| Gameplay | A |
|---|---|
| Controls | B+ |
| Graphics | B+ |
| Presentation | A |
| Audio | B+ |
| Value | C+ |
| Vital Stats | |
| Publisher | Nintendo |
| Developer | Nintendo |
| Price | $29.95 |
| buy from MotionGaming | |
| MetaCritic score | 78 |
review by David V
My hat's off to Nintendo for their stroke of genius in the New Play Control series. Since the GameCube only sold half as many total units as the Wii has already sold in 3 years, there are many games that a lot of gamers just never played. One game that sold particularly poorly was Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, which used bizarre (but I would have loved them) bongo controllers that you beat upon with your hands to control your character through variously beautifully rendered settings. Perhaps the idea was ahead of its time.
With the advent of the Wii, its time has come back. New Play Control Donkey Kong Jungle Beat brings to the Wii for the first time Nintendo's oldest running character (tied with Mario, as they debuted together in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong) in a gorgeous 2½D platformer that every Wii owner should try. As DK, you play through various levels to collect bananas. One thing that is surprising is that the lengths of the levels are all over the place. Some take a good 5 to 6 minutes to traverse, while others are over almost before you know it. Each level has three parts, two platforming stages and a boss battle, and some of the longer parts have checkpoints to cut down on repeating too much if you get stuck on a particular puzzle. The combo system is pretty cool. You could just collect bananas, but the game rewards you for collecting them with style -- in the air, through multiple taps of the A button while airborne, spinning through them, freeing them with sonice blasts, and as long as you don't touch the ground, they keep on multiplying. You can get hundreds of bananas in a rather short amount of time. What do you do with those hundreds you collect? Use them in the boss battle as your health points! It's a great idea, and one that I've never seen in a game before.
Having never played the original game with the bongo controllers, I can't say how the New Play Control scheme compares, but I have no complaints. The analog stick controls Kong, you jump with A and pound the ground with B. The Z button triggers some special actions. Motion controls are used to attack with a sonic handclap blast in the direction the analog stick is facing. That means Kong can easily blast enemies to his sides, but he'll have to stop and look up in order to launch his sonic attack skyward. The controls do get just a little wagglish after awhile -- and your arms get tired, but I suppose that was a risk in the original -- because there's nothing elaborate about them. Shake to blast. Both the remote and nunchuk can be used for this function, but the remote is, of course, much more sensitive and reliable.
The boss battles themselves are different. Instead of finding some hidden vulnerability and exploiting it three times like typical, you have to wear them down to zero hit points, so the battles are less like Mario platformers and more like Metroid. The bosses also range from easy to mop-the-floor-with-you, leaning towards easy. I took down the first two bosses without losing much, but the third took multiple attempts. The more bananas you collect, the easier the battles are since you can hold out longer and overcome mistakes. You can restart the boss battles as many times as you have lives.
The graphics in this game demonstrate why I'm convinced that 90 percent of Wii developers just aren't trying. This four-year-old GameCube game looks better than most new 3rd party Wii games. You can actually see DK's fur, especially in close-up cut scenes. The detail is splendid for an otherwise relatively straightforward platformer. The flow of the game is punctuated with mini cut scenes, and the abrupt switching back and forth gives the whole game a frantic feel. One new addition are tiny little monkeys that show you when motion controls are available. They're scattered through the levels, miming whatever motion works.
The audio adds to the manic tone, with the volume punched to 11 and motifs on the jazzy Donkey Kong 64 theme playing throughout. I'm reminded not unfavorably of the music from Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, ironically enough. The sound effects are suitable for the purpose and will make you smile from time to time. The game gives you a generous six save slots, and the menus are all very well done and attractive, though not IR enabled.
The only thing making me hesitate to recommend Donkey Kong Jungle Beat whole-heartedly is the length of the game, which is relatively short. The replay value is in the pursuit of high scores, or high banana counts, and speed runs. If that cranks your handle, and you're a platformer fan, then add half a letter grade to the final score. For the rest of us, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is at least a good solid rental, and it may even win you over anyway. A game that was made for bongos turns out to be made for Wii just as well.
