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Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

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Just ordered this. Managed to get it for the grand total of £21.05! :D

 

Basically I have a Very account, and I ordered some aftershave from them a few weeks ago that arrived the day after they told me to expect it. Was no biggie, wasn't in a rush for it. Anyway, the day after I got a text from them apologising for the delay and to enjoy £13.95 off my next order by quoting a promo code they included.

 

Totally forgot about it until I got another message off them this morning about a brochure or something which made me remember the promo code.

 

They had DK for £35 so I added it to basket, used my promo and got £13.95 off! Bargain!

 

Looking forward to playing. Totally using the pro controller though.

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Just ordered this. Managed to get it for the grand total of £21.05! :D

 

Basically I have a Very account, and I ordered some aftershave from them a few weeks ago that arrived the day after they told me to expect it. Was no biggie, wasn't in a rush for it. Anyway, the day after I got a text from them apologising for the delay and to enjoy £13.95 off my next order by quoting a promo code they included.

 

Totally forgot about it until I got another message off them this morning about a brochure or something which made me remember the promo code.

 

They had DK for £35 so I added it to basket, used my promo and got £13.95 off! Bargain!

 

Looking forward to playing. Totally using the pro controller though.

 

Nobody likes a bragger! :heh:

 

Lucky sod.

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Just finished the game...It has two major design flaws:

 

1) Putting you in situations where stuff happens faster than you can comprehend/react to.

2) There are a lot of situations where you need to wait, but you don't know whether you have to and if you do, there's no way for you to figure out for how long.

 

This doesn't make the game difficult, it makes it unfair. And in order to win, you have to memorize a lot of levels/sections.

 

So in the end...considering all...

There are fun levels but overall, finishing the game felt like a chore.

 

Just because you couldn't do it doesn't make it a bad game!

 

The un-lockable levels were difficult. But always fair. I beat some of them in literally two or three lives.

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Just because you couldn't do it doesn't make it a bad game!

 

The un-lockable levels were difficult. But always fair. I beat some of them in literally two or three lives.

 

Cool bro!!

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Finished this yesterday. Wasn't impressed with it at all, was a major let down.

 

It wasn't until I got to the 6th world did the game start being enjoyable.

 

The level design, music and graphics all seemed to go up a level compared to the other 5 worlds. Why wasn't the rest of the game up to that standard.

 

It didn't feel very polished either with the loading screens/times being atrocious.

 

I'll be selling it so if anyone is interested, check out the sales / trade board.

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Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze Appears to Have a Miiverse Achievement System That Was Scrapped

 

"Whoa! You've used Cranky's Cane Jump 10,000 times! Hop to it, gramps!"

 

If you like to follow fellow Nintendo gamers on Miiverse your options for tracking their gaming habits are nevertheless relatively limited; you're reliant on others actively bothering to post in game communities, in most cases.

 

Exceptions to this rule include Hyrule Warriors - and a select few other games - that include optional automatic achievement notifications on Miiverse. The Wii U lacks Trophies or Achievements at a system level, but titles like this offer the chance to automatically share snazzy in-game achievements with a nice medal or screenshot; it's a pleasant and low-effort way to show off, at least.

 

According to the code-scrabblers at The Cutting Room Floor, a mechanic like this was planned for Retro Studios' brilliant platformer Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. A 'Miiverse' strings file has a whole load of strings that are clearly achievements, but for whatever reason this wasn't included in the final product. It's a massive list, but a few of our favourites are below - presumably these would have auto-posted with a screen or medal to Miiverse, as per other titles.

 

You hit every boss to the max! Flying fists of fury!

 

You beat the level without taking damage! This Kong is untouchable!

 

You've completed all the levels on this island! Kong supremacy!

 

You've filled the diorama gallery! You could stare at it for days!

 

You bopped 3 creatures in a row! Look, Ma, no ground!

 

Whoa! You've used Cranky's Cane Jump 10,000 times! Hop to it, gramps!

 

It seems a pity that these achievements never made it in - frankly, we'd happily have them in a patch, even as the game approaches one year old.

 

Would you have liked Miiverse achievements in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, or would you prefer that everyone stop showing off? Let us know.

 

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/02/donkey_kong_country_tropical_freeze_appears_to_have_a_miiverse_achievement_system_that_was_scrapped

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Personally, I get annoyed by automatic Miiverse posts. So I'm glad this didn't happen.

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So I'm hilariously late to the party here...

 

It's great! But I do think that Returns is still the better game of the two. Compared to DKCR, I felt that DKCTF's levels felt a lot slower and leave the player waiting around much more for stuff to catch up/passages to open up etc. The levels are also longer than Returns for the most part and that also makes it feel like a bit of a drag in comparison (especially the boss fights! They take a ridiculous amount of hits now! - shame really, cause they're generally well designed otherwise, if a bit lacking in grandure) It also doesn't bring as many new ideas to the table as its predecessor and lacks in per-level gimmicks in comparison to DKCR (I mean, the wooshy swooshy 3D camera stuff was great, but they only used it in about 3 levels or so...). There's simply too much that feels like a modified take on stuff we saw in Returns and I also feel like plucking was a weak replacement for blowing - the latter at least saw some clever uses for beating certain enemies and environmental interaction, while the former is basically used for just two things throughout the whole game. The enemies themselves are also fewer in number and generally less creative than what we saw in Returns (even though I prefer the Viking motif over the Tikis).

 

The swimming is a fantastic addition mind you though and feels great! Definitely the biggest addition over DKCR for sure! : peace: and the slower pace works well underwater; you don't mind those moments where you're waiting around so much because the pacing for the underwater levels/sections is slowed down a notch anyway - so you don't get those moments where you're flying through a level and you're forced to stop and wait.

 

The addition of Cranky and Dixie was also handled very well. Both kongs bring something different to the table (one is good for speed running most levels, while the other allows you to cheese certain parts of levels and acts as a brilliant air-assist) - of course, they make Diddy completely useless and obsolete in the process though :laughing: I do find myself pining for more animal buddies though... such a missed opportunity that could've brought much more variety to the table...

 

And while this is neither a positive or a negative really, I do feel that TF is a fair bit easier than Returns. With the exception of the very last level (which is a complete and utter bastard that even gives the Golden Temple level a run for its Banana Coins :o ), the overall difficulty does seem to have been toned down along with the overall pacing speed of the levels. Personally, I put that down to the lack of Super Guide myself; since there's no safety net for players who struggle here outside of the assist items. The extra health on the Rocket Barrel and Minecart levels also makes them hugely easier... (well, until you get to Hard Mode - which I'm probably not gonna tackle for a long time to come, but seems totally nutso!)

 

Music is a total upgrade over Returns though! While I wouldn't really put it on the same level as the original SNES trilogy, the music is far more memorable than what you got in DKCR and covers a much wider range of styles and moods too.

 

So while the game is still very good, it doesn't really match up to Returns for me. It's not as creative, slower paced, less polished (lots of things feel incomplete - like the lack of death animations & cutscenes for bosses, the really abrupt ending where you suddenly think "wait, that was the final boss!?", the rough looking menus that lack animation, loading hitches, weirdly handled Gamepad/controller settings) and it doesn't quite give you that same rush that Returns did.

 

But there's no shame in that! DKCR is a ridiculously high bar to live up to and even though it falls short for me, it's still a great game nonetheless! It's only really disappointing compared to its predecessor :)

Edited by Dcubed

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So I'm hilariously late to the party here...

 

It's great! But I do think that Returns is still the better game of the two.

 

I instantly stopped reading there.

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I instantly stopped reading there.

 

Heh, depends on what you're looking for in a platformer I suppose. But I loved DKCR for its focus on raw platforming skill and its breakneck pace.

 

DKCTF slows things down too much for my liking and while I can understand that people might appreciate it for that, I felt myself just wanting things to ramp up and speed up.

 

It's a bit closer to the SNES games in that respect, since it encourages you to take your time and look around more, but I don't really think that it benefits from that as it is still closer to DKCR than the SNES ones when it comes to structure so the waiting just feels a bit out of place to me.

Edited by Dcubed

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In related news, Nintendo have just officially released the DKC TV show on Youtube

 

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In related news, Nintendo have just officially released the DKC TV show on Youtube

 

 

Dear God... What have they unleashed!

 

i5vtUZX.gif

 

This ought to be good for a few laughs, ahh memories :laughing:

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So ive been chipping away at this. Ive had it for months so its shameful that it has taken me so long to get through it.

 

I'm half way through World 6 now. Is there much left to go?

 

Did anyone actually obtain all of the collectables and complete hard mode? Im tempted not to bother as the difficulty level is already frustrating for me :(

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So ive been chipping away at this. Ive had it for months so its shameful that it has taken me so long to get through it.

 

I'm half way through World 6 now. Is there much left to go?

 

Did anyone actually obtain all of the collectables and complete hard mode? Im tempted not to bother as the difficulty level is already frustrating for me :(

 

Yeah, I nabbed all the collectables and got 100% ( I think Serebii and Welsh Gamer did as well ) but I didn't bother with hard mode. It was the same on the original game. I got 100% but never bothered with mirror mode.

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Yeah, I nabbed all the collectables and got 100% ( I think Serebii and Welsh Gamer did as well ) but I didn't bother with hard mode. It was the same on the original game. I got 100% but never bothered with mirror mode.

 

*cough cough*

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Right, Retro have really driven me to insanity with level 2-K.

 

Bouncing off of those owls once you get shot out of a barrel is down to the millisecond.

THE MILLISECOND!

 

This level is fucking crazy, but I have got all of it down to a fine art except for that part.

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Mark Brown doing Gods work again.

 

 

Great video for a fantastic game. The urge to play the game again is rising. :D Also, I like how he points out the issue that many people have with the NSMB series.

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Tropical Freeze is a hell of a game, @Hero\-of\-Time, and one that I grew to appreciate more and more the further I progressed :love:

 

It would be a shame to have such an amazing game locked away on the Wii U as I'd probably be happy to repurchase my entire library on Switch but I'm glad to have played it :hehe:

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That video reinforces my stance that NSMB Wii is a better game then NSMB U.

 

But yeah, it's pretty spot on, especially the surprise aspect, a lot of levels made me think, "Is this actually happening!?"

 

Shout-out to most hilariously mental minecart level, Sawmill Thrill.

 

tumblr_nbaund8mJ31susn9uo3_500.gif

 

tumblr_nbaund8mJ31susn9uo5_500.gif

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Mark Brown doing Gods work again.

 

 

Great video for a fantastic game. The urge to play the game again is rising. :D Also, I like how he points out the issue that many people have with the NSMB series.

 

Yep... I'd gladly buy a switch double pack of the two games and play through them again!! Fuck it, bring on a retro developed third one too!

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I'm still going through it with my house mate.

We are at the boss of world 4 now.

 

I go through the stages we already played alone and collect everything, find the secret stages and do some time attack.

 

It's a beautifully crafted game.

I am content that in this day and age we can still sit down and play a well-crafted 2D platformer.

 

Nintendo should make a '2D open-world online platformer' as a tribute to all their 2D succes :laughing:

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So I finally beat the main story of this bad puppy.

A short but sweet game, and undoubtedly more brutal as I unlock the extra levels and the secret world.

Dongs will expand!

I must say that I really love the personality of the characters. Donkey Kong is such a love able big lump of fur who loves to chow down on some bananas and kidnap damsels. His expression is still priceless; something which Mario Kart 8 amplified, haha. 

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I do still prefer DKCR for it's quicker pace, as I feel that DKCTF's levels are too long for their own good, but Mark Brown makes some great points in that vid.

 

Also it's a bit unfair to call out NSMB Wii as "lazy" when it's NSMB U that cribs ideas from it, not the other way around! Also he really undersells what an accomplishment it was to make a 2D Platformer that is just as fun in 4 player co-op as it is in single player (something that NSMB U doesn't pull off nearly as well either).

 

But yeah, DKCR and TF are just incredible games! All the more tragic that Retro were a no show at this year's E3 (just what the hell is going on with them!?)

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1 hour ago, Fused King said:

So I finally beat the main story of this bad puppy.

A short but sweet game, and undoubtedly more brutal as I unlock the extra levels and the secret world.

Dongs will expand!

I must say that I really love the personality of the characters. Donkey Kong is such a love able big lump of fur who loves to chow down on some bananas and kidnap damsels. His expression is still priceless; something which Mario Kart 8 amplified, haha. 

Tropical Freeze is actually a game I felt a little disappointed in initially when I first went through it feeling that it wasn't as enjoyable as it's predecessor on Wii. Going back through the levels for all puzzle pieces and KONG letters absolutely transformed my experience, though, and became one of my favourite Wii U titles :love:

39 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

I do still prefer DKCR for it's quicker pace, as I feel that DKCTF's levels are too long for their own good, but Mark Brown makes some great points in that vid.

 

Also it's a bit unfair to call out NSMB Wii as "lazy" when it's NSMB U that cribs ideas from it, not the other way around! Also he really undersells what an accomplishment it was to make a 2D Platformer that is just as fun in 4 player co-op as it is in single player (something that NSMB U doesn't pull off nearly as well either).

 

But yeah, DKCR and TF are just incredible games! All the more tragic that Retro were a no show at this year's E3 (just what the hell is going on with them!?)

While I may have initially felt that Returns was the superior game, my opinion changed the more I played Tropical Freeze and that has been reinforced as I'm currently playing through the 3DS version.

While it's still a great game, I'm not sure it holds up quite as well as the Wii U game. Part of that may be down to playing it on 3DS, however, as only the Wii Remote and Nunchuk ever felt natural to me for both games, largely down to 'roll' and 'grab' being on separate buttons. Somehow, it all just feels perfect on the Wii.. even waggling to roll :grin:

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