Topic: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Switch)

@Snadertjuh
It is a gorgeous game for sure. Personally I don't think it is the best game ever, I would probably give it a strong 6 because it is a well-polished game, even though I don't feel it had staying power.

I would suggest you read some reviews, don't just look at the score. Read both raving reviews, and some that are not to too favorable to make up your mind. On boards like these you will almost never see any nuance, it is either doom or the best thing ever. I don't think we are doing Nintendo any favours by blindly telling people to buy all games.

And if you can, try it before you buy it is always a good advice.

@Snadertjuh it’s great and is certainly one of the best 2d platformers ever made.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel but the DKC games never have. On the SNES they were very good platformers but not in the same class as Mario games. They stood out due to visual spectacle.

DKCR and DKCTF are much better platformers - very refined and very well thought out with a definite rhythm to levels. They’re very tough but not unfair - if you remotely like platform games you need to play them.

however TF doesn’t bring much that Returns didn’t already. I think it’s a better game on balance but if you played Returns a lot then TF could leave you a little cold.

Price wise I don’t understand why people have such an issue. It’s more than I will pay to double dip (I would if Returns were included as a sweetener) but why should games automatically fall in price just because they’ve been around a few years?

They fall due to competition but there is next to no competition from other high end 2d platformers - they’re so rare at this point. There’s not even much competition from the game itself on the second hand market because there were so few Wii Us.

Just because every other indie is a budget priced 2d platformer shouldn’t mean that every 2d platformer has to be budget priced (and budgeted!). But that’s what the long term consequence of setting an upper price limit for those games.

Any lucky people received their physical copies early?

@StuTwo Regarding price, I agree with you. The only thing you need to ask yourself is "is this game worth $60 for me?" If it is and you can afford it, buy it. If you think it is steep, don't buy it. Simple as that. Not buying it is a much better signal to Nintendo than complaining on forums.

@StuTwo Isn't that kind of a problem though? 20 years is a long time to go with no changes to the series. It makes the games stale and boring when you're just doing the same thing in different levels. Doesn't matter how refined and well designed a game is if it's not fun.

Honestly though, this seems to be a larger problem with 2D platformers as a whole. All of Nintendo's 2D platformers just seem to have become stale to varying degrees, whether it's Mario with the NSMB games, Kirby with the modern RtDL/TD/PR/SA line, Yoshi with New Island and Wooly World, or DK with Returns and TF, there's just been a lack of innovative new ideas across the board. Not sure what's going on but since Nintendo's revived 2D platformers in the early 2010s they really haven't done much to push them any further. And when they've made so many of them in the last 8 years, it becomes very tiring.

@Bolt_Strike you can’t reinvent the wheel once the wheel exists. By definition most of the really big innovations that will ever happen in that genre have already happened.

A modern 2d platformer - to me has to either push the genre at its margins (super hard - a la Super Meat Boy, super creative & connected - a la Mario Maker or LBP, adding multiplayer - a la Runbow etc.) or be really polished mechanically and in terms of level design while acknowledging some modern design conventions.

Tropical Freeze is incredibly polished. It’s a more attractive and fair game with more tiers of optional challenge than just about any platformer from 20 years ago. It’s not a major leap forward but it doesn’t have to be.

The genre was always very fun and approachable - that’s why it was so dominant for so long - it’s just been easier for a game to stand out breaking obvious but technologically challenging ground in genres like 3D platformers and open world games than to either better the best in a long crowded genre or to eke out a distinctive new direction that everyone who’s gone before has missed.

Apparently, mine already did; just received a message. I can't check it till tonight though. Same happened with Kirby. I know I'm never preordering my games anywhere else anymore

What you're saying is totally true if you've played all related games in these past 20 years. I'm one of the lucky guys who's thoroughly enjoyed the SNES games but then kind of lost touch with the games. My gaming time went very limited due to educational and social obligations, so I mainly played Mario Kart and FIFA with friends the last 10 years. I only occasionally played a single player focused game.

So for me, if DKTF feels like a scaled up remake of Donkey Kong Country, I'm more than happy

mine shipped early and will be here tomorrow (Thursday)

Playing right now!

Decided to start regular mode after all. I want to get how the game is meant, before I lean back and finish the game 'easy mode'.

So far it's nice. I have to get used to the controls though. The only platformer I've put a decent amount of hours in the past few years is Mario. Visuals are great!

There's a huge difference between reinventing the wheel and blatantly repeating everything ad nauseum though, and the 2D platformers are much closer to the latter than they need to be. Sandbox platformers haven't exactly reinvented the wheel either, but you look at what 3D Mario has done over the years and with the exception of 3D Land/3D World (which was designed to be like the 2D games), the 3D games have done a great job of disguising lack of technological innovations with gameplay changes not related to technology and game wide gimmicks. 64, Sunshine, Galaxy, and Odyssey all have similar gameplay formulas and yet they all feel like different experiences because they have different settings, different abilities, etc. If they designed Tropical Freeze like those games they'd have at least given DK some sort of ice related ability and that would've been enough for it to not feel like it's just another DK game. For whatever reason, 2D platformers just don't do things like this. There's been some that have come close (Planet Robobot), but for the most part they just blatantly rehash over and over again. This isn't them running out of ideas on what to do with the games. This is an intentional design decision.

You really haven't missed much. 2D platformers all but disappeared between 1996 and 2010. But even with that gap DK has had 5 2D platformers that basically stayed the same, so it could definitely use a larger step forward.

Ohhh I'm so jealous ... I pre-ordered with Prime, but apparently it's arriving on Saturday

@Bolt_Strike the simplicity is by design. It’s intended to be accessible- or at least to not over complicate the controls.

2d platformers did experiment in adding more buttons, more powers etc. but it was a bit of a dead end for the genre. The real strength of 2d platformers (versus 3D ones) is the simplicity and intuition of control - which is why so many modern examples have doubled down on that and taken it to extremes.

Which is what TF does. It pairs very simple but flexible controls with excellent level design that favours momentum, reflexes and one off spectacle over size, spatial exploration, collectibles or gimmicky level specific powers. In many ways I actually do think it’s very similar to the Galaxy games.

It’s just that other 2d platform games did do similar things in the past (though rarely half as well) whereas 3D games have been less well able to due to the much higher technical barriers to entry.

@StuTwo And that's a problem. Simplicity tends to become repetitive and boring quicker. Not saying the game needs to have super complicated control schemes, but adding in one or two new abilities wouldn't hurt.

Just started playing this (I double dipped, I've already beaten it on the Wii U), and I must say I'm quite impressed. The game is beautiful in handheld mode and on the TV. And those controls...

I might have to put Kirby aside for a bit!

I disagree. With TF adding new abilities (beyond the few major ones that were added - I.e the pogo stick) would detract from the experience. It isn’t an action puzzle game or intended to be one.

As for simplicity - the general mechanics, controls and progression of the game may be simple but the level design is particularly intricate and inventive. TF surprised and entertained me a lot - especially later on - without really adding anything significant to the toolbox.

Overall I think the genre has evolved off in a few different directions since the 90s but it’s not as obvious as the growth in other genres because 2d platformers still look superficially the same and so many of the obvious wells were mined in the late 80s and early 90s.

@StuTwo Don't even bother, he hasn't even played Tropical Freeze

I haven't played Tropical Freeze yet (but I am interested - the money isn't right at the moment though) and I know the game is like 6.6 GB, but what was the file sizes back on the Wii U? Just for comparison.

@EvilLucario Around 11GB.

@Octane Wew, that's some magical compression there.

@EvilLucario Pretty much the case with all Wii U ports (smaller than the Wii U file size) which is promising for when XCX comes along.