Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze!

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is in stores since friday the 21st of february! (in europe) Off course me and my boyfriend pre-ordered the game so when we got it we were super excited!! The very first Donkey Kong which is totally playable in MULTIPLAYER!! If you hadn’t had a good reason to buy a Wii U, I guess the new Donkey Kong is a good reason as any. If you are a parent looking for a fun and easy game for you children, this is not it! The game looks cute but the Donkey Kong platform games always have a high difficulty. This makes the game very challenging for experienced gamers.

So what is the new DK like? I can’t say it enough times but the Wii U is a totally new and powerfull console and the HD quality in which you can play the games is really amazing. The fur of the monkeys looks soft and the colors are so bright. So before I started playing I was already gawking at my tv screen. Fun fact: the music is composed by the composers who also made the music for the very first Donkey Kong. So the feeling at first is good, let’s review the gameplay.

Player 1 is Donkey Kong, always. Then you have the multiplayer option for player 2 and you can choose between: Diddy, Dixie or Cranky Kong. In previous games Cranky Kong has a place where he sells extra items (lives in the shape of balloons, potiens etc.) since he is a character in the game now, a new member stepped in to sell us those things. Funkey Kong! He looks very funny, and makes a great addition to the family. As my boyfriend is player number 1, I’m left with the options, which character should I be? You can’t switch during the game but everytime you start the game you can choose who you want to be. For my fist pick I went for the girlie monkey:

Dixie!
I always find it very funny to play with a girlie character mainly because I’m a girl too. So about Dixie. She has hair that is the color and shape of a banana! With this hair she gets the ability to fly a little bit. This option comes in very handy at some points. I will try to explain what she actually does. When you jump with Dixie she jumps, and then falls down again. If you hold the button to jump, before she will fall to the ground again she will go up and even higher then she usually jumps. This way it’s easy to get items which are placed high or when you fall of a cliff, quickly hold the jump button and she might float back up high enough to save yourself. She also giggles funny sometimes.

Diddy
This cute little monkey has a jetpack on his back! With this he can fly a little bit too! I guess I was very spoiled with Dixie as she flies up a little bit, Diddy does not have this feature. He floats and stays on the same height but can come further because of his jetpack. So I guess it’s all about what you think is better for yourself. I didn’t play that long with Diddy because if two characters can fly, I’d rather stay with the girlie version.

Cranky
He can’t fly, but has another very cool feature. As he is a bit old, he caries around a stick to walk with. When you play the game you encounter lots of obstacles, for example a pointy road. This rock like road with pointy things in it will kill you if you walk on it. So you will have to jump over these roads all the time. Or not? This is where Cranky Kong is at his best. If you jump up, and before you hit the ground, you press the jump button again, he will land on his stick and jumps right back up. His stick doesn’t get hurt by the pointy obstacles, and you can jump on them as long as you want. I had to practice a bit because in the trailer it looked easier then it actually is.

Kong pow! This is not a character silly, this is a move you can make! It took us a while to figure out how but now we know it’s a very wicked move. Player 2 needs to be on the back of Donkey Kong in order to do this move. They high five and every bad guy in front of you turns into extra golden hearts (lives).

My favorite character still, is Dixie. Her hair saved me so many times, it’s hard to choose another character. In the game I can climb on Donkey Kongs back (all of the characters can) and when I do that he can use my ability to fly! Some parts of the game are so difficult and need to be done so quickly that it is nearly impossible to time it exactly the same, so I will climb on Donkey Kongs back and he does it. This is also very handy for the levels when you are on a barrel or in a kart. Player 1 will have to do all the work but you can switch the gamepad so player 2 can also play those levels.

This game is my first Donkey Kong game, my boyfriend is a real fan and I really didn’t know what to expect. We saw in trailers that there were also underwater levels. Now we have played those levels and they look so beautifull. The music also changes when you are underwater.

What I really like is the fact that you don’t have a time clock ticking. This way you can explore the whole level and go back if nessecary. In every level you need to get four letters: K.O.N.G. And some puzzel pieces. So without a time limit you can go back and search for those things. Sometimes they are very difficult to get though, and you will be glad to even finish the level. When you finish the level, you can go on to the next. Even if you don’t have the four letters. But after 6 worlds with a various amount of levels, you have completed the game. Is this it? Off course not! Why would you need to get all those letters? Well, because if you got all of them, you unlock special bonus worlds! That is another thing I like, you have to redo most of the levels to get all the KONGs and puzzel pieces. This way the gameplay almost doubles in hours of fun.

This Donkey Kong has special portals in many of the levels, these portals give you another exit and when you get back to the world where you select the levels, there is a bonus level unlocked! My boyfriend and I are now in world 6, near the end. We have 14 hours of gameplay in the game so far, but we didn’t unlock all of the bonus levels, so we will have to go back at some point to unlock those, awesome right!

I can write about this game for a very long time but I guess it is time for something for the eyes and ears, here’s the trailer:

Do you also have Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze? Do you have any questions? Feel free to ask!

– JoanyM