Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong Country Returns is an unusual project: a studio famous for grim sci-fi adventures was tasked with reviving a classic platforming series from the nineties, and it pulled it off with remarkable respect for the source material. Donkey Kong and his buddy Diddy once again race across an island that someone has raided of its banana supply, and the game sticks to a side-on view, precise jumping, and a fast pace. Diddy rides on the back of the bigger gorilla, and his jet-pack barrel allows for a brief hover in mid-air, which during tricky jumps is often the difference between success and a fall.

The game is demanding and doesn't try to hide it. The levels are full of traps, vanishing platforms, and enemies that appear at exactly the moment you're airborne, and several of the final maps rank among the hardest Nintendo has ever released. At the same time, everything reads clearly, and mistakes feel like your own failure rather than injustice. Alongside the classic jumping, the mine-cart ride and the rocket barrel return, silhouette passages have been added where the entire screen turns into a black shadow against a colorful background, and there are scenes where the action spills between foreground and background. The controls lean on motion a bit forcibly: the drum-thump and the roll are performed by shaking the controller, which most players considered unnecessary when a single button would have done the job.

The audiovisual presentation is one of the finest showcases of what Wii could do. Environments have depth, dynamic lighting, and a wealth of background detail, and the music reworks classic themes from the original trilogy into fuller, drum-driven arrangements that instantly trigger nostalgia. Critics received the game very well, praising exactly the fact that it isn't a mere trip down memory lane but an honest, tough, and carefully designed platformer. Today it still holds up excellently, only the shake-based controls feel more dated than they need to. Later releases on other platforms accordingly offered classic button controls and showed just how little the game needed to be perfect.