(Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/18/2024)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Developer: Retro Studios, Monster Games
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): 2D Platformer
Platforms: Wii U
Release Date: February 14, 2014
The oxymoronic subtitle in this DKC entry refers to the primary source of conflict the game introduces in its first cutscene. At first, the mood over at Donkey Kong’s treehouse is an especially jubilant one, for all of the tie-clad ape’s friends and family members are celebrating the big guy’s birthday (did 2014 mark the anniversary of something Donkey Kong-related?). In the distance, a Viking ship sails forward to Kong's home island sounding the horns of conquest, and Donkey Kong is alarmed by their presence once a stray snowflake douses the lit candle atop his frosted birthday banana. The shadowed ship captain summons an ice phoenix whose graceful wingspan is evidently equal to the powerful wind velocity of a category-five hurricane. With their only obstacles out of their way, the invaders find it fitting to reshape DK Island into something akin to their frosty habitat, glazing the humid jungle in such a thick layer of ice that it now resembles something of an alpine tundra. The series has shifted the silly conflict of banana thievery into the serious subject of climate change, a dreadful phenomenon that renders the DK crew’s homeland totally inhabitable. The premise is so sympathetically grim that it makes us all angry at penguins, a species of bird that is typically difficult to harbor negative feelings toward.
When Donkey Kong “returned” as the previous game had suggested in its title, one completely new aspect was the implementation of motion controls. In Donkey Kong Country Returns, the developers felt obliged to work with the Wii’s unique utility by assigning Donkey Kong’s roll and ground slap maneuvers to the shaking of the Wiimote. This decision proved to be fairly agreeable, but I still wondered if the scheme was really necessary from a player-character kinetic standpoint. Really, the only commonality that the Wii U shared with its immediate predecessor was its name, so the motion control gimmick that defined the console’s legacy did not carry over to the next generation of Nintendo consoles. Donkey Kong’s special tricks are instead executed all in one button, with the discerning factor depending on whether or not he’s stationary at the moment. As for the odd blowing move DKC Returns introduced, the developers wisely came to the same conclusion that I did in that it made their strapping, hunky hero look like a frilly schoolgirl playing with dandelions on a sunny spring afternoon and did away with it entirely. The Wii U’s more traditional control scheme sees the series going back to basics in a sense, and the consignment of Donkey Kong’s controls to the same button function as his jump maneuver honestly feels more organic. You can’t fix what isn’t broken, after all. However, something that wasn’t broken in the previous titles that Tropical Freeze evidently decided was imperative to toy with was Donkey Kong’s ability to breathe underwater. Now, an air gauge will deplete if Donkey Kong is submerged for a lengthy period, and he’ll obviously die if he doesn’t reach a source of oxygen in time. I understand that the abundance of underwater settings in Tropical Freeze might warrant this mechanic to prevent these kinds of levels from being effortlessly facile. Still, nerfing one of Donkey Kong’s trademark talents like this is equivalent to severing the fingers of a musical prodigy to put them on an equal playing field with the rest of the kids in their piano class.
Donkey Kong has always obliged assistance from his friends in his quests to reclaim his precious and impressive banana hoard, so he’s certainly going to need a helping hand to overcome this dilemma of epic, life-threatening proportions. I lamented that Diddy Kong, an integral character from the series who clocked in more screen time than the titular Kong in the SNES trilogy, was relegated to a secondary supporting role instead of continuing the tag team dynamic he shared with Donkey Kong. Diddy is still gliding his burlier friend over gaps with his jetpack in Tropical Freeze, but I can’t stay cross at the developers because Diddy is now mixed with good company. In Tropical Freeze, the character barrel now shuffles between three supporting characters from the series: Diddy and the newly added Dixie Kong and Cranky Kong. Each of them piggybacks on Donkey Kong and provide a unique aid to Donkey Kong’s limited range of movement. Dixie Kong will flutter her blond ponytail upward like a helicopter, while Cranky Kong will channel another old codger from gaming’s yesteryears and use his cane to pogo off of flat surfaces or the heads of his enemies. The secondary character’s special properties also translate to an underwater setting, where Diddy and Dixie provide propulsive movement via their jetpack and hair respectively and Cranky Kong swiftly whacks the creatures of the deep with his walking apparatus like they owe him a Cracker Barrel coupon.
I understand that incorporating all of these characters into the gameplay is intended to evoke the sentimental rejoicing of a DKC reunion, even though Kiddy Kong was evidently cut from the mailing list as expected. While I appreciate the enhanced modes of gameplay all of these characters provide, a few issues still arise. Dixie renders Diddy Kong worthless as her similar flight maneuver is smoother and covers a bit more aerial space. Hopping to the buoyant heights of a trampoline with Cranky Kong is not a problem in the slightest; rather, his first-time inclusion on the field indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the character. Lest we forget that Cranky Kong is Donkey Kong’s grandfather. If anyone has ever known their grandfather, one subject of conversation they cannot resist speaking on is how monumentally strong and resilient they once were in their younger days, especially compared to their grandkid’s generation that they perceive as a bunch of namby-pamby soy boys. Cranky Kong is guilty of bolstering the tremendous achievements of his yesteryears like any other decrepit geezer, and the dubious self-asserted accounts of these feats have served as the penultimate challenges in every game of the SNES DKC trilogy. We were never intended to see Cranky Kong in action, for the illusion of this old ape’s glorious feats of athleticism is squandered by his meager supporting role of allowing his grandson to bounce like a basketball. In other related news, what continues to disappoint me in terms of classic character inclusion, or in this case omission, is that Rambi is still the sole animal buddy representative (besides the Squawks radar in the shop). As much as I am delighted to encounter the trusty rhinoceros on the field and ride him as he furiously stampedes through lines of enemies, one would think that a game that highlights a reunion initiative of the series’ characters would believe that including all of Donkey Kong’s non-simian friends would be prudent. What did the Kongs do to make all of the other species on DK Island so jilted? The spontaneous ice age concerns them too!
Donkey Kong can’t deal with this icy ordeal surrounding his home island with the immediate urgency it probably warrants. The flight of the ice phoenix was so majestic that it literally blew Donkey Kong and company away–to a place situated five islands west of DK Island. The journey back to the Kong’s residential address encompasses all five islands plus the eventual return to DK Island, a fitting number of “worlds” for a stacked 2D platformer game. As par for the course, all six major worlds in Tropical Freeze are progressed through on the Super Mario Bros. 3-esque grid map and they are all thematically distinct from one another. On the subject of level themes, Tropical Freeze exhibits what is arguably the most creative array of worlds that the series has ever displayed. The game begins with “Lost Mangroves”, a beach level traditional to the recurring themes across the series if the tropical fruit of the island’s namesake was any indication. After that, “Autumn Heights” showcases an island in a perpetual state of the season of arboreal decay and all of its beauty. “Bright Savannah” is an inspired tribute to the scorching wild plains of Africa, complete with model giraffe heads made from cloth that the humble people of this continent would craft for a tribal ceremony. The sheer breadth of the deep sea in “Sea Breeze Cover” is likely why the developers figured it was appropriate to give Donkey Kong a pair of vulnerable lungs, for traversing through this divine aquatic realm shouldn’t have the ease of swimming laps in a public pool. Also, I’d like to point out that this world should’ve revitalized the swordfish Enguarde back into the franchise, and I’m quite upset that the developers didn’t jump at this opportunity. The standout world in my opinion is the fruit-oriented “Juicy Jungle,” an island dedicated to liquidating the island’s tropical produce at an industrial rate of efficiency. The series of factories claim to be for the production of popsicles, but what popsicle factory is made of brick with vines crawling all over it? Your disguising of a winery in a game for general audiences isn’t that inconspicuous, Retro Studios. Lastly, Donkey Kong and friends arrive at home base and are forced to progress through the map via a chain of blast barrels due to the cumulative mass of snow on the ground. One would think the premise would serve as a ploy to rationally insert the common ice-themed platformer-level trope in a series that typically has warmer climates. Still, the final world isn’t an outright cavalcade of ice. Fluttering snowfall as an invasive element to a familiar land evokes a stirring melancholy unexpected from this series. It’s an odd, yet effective way of signifying the threat at hand.
One might notice that a few levels in each world’s map will still be in their locked, darkened state even if the player successfully completes the areas preceding them. This is because each world offers at least one branching path from the standard trajectory, an innovation that Tropical Freeze debuts. If the player notices that two levels intersect from the current one, this likely connotes that a warp gate is located in that level. These alternate exits tend to be placed distantly off the beaten path, so the player will have to put on their tweed detective hats and do some genuine scavenger work. The “extra” levels that the portal uncovering leads to are nothing out of the ordinary in terms of diverting from the theme of the world they reside in, except that they commonly exhibit the silhouetted art style that DKC Returns introduced. These discoverable warp gates incentivize the player to stray from the linear line of progress that most 2D platformers uphold, and that supplementary stride allows the player to engage with the levels to a more intricate degree. Tropical Freeze continues to foster replayability by reintegrating the DK coins back into the series. Instead of simply serving as another collectible found in the same roundabout fashion at the warp gates, these giant, copper tokens are earned through optional time trial runs through the level after completing them initially. Crash Bandicoot is giving back to the series that inspired it after taking so much of its identity for itself! Isn’t that swell?! The caramel-colored leaves still unlock concept art in the menu, and collecting the KONG letters per level will still open a series of temple catacombs that act as the apex of DKC difficulty. To be transparent, none of this extra content is all that revolutionary, and it’s not as if Tropical Freeze offers more of it than the previous titles. Still, I can appreciate the avenue to an auxiliary challenge.
Veteran DKC players such as myself will be especially thankful that Tropical Freeze caters to them specifically with these tangential tasks because the base game is a bit too easy to stimulate our interests. Yes, I’m completely serious: Tropical Freeze drops the spicy heat of DKC’s notoriously steep difficulty down to a cool breeziness not unlike how the Snowmad imperialists plummet DK Island to a temperature below freezing to fit their normal habitat. On paper, Tropical Freeze doesn’t alter the course of a DKC game one bit. However, upon playing it, seasoned DKC soldiers will notice that the platform placement is more manageable to jump between, enemies tend to approach Donkey Kong with a languid lethargy, and the game is far too accommodating with placing 1-UP balloons throughout the level, much less the overhaul of bananas in differing quantities that grant the player lives by the barrel full anyways. Over the course of playing Tropical Freeze, I amassed so many extra lives that I thought the A&E network was going to call me and exploit my hoarding for their television program and refer to it as a mental illness. I hit the fucking maximum capacity far too many times for comfort. I had to look up what the “game over” screens for this game looked like out of curiosity, and it’s almost a shame that I never saw it because the image of two emperor penguin enemies ensnaring Donkey Kong in a block of ice as a means of captivity is one of the better ones. Sure, I died occasionally, and the rate of dying accelerated near the end of the game because the final world is leagues harder than every single world that precedes it. However, death was still a trivial hiccup due to the stockpile of lives I had accumulated during the easier areas leading up to it. For the first time ever, I feel like the series is punching below its weight class.
Tropical Freeze also (unintentionally) marks an unbelievable series first in that its bosses are far more formidable than their levels. The aspect of the DKC series most maligned across the SNES trilogy was boosted to unprecedented heights with Retro Studios at the helm, for the bosses they conjured up were finally fit to be referred to by their imposing descriptor. Tropical Freeze’s end-level foes continue the admirable streak of multifaceted mechanics and shifting phases to keep the player from catching on to the scent of their attack patterns. Pompy, The Presumptuous is a slippery seal who adores the spotlight as he performs his big top circus act, while Scowl always tests Donkey Kong’s airborne aptitude by ascending further into the skies upon each phase. My favorite of the high-ranking Snowmad lieutenants is Bashmaster, whose tonguing of a frozen, fruity treat upon encountering him begs the question if he’s taking advantage of the domain he’s settled in or the juice workers are solidifying their product into popsicles under his commands. Either or, he’s an upright-standing polar bear who wields a massive mallet. He looks like a goddamn World of Warcraft beast. The poisonous Fugu and the duplicating Ba-Boom, unfortunately, deflect the consistent arctic animal theme of the bosses, even though they wear the snowflake insignia that spells out their allegiance to DK’s new nemeses. Still, they are far superior to similar bosses from series past such as the Scurvy Crew from DKC Returns and the giant urchin Barbos from DKC 3. The regal king of the Snowmads, Lord Fredrik, resides in the inner sanctum of DK Island’s volcano, and the leader of the Snowmad clan is as daunting as his venerated title and shadowy visage would suggest. This prideful walrus stalls Donkey Kong to make him sweat as the unstable, molten platform that is the boss arena sinks into the pool of lava underneath, and his mammoth of a Viking horn features a swiss-army knife of unique utilities. Even if the player accurately times their jumps on his backside as he bullrushes towards them in a huff, this final boss is still a tense test of endurance.
How dare you dumb down my beloved Donkey Kong Country to appeal to a wider gaming demographic, Retro Studios. I half expected your previous effort to submit to the standards of the modern gaming climate, but I was ecstatic when you stuck to the traditional values of the series. I suppose they regressed DKC’s difficulty as a desperation tactic to make the sinking Wii U ship more approachable. This decision didn’t garner the intended results, now did it? I dedicate a raspberry noise to you, Retro Studios, for your foolish antics. On second thought, I shouldn’t express my bitter schadenfreude too explicitly, for I do wish for the developer to make another DKC game to surpass this one. However, it's unlikely that will ever happen, either due to the studio not bothering to put the effort into one or because the series has already implanted itself into the realm of accessibility to the point of no return. Even though I commend the mature premise and world themes, Tropical Freeze hardly adds anything fresh and exciting and ultimately dilutes the properties of the previous title. For the chosen few who purchased a Wii U and those who heard of Tropical Freeze from word of mouth and decided to try it on the Switch, Tropical Freeze is lauded as the peak of the series. In my opinion, all Tropical Freeze does is elevate DKC Returns as the perfect revival title. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is undoubtedly my least favorite game in the franchise, but it's still better than most traditional 2D platformers. This is especially true compared to the regurgitated slop Mario was serving up on the same system. The Wii U never stood a chance.
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