Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze

 While waiting for Metroid Dread to arrive in October, I decided to splurge on another game to add to my Switch collection. Tropical Freeze was initially released in 2014 for the Wii U (which makes its full-price re-release on the Switch a bit eyebrow-raising, but whatever,) as a continuation of the revival of DKC that began with the Wii's Donkey Kong Country Returns.

What the game is is a totally charming platformer that is both old-school but also takes advantage of the far more powerful hardware that we have these days. While the original DKC used computer graphics to take the place of pixel-art sprites, this game makes use of three-dimensionality to have, for example, levels that have you hop in a barrel and watch as you smash through the background to find yourself in a whole new environment.

Difficulty-wise, the first world is a bit of a cakewalk (caveat: I've been playing through Super Mario World and the original DKC recently on the SNES collection, so my platforming reflexes are in good practice,) and I think the first boss took me only two attempts. However, once you get to the second island (which is how they thematically connect the groups of levels) the difficulty ramps up significantly - I found myself repeating the same span of one level over and over, my 26-life reserve dwindling to 15, and then down to 9 once I fought the second island's boss.

Boss fights, incidentally, are very elaborate, with multiple phases and often only brief windows in which you can damage them.

Like "Returns," Tropical Freeze sets aside the classic Kremlings and their leader, King K. Rool, to give us some new baddies - a sort of Norse-themed invasion of arctic creatures into DK's tropical home. Penguins, seals, owls, and I'm sure other cold-climate creatures are your primary adversaries.

One thing that's really different is the way that your companions work. Rather than having Diddy, Dixie, or Cranky simply swap with you when you get hit, instead they'll ride on your back and give you some extra jump effect. You and each Kong buddy has two hearts, which act as a health bar, and if your companion loses both of theirs, they fall off your back and you'll have to find another barrel to get them back. These barrels (and actually, barrels in general) are not nearly as common as they were in the old games, so hitting a checkpoint in the middle of a level can sometimes make the going more difficult going forward if you can't get a barrel.

Also, depending on your companion, you'll gradually build up a little meter that allows you to wipe out all enemies on screen and turn them into useful items, like lives or golden hearts that allow you to double up on health. (I don't yet know what you get with Cranky Kong.)

Anyway, it's nice to see that at least with Nintendo, this most classic of game genres isn't dead (though I'll confess the fact that this game actually came out seven years ago makes this statement a little less useful.) And I think this should help me pass the time while I wait for Metroid Dread, which has been my obsession this last month or so.