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Easy, Hard, What’s the Difference?
One of the few changes in Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D is a new mode, which serves as something of an easy mode. While the game never directly calls it an easy mode, it gives you another heart (so you can take 1 more hit or 2 with Diddy Kong) and allows you to use 3 items, over the previous limit of 1. At first you might think this makes a difference, but it really doesn’t.
Most of the game’s difficulty comes from the cart/rocket barrel stages and I suppose to a lesser degree the bosses. Thanks to the increased item limit, you can now get a maximum buffer of 6 hits in the cart/rocket barrel, versus dying upon contact, but these items cost in-game money and might not be the answer you’re looking for. Speaking for myself, most of my failures were from missing jumps in the cart section, versus running into things, which sadly can’t be won over with items. Regardless, the New Mode makes it slightly less stressful to collect everything, but don’t expect to dominate this game if you couldn’t do the Wii version.
Doesn’t Support Thumb stick and Dpad at the Same Time
I don’t know about anyone else, but a 2D platformer only feels right when I play it with the Dpad. So when I started Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, I was shocked to learn my Dpad had no control over Donkey Kong what’s so ever. Thankfully a quick trip to the settings menu resolved this problem, but it’s never made clear that this is a setting you can enable. When you consider most games have both enabled by default, it could lead to some people failing to realize you can change the input and that can be a real turn off. Not the biggest deal in the world, but definitely something you might want to be aware of.
VERDICT
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D is a good experience, but can’t quite match the original games. Despite this, there should be enough content to make fans happy and give platformer fans something new to do on the go. When you consider all the collectibles to find and time trial challenges to complete, you can without a doubt get your money’s worth out of it. Sure it might be hard for newcomers or on your first few attempts, but after that it really goes on to be a pretty solid experience.