3DS Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D

Can Donkey Kong still be King of the Jungle?

Donkey Kong Country Returns hit the Wii back in late 2010 and was well received by fans that were curious to see what Retro Studios could do with the franchise after their best efforts with Metroid. The 3DS version is more of an enhanced version with a bit of extra content and items to make things easier since the difficulty of the Wii version was quite high.
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The top screen shows the action while the bottom displays how many items you have collected such as puzzle pieces, bananas, the KONG letters and the amount of lives you have, but luckily the game dishes them out quite a lot. The game can still be tricky at times and if a level drives you too mad, you can just enable the Super Guide to do it for you like before. The only downside is that you won’t be able to earn any collectables for that level.

There are new stages to be found by collecting all the KONG letters in each world, doing all of them will open up another temple that once completed will unlock mirror versions of each level, make Diddy absent and you are only given one heart. This is of course only for the truly insane gamer, trust me on that.
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The boss battles are still memorable as before, but they are a lot easier thanks to the controls of the 3DS. The 3D itself is impressive and helps with precision and depth of your jumps, but it’s still perfectly fine in 2D. The visuals are a little weaker on the 3DS, but it’s still a great looking game and the framerate rarely drops. The music is great; just make sure you use earphones to get the most out of it.

The Verdict

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D is a great enhanced version for those who missed out on the Wii version, but it’s hard to recommend if you’ve already played the console version. Despite that, the extra levels and the mirror mode will push gamers to the brink of madness. I’d love to see what Nintendo decide to do next with the big ape and hopefully we’ll find out at E3…

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