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I harbor some hate towards DKC for this. Sure, almost all platformers have always had something to collect, but DKC took it to the nth degree. And then, thanks to its popularity, almost every platformer to the present has this stupid collect-a-thon shit. I don't want to collect useless trinkets for the sole purpose of getting to 103%. Platformers keep relying on this crap, and as a result, lack any real challenge in terms of getting through the levels.Quote:
Originally Posted by GeckoYamori
Yeah... that's me! Well at least usually on first impressions, anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drixxel
Only because it was on Nintendo! If it was on Sega I'd have probably had so many orgasms that I'd still be stuck to my chair to this day from all of the goo produced! J/K :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Drixxel
It's also pretty funny how it was marketed as the first game to be based on pre-rendered 3D models. Sonic 3 used the same technique, and I suspect quite a few Amiga titles did as well, like Turrican.
I tried hard to like Donkey Kong Country. Everyone else seemed to love it to death. I was never able to develop a taste for the graphics and the gameplay was just some mediocre cut-and-paste platforming.
I'd actually jumped away from my Genesis to the PC for a while by around the time DKC came out and that's probably the reason DKC's graphics didn't phase me much. It just looked like blurry, crappy sprites to me instead of the carefully rendered art I was used to in platformers.
All this would've been forgiven had I actually enjoyed the game, but after a few levels of, "This is pretty fun." I got bored and put it down. I got the same effect every subsequent time I tried to pick up this game or one of its sequels.
Since I'm lousy at tech stuff, I'd really like to know where in the game you can see this kind of graphics.Quote:
Originally Posted by GeckoYamori
Probably just some of the art in the background. Nothing that would really leap out at you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe
That was what Nintendo was going for in their ad campaign for DKC - EVERYTHING was pre-rendered, not just one or two fluidly-animated sprites here or there. You couldn't not tell that something was very different about how Donkey Kong Country looked when stacked against everything else at the time.
About the game itself, I generally hated having to deal with any level obstacles involving those bloody bees, especially when it was just straight platforming and not a barrel-blasting marathon. Collision detection is fun!
The title screen in Sonic 3 is rendered, but it doesn't animate much. But it has the same grainy graphics that make you say "ewww" as DKC.
There's also the 3D Sphere bonus rounds.
I've concluded that Donkey Kong Country is just.... VeryTex.
Blimey. Harsh crowd.
What would you say if we put the game up against something like Bug? I know what I like in platform games & that's save points. At least you don't have to play DKC for 3 hours straight before it saving when you don't know it's saving anyway. Gameplay wise DKC is comfortable to deal with. It doesn't throw you into an abyss of gameplay where you have to struggle forwards for fear of turning it off & losing everything you've accomplished for the last 3-4 gigantic levels.
I don't really mind the seldomness of saving that much. I've played many games that have no saving at all.
Games like Manic Miner yes. Don't forget continues though. They make saving obselete if the game is pretty small anyway. Gunstar Heros for an example. You couldn't go through DKC with no saves or continues. If you could, do me a .wmv of Jet Set Willy from start to finish.
Exactly. It seems scoring systems have been replaced with collection percentages, and the gameplay has suffered as a result generally; now it's not about reflexive skill or level challenge, it's about exploration of every nook and cranny in a given game.Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
Sidescrollers ushered this in, but nothing is more boring than the average 3D platfomer. I made the mistake of buying Daxter...a game where they don't even pretend to present true challenge outside the need for saintly perseverance (certainly it would help to be a true believer in this type of design, though I truly wonder if anybody has fun playing these types games in their most extreme form or example) in hunting down 100-something gems in each area. They don't even bother with the pretense of lives in the game, and it's certainly not like the challenge is that of your average Doom II map.
All that being said, DKC was still a very good platformer and the sequel is one of the best in the SNES library. It might have been the beginning, but there are a great many worse treasure hunt-focused, interest and challenge-vacant games than the three DKC games.
Between Diddy's Kong Quest and Yoshi's Island, I'd say that the former is far closer to the mold of classic, challenging platformers than the latter -- in fact, YI is itself only challenging when played as a collectathon. I don't know which I prefer, but I do think that DKC2 is very finely crafted as far as difficulty of level layout, moreso than Yoshi..