I played with the Wii remote and nunchuck control scheme, which I think is the best one.
The gameplay is varied, fun, fresh and clever. The controls and mechanics all work extremely well, except for the motion control used for rolling, which isn’t perfectly responsive and can lead to several missed long jumps and some unpleasant deaths. If I hadn’t already experienced the high responsiveness of the intuitive motion controlled spin of Mario in both Super Mario Galaxy games, then I could’ve doubted if the Wii remote itself wasn’t the one to blame for this flaw, but I have, so I know it could’ve been done better than this. Fortunately, in many of the levels you can’t even do that action, because the gameplay is different, and in many others you can mostly avoid doing it near a pit, since you seldom have to do long jumps that require it. But still, this control issue significantly hurts the overall lasting appeal of the game.
The boss battles are entertaining but not very challenging, consisting of basically trial and error without much room for creative thinking.
The visuals are very impressive for a Wii game and the artistic design in most levels is simply gorgeous.
The levels are all impressively designed and challenging enough, only rarely crossing into frustrating territory, and full of hidden secrets that are fun to uncover and fully justify revisiting them. In most levels it's hard to find all the pieces, and it wouldn't be very fun to replay a level many times trying to find them blindly, but the game gives you a smart option to make it easier and more thrilling to search for them if you want to. There's also a fun 3 medal time trial mode in every level, that forces you to drastically change the way you play them and also serves as a nice change of pace, which is another good reason to revisit them again.
So, this might not be the best Donkey Kong game ever made, but if you love action platformers like I do, don't miss this really great return of the famous gorilla.
GAMEPLAY = = = = = = = = = ( 9 )
GRAPHICS = = = = = = = = = ( 9 )
SOUND = = = = = = = = ( 8 )
VALUE = = = = = = = = ( 8 )
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MY GAME SCORE = ((( 8.5 )))