The New Donkey Kong Country Game Defies Me to Remain Unimpressed
I know there’s a lot of nostalgia and nerd love for the SNES Donkey Kong Country games, but I never had any. I prefer my monkeys named Donkey to be tie-less and kidnappers of women, the whole jungle setting/Diddy Kong thing never did it for me. so I was all prepared to post this preview of Donkey Kong Country Returns and not give a shit (although I probably would’ve made a snide remark about how the title really should be Return to Donkey Kong Country), but goddamn if it doesn’t look like an amazing old-school platformer. The kind that’s less about adventure, like Mario games uses to be, and more about frantic jumping and incredible, pin-point timing to cross the level. And honestly, the game looks pretty beautiful for being on the Wii — the 2.5-D is fantastically used, as well as the multiple plane effects. I still don’t know that I’ll purchase it, but I will shut up about the game not being exciting.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.