Game of the Year Awards 2010 Day 3

The platformer genre was very well represented in 2010 and saw many big name franchise making a splash. At number 8 in my Game of the Year Awards 2010 is Donkey Kong Country Returns.

8:

Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii)

I was a Sega fan as a kid and hence did not own a SNES which is why I never really knew about Donkey Kong Country series. The Wii did introduce me to the series through the Virtual Console service but I wasn't really impressed with Rare's popular franchise. But when Nintendo announced its barrage of games at this year E3 Donkey Kong Country Returns was the game which piqued my interest. Maybe the graphics were the real cause as basically the game design was identical as its SNES precursor (although the game development was done by Retro this time around rather than now Microsoft owned Rare), but whatever the case the game looked gorgeous. I was keen in knowing what the whole hoopla was about Donkey Kong Country popularity.

Fast forward to November and Donkey Kong Country Returns had knocked my socks off with its awesome graphics and spot on controls and inspired level design. Making leaps across canyons, dodging huge waves, transversing treacherous mines, battling awesome bosses was the quite rush and when you factor in the difficulty, it makes for some fine old school gaming. Yes the game is quite difficulty, sometimes so much so that I would almost fling my Wii controller across the room, but even then the difficulty is not frustrating as usually it would be my impetuousness which would lead to me wasting Kong's lives. The level designs are really well thought out with right amount of obstacles to overcome and finding secret areas. Each area of the game has a cool theme which makes for varied environments to look at and explore. And as I mentioned before the visuals are easily among the best on the Wii with staggering amount of attention laid on in the details and nary a hint of slowdown. Nintendo has brought out its A game and has delivered a stunning comeback from Donkey Kong and his cohorts.

You can always count on Nintendo to turn heads, and usually such events come about more often than other developers. It is as if people at Nintendo know exactly what gamers want and literally pulverize them with such knowledge and insight. Donkey Kong Country Returns is a fine example of such a fact as this game is easily one of the best 2D platformers I have played and is definitely one of the best games for the Wii. Period.