You would struggle to come up with a more poignant manifestation of the dire situation in which the great Nintendo currently finds itself enmeshed than Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. It's the latest, and unquestionably finest, iteration of a great franchise – just mention Donkey Kong Country to gamers of a certain age and they will wax nostalgic about the golden 16-bit days, when Rare Software set the gaming agenda. It's a brilliant game, too: lovingly executed, superb to behold and endlessly inventive.
But then it makes few concessions to the Wii U's unique attributes – although you can play it on the GamePad's screen, freeing the TV, its control system ignores the touch-screen. Nor, in its quest to take the classic left-to-right-scrolling platform gameplay to new heights, does it provide an irresistibly innovative reason for the unconverted, amid the thoroughly modern temptation of a PS4 or Xbox One, to commit themselves to buying a Wii U.
Which is a crying shame, since those without a Wii U will miss out on a slab of no-compromise pure platform action which perfectly illustrates why that most venerable of genres endures so convincingly. The seemingly paradoxical Tropical Freeze tag is explained by an intro sequence, in which a chill is brought to the lush island idyll, beautifully rendered in a vibrantly colourful manner, occupied by Donkey Kong and friends, by invading Snowmads -- penguins and owls, along with all manner of exotic wildlife.
Classic action
As ever, you restore order by finishing many worlds' worth of levels. Precision platform action is the general order of the day although, this being Donkey Kong Country, there are plenty of levels involving jumping around in minecarts and shooting yourself from barrel to barrel, as well as swinging from vines and clinging onto moving grassy surfaces. Donkey Kong frequently goes underwater, too, where he proves surprisingly graceful for such a big unit. This time around, Donkey Kong has three sidekicks: Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong and that old buffer, Cranky Kong. The latter uses his walking stick to give you an extra-high jump, whereas Diddy and Dixie add a hover-jump. And all three effectively double your health.
Countless small but enjoyable additions have been made to the Donkey Kong Country blueprint. Donkey Kong, for example, can pull up handles, revealing power-ups or even reshaping the scenery. The longer you survive with a companion on your back, the more you build up a meter which lets you unleash a Kong Pow attack, that kills all enemies (apart from bosses) on screen. You often come across arrays of bananas; if you collect them all quickly enough, you'll get a reward of some sort (usually a puzzle-piece or a token). Collecting tokens, which are generously placed around Tropical Freeze, proves vital, since Funky Kong's shop has received something of an upgrade, with a welter of new items. Green balloons, which bring you back from falls to oblivion, are useful, and you can buy extra health and even cow-catchers for minecarts.
Mirthfully inventive
Just about every level has some little inventive twist which will have you chuckling away to yourself. Such as burning hedgehogs which you can extinguish by chucking giant juicy plums at, or baby owls that arrive still encased in half their eggs, which you must jump on to stun, then pick up to use as ammunition.
A glorious, goofy sense of surrealness permeates throughout. The bosses are magnificent – challenging, multi-stage marathons involving some hilariously weird adversaries. And at times, Tropical Freeze abandons its left-to-right rigidity with sequences that move into and out of the screen. Those effectively highlight the quality of its graphics – it's by far the best-looking Wii U game yet.
Decent co-op and replayability
Tropical Freeze has a two-player co-operative mode which lets someone else (using a Wii Remote) jump in to play as your companion – they get an extra ability, to fire shots which stun enemies but don't kill them. This proves great fun, after an initial adjustment period, and would provide a great means of parent-sibling bonding. And Tropical Freeze definitely offers good value for money – it's incredibly long and, given its increasingly fearsome difficulty levels (the cack-handed will find it frustrating after the first two worlds), a huge collection of unlockable levels, and the fact that it is rammed full of collectibles like Kong letters and puzzle pieces, it will keep you occupied for a considerable amount of time.
In other words, it's a great game – exactly what we expect from Nintendo. But in a way, that's also its problem: anyone with a Wii U would be a fool not to buy it, but so few people have committed to the Wii U, and in order to rectify that, Nintendo needs to woo the unconverted with all-new gaming experiences. And the gaming experience that Tropical Freeze provides may be rich, enjoyable, challenging and frequently hilarious, but it isn't anything conspicuously new.
