unfair.

At the end of each level is a boss and I’ve got to say, these fights can be fun.  A few are recycled in later levels with insignificant updates, but overall they’re a good time. Once you beat a boss, you can use the key they drop to unlock a part of K. Lumsy’s cage.  Then he gets happy, dances around and opens up a new level until his cage is completely unlocked.  When that happens, he’ll let you into the hideout helm where you complete a long time trial through a level requiring all 5 Kongs and fight K. Rool.  However, there’s something I need to bring up before finishing this review.  The way to finish the game.  

Okay, so you’ve gotten all the bananas you need, beaten the final level’s time-based challenge and you’re ready to fight King K Rool.  TOO BAD.  You need the Rareware coin and the Nintendo Coin to get through the door.  How do you get these, you might ask?  Well, to get the Rareware coin you have to play the Jetpak arcade game in Cranky Kong’s hut and beat his high score.  This isn’t that bad and the game makes such a big deal out of playing this game and getting the coin on your journey that you know where and how to get it.  No.  The problem is the Nintendo coin.  This fucking coin is the bane of my existence.  To get it, you must go into a level and beat 4 levels of the original Donkey Kong arcade game… in one life.  Not that bad, did it and got… a golden banana?!  That’s right. You have to beat this a second time at a ridiculous level of difficulty with only one life.  The game doesn’t even tell you that this is where the coin is.  It makes a reference to it, sure, but if I hadn’t looked it up online, I never would have known to go here and do this TWICE!  It’s blatant padding in a game that feels too long to begin with.   It’s terrible design from a company that, in its prime, had some of the best game design a player could experience.

DK 64 is a good game.  It still has that Rareware feel to it that made so many people fall in love with them from the start.  Unfortunately, the game suffers from a focus on quantity over quality.  Had they done something like removed one or two characters in place of giving the others more depth, removing some mini games to add unique twists on the ones that are fun, or shortened some of the cutscenes to work on the gun handling instead I think this could have been a really fun game.  Maybe even up there with the likes of Banjo and Conker. Unfortunately, as it stands the game is way too bogged down by problems and the coins being required for the ending left a bad taste in my mouth. That’s why I’m giving DK 64… 7 Golden bananas out of 10.