I had always thought of Donkey Kong 64 as a "worse Banjo-Kazooie", but my recent 101% revisit confirmed just how pitiful it truly is. Donkey Kong 64 is not just a poor video game—it's probably the nadir of collect-a-thons, or at least a strong contender for the odious title. It's long, boring, repetitive, dreary, and humorless, lacking both the stellar design of Donkey Kong Country and the warm charm of Banjo-Kazooie. How Rare of all developers churned out a game so irreparably vapid is beyond me.
I don't think Donkey Kong 64 was destined to fail just because it jumped to the third dimension, but it was facing an uphill battle. The Country series is defined by its unique stage gimmicks and deviously hidden bonus barrels, both of which could work in 3D but would require a focused "smaller stage" approach, similar to Super Mario 3D World. Instead Rare honed in on the "completionist" aspect of the series, using Banjo-Kazooie as a springboard. Donkey Kong 64 would have a hub world, several learnable moves, and hundreds of items to keep track of. Then Rare lost their goddamn mind and jammed five playable characters into the game, each with their own collectibles to gather on every level.
While that didn't necessarily condemn Donkey Kong 64 to the trash bin, the inclusion of the tag barrel certainly did. With it, the player can only swap characters at designated spots, meaning that they'll have to backtrack to a tag barrel just to re-explore a level. And exploring isn't all that fun since stages are filled with boring enemies and nearly zero platforming. There's what, the sand you have to hop across in Angry Aztec, the entirety of Creepy Castle... and that's it for notable obstacles. Most of the time you'll be holding forward on the control stick, ignoring enemies, and slowly climbing up trees. And then at the top you'll realize you need Diddy Kong not Lanky Kong to obtain those five bananas, so you'll saunter back to the tag barrel, switch characters, forget where that particular tree was, and lose a bit more of your sanity.
People often deride the game for forcing you to play it essentially five times, but I think the senseless level design is what's truly detrimental. There's nothing to do the first time you're in the area let alone your fifth, besides activating teleport pads and making note of what Kongs you'll need where (and good luck remembering it all.) Stages are just boring busywork meant to waste time until you get to a golden banana challenge, which at their best are simply "okay." Sometimes you can't progress deeper into a level without a particular Kong's skillset either, and the lack of consistency here bugs me. You might need to shoot a switch or use a music pad or grab a golden banana to unlock a new area—and all of these will look the same as every other switch, pad, and banana. It's frustrating because it means you can't start a level with a single Kong and net all their goodies; you'll have to frequently swap between all five simians, only stumbling upon an "optimal route" after the stage is fully cleared.
Hell, there's no consistency in the golden banana rewards either. Sometimes you'll be given one for merely hitting a switch, and other times you'll have to undertake multiple steps and platform through an area just to get to an accursed bonus barrel, which contain their own challenge. It feels like it's a 50/50 shot whether you'll get a bonus barrel at the end of your road or not, and almost none of them are enjoyable. I think an argument can be made for Minecart Mayhem and Kremling Kosh, but the others alternate between mindless (Peril Path Panic, Krazy Kong Klamor) and unbelievably frustrating (Big Bug Bash, Searchlight Seek, Beaver Bother.) Worse still is that most of the bonus barrel minigames repeat themselves, so you might find yourself playing Beaver Bother twice in a single stage—with zero variation between the two minigames, no less!
Speaking of, Donkey Kong 64 has some really bizarre, unjustified spikes in difficulty. The aforementioned Beaver Bother is a buggy nightmare that takes an hour (or two) to learn to play properly, and both races against the beetle are way, way too demanding. These aren't just "hard" either; they require such articulate, flawless execution that they spiral into torture until you miraculously manage to edge out a victory. It's one thing if your goal is to make a dull game that you can practically sleepwalk through, but these spikes (among a few others) are so unbelievably rude that the game morphs into Schrödinger's Disrespect: I don't know whether Donkey Kong 64 is going to demand too little or too much from me until I hop into the bonus barrel.
While I think the stage design and bonus barrels are the worst part of the game, I think there's also significant lost potential with the characters. Sure, they all have a distinct personalities and gear—but they don't play all that differently. DK and Chunky are big and slow, Tiny and Diddy are small and fast, Lanky can attack enemies from far away... and that's about it? Each one uses essentially the same gun, their musical instruments all have the same effect, they can all ground pound, and even the way they lob oranges is the same. Most unique abilities—like Lanky's floating and Chunky's gigantism—only work at designated areas that limit how long you can stay in that state, or just bar you from exploring beyond a specified pen. You basically play as the same character five different times, with individuality allotted only where the game deems fit. Diddy Kong's jetpack is probably the most unique ability, but even that thing feels so slow that I'd rather not use it most of the time.
I'll throw Rare a bone and admit that while the design is atrocious, it's a generally well-made game. Sure, there are a number of bugs and glitches (I fell out of bounds once), but it technically works and doesn't have any dumb ways to lock yourself out of 101%. That, and the end of the game is pretty good, all things considered. Hideout Helm is a decent test of all you've learned and the final battle is ironically one of the best fights Rare has ever produced. It's just a shame that they're locked behind so much mediocre-to-bad gameplay; they're diamonds in the rough, if the "rough" was a mile wide pit of banana-yellow quicksand.
Donkey Kong 64 is a 20+ hour collect-a-thon that is massively unrewarding. Even if you like the idea of scouring a level for hours on end looking for any nooks you've missed, Banjo-Tooie's got you covered. As a Donkey Kong fan, this is the lowest the series has ever been and I pray the franchise won't ever return to this formula. It's not hyperbole to claim the best thing about it is that deliciously corny DK rap; Donkey Kong 64 is just not worth playing, let alone completing.
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Images obtained from: gamesradar.com, hardcoregaming.net
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