Donkey Kong 64 was my Super Mario 64 and Crash, as in, it was my first 3D platformer. I remember the game feeling like a huge maze. I don’t think I got past the second world and just wandered around the hub area, not knowing what to do. It was my first 3D platformer and my only 3D platformer for many years until Jak and Daxter (which I replayed recently and found it held up). After playing Yooka-Laylee, which, despite many issues, I enjoyed well enough, I was in the mood to play more Rare platformers and collectathon.
I understood well about the infamy of DK64, so I opted for the Tag Anywhere mod that allows the player to switch the Kong at any time without having to backtrack to the barrel. I heard that with this mod applied, DK64 becomes a hidden masterpiece that was all along buried under all the bullshit. For the first few hours, I was quite enjoying the game. It was like replaying Shadows of the Empire a few years ago. Nostalgia over all the levels that I went through over 25 years ago alone giddied me, and the game was simple and straightfoward with the mod that I was having a great fun.
Then I knew the game was in trouble when I got to World 2. The desert worlds from Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64 were some of my favorites, so I was expecting something similar, full of imagination. The desert world in DK64 is basically a round room, then a tunnel, then a round room. That’s it. There is a temple with five entrances, having you go through the same place five times with the different Kongs, and it’s the literally identical room layout and challenge. Go through the dark tunnel, run past the same NPCs because why even fight if the combat is so terrible, same collectible placements, and the minigame, then the self-destruction sequence. It’s the same. Five times. What’s funny is this was one of the better worlds because the next world is full of water where you have to swim 90% of the time through the timed-gate challenges…
The entire game is like that. There was a lot of clumsy, murky level design like that throughout the game. The worlds and challenges are all poorly constructed. Watch the Youtube playthrough of Banjo-Kazooie, and the level design pops because everything is well laid out. It's like a theme park, with clear landmarks to reorient yourself. You are never lost. Each challenge, theme, and visual aesthetics are all unique and given proper care. At any point of timestamp, I know instantly what location this is, what the player is doing. Meanwhile, if I pick any timestamp of DK64, I have no clue, and I just played this game. Even Yooka Laylee in comparison comes across as a tightly designed game.
Rare has settled into some poor overdesign habit. The most problematic is their obsession with turning each collectible into a labyrinthine level of overcomplication, and that is even with Tag Anywhere that lessens the backtracking. If you complete a challenge, Rare doesn’t just give you a collectible. To get the half of the total bananas in the game, you have to get through the shittiest minigames. It’s not like Super Mario Sunshine where you are dropped into the difficult platforming zone. Most of the minigames in DK64 don’t utilize the core gameplay mechanics. They have nothing to do with platforming. That's the disconnect. The players bought a Donkey Kong game to play a Donkey Kong game, but what happened was Rare just dropped the platforming rope and walked somewhere else to make some random minigames.
The last world is literally 40 minutes of continous minigames, straightforward. The funniest thing is you chase the final boss, and you are immediately blocked by a gate that requires the collectible crowns to open, so if you don't have them, you need to return to the previous worlds, retrace your trail, and find those crowns. Then you are hit by another gate that's unlockable with the company coins, which require you to complete an old Rare arcade game and the original Donkey Kong arcade game with one life to open it. And you have to complete the arcade twice if you want to even fight the final boss. Can you imagine that you were nearing Bowser in Mario 64 at last, and then the developers suddenly have you play Mario Bros. and Sheriff for three hours just before the boss fight?
What is the appeal of the 3D collectathon platformer? What is the point? The fun of collectathons comes from the constant rewards for your platforming and exploration. The collectables are there to give you rewards for completing the challenges well. Donkey Kong 64 gets it backward. Literally 90% of times, I don’t think I even did actual platforming. Instead of the collectathon formula supporting the core gameplay mechanics, the platforming is built to support the collectathon formula. I was running around the open field, collecting one thing, then must go find the other thing, whether that is going back to the same NPC to hear the 30 seconds of dialogue or a minigame. Before doing that, you must level up three or four separate “skills” to even access to those “challenges” or collectibles, and to do that, you must meet this NPC or that NPC. Where is that NPC? You have to go to this place and… It goes on and on. There are like five arbitrarily different types of collectibles that could easily have been golden bananas, but instead you have to backtrack and bring them to the different NPCs. Quantity over quality. I can’t even imagine playing this without Tag Anywhere.
Why does Rare think this is remotely fun? I suppose they thought this would add “depth” by overcomplicating things, but it’s a fake depth. The level design is mostly a flat space and is boringly designed, and having the player to traverse it over and over exists to mask how shallow it is. Super Mario 64 is deep because it is a sandbox that gives the players the freedom to decide how they tackle the challenge or approach the goal. DK64 has virtually no freedom in the gameplay or even has systems that aren't just time wasting trash. We are