Donkey Konga

"Great Game..."

When I first saw this game, I thought it would be the stupidest creation ever. But as the weeks went by from that day, I started reading more and more about it and several weeks later I decided I might want it. I had never ACTUALLY played a rhythm game before. ( I tried DDR for like a second and I hated it ) Finally I had to decide if I would but it. Taking a risk, I did end up buying it, and I am very happy that I did!

Sound/Songs/etc...

This game really does have something for almost everyone. The songs range from childish rhymes like "Bingo" to Blink 182's " All the Small Things," to great nintendo themes on games like Zelda and Mario. There are also some odd ones like " Turkish March," and "Hungarian Dance #5 in G minor " Though odd, they are still some of my favorite ones to play in the game. But if you either hate the songs or you love the songs, they all have a decent level of rhythm. There's a total of 33 songs in the game. Also, you can use alternative drum sounds. ( I'll tell you about those later ) 8 out of 10.

Gameplay:

This is the greatest part of the game. Why? Because it is so simple, yet so fun. It is simple because you only do 4 things, and those are as follows: hit the left drum, hit the right drum, hit both of the drums, and clap. Thats all you do. But like I said, it's major fun. You do the appropiate action when the game tells you to do it. ( yellow=left, red=right, pink=both, blue star= clap. ) Even if you do have trouble getting the rhythm down, you are still in luck, because there is a frame of a circle and you want to try to hit that frame dead on with the icon. I hope that didn't sound confusing. lol. If it did, it's okay... you'll understand me once you play the game. When you hit the correct drum during a song you'll be ranked on how well you are going to the rhythm. The ranks are: Great, Ok, Bad, and Miss. You want to try to get all Greats and Ok because if you keep hitting those you build up a combo. And, the higher the combo = the faster the completion meter will get filled. Ah, the completion meter. You need to fill it to a certain mark to complete the song... Just do good and you'll complete each song just fine. Now i will tell you about the modes. There are: Street, Jam, Ape arcade, Dk town, and more. ( those are the only ones I play in though ) In street you just simply complete each song to earn coins for spending in Dk town. In Dk town you can there are 54 things to buy. 33 of them are all the songs on hard mode, 18 of them are crazy alternate drum sounds, ( EX: Dogs, electric drums, mario, etc ) and 3 of them are minigames. The minigames are fun. In Bash K Rool you use this mallet to bonk him on the head when he comes pops out of 3 holes. You basically just try to hit him as many times as you can before time runs out. In Banana Juggle you, well... juggle bananas! See how many you can juggle at once before time is gone. Lastly, is the 100m vine climb. You basically just climb a vine up 100m while collecting fruit and avoiding bugs. You play all 3 of those in Ape arcade. Thus in jam mode, you can jam with 3 other friends to the songs in the game. If something is wrong with the clapping reaction of your bongos, you can fix that problem in Dk town, also. Like I said before; those are just the modes I play. Theres another mode where you can turn the icons off to create more of a challenge, too. Well I think thats it for gameplay. 9 out of 10.

Graphics:

Not that great. In fact, the graphics are kind of bad. The little Birds, Diddy and other animals that dance at the bottom while you are playing, are just hideous. DK, in the upper left hand corner, looks fine. And the backgrounds are just "okay." The game menus are plain too, but do get the job done ( for me. ) But this is the type of game where graphics don't matter to much. You are too busy keeping up with the beat, and looking at the icons that you hardly even pay that much attention to the graphics. You'll realize how average the graphics are once you watch some one else play the game. Since I'm nice... 6 out of 10.

Replay:

It depends on YOU and how much YOU like the game. I really enjoyed the game and it took me about 3 weeks until I started getting tired of it. I personally think this game has lots to offer. I mean, it does take a while to unlock everything because the prices of unlockables can be as cheap as 100 coins, or it can be as expensive as 25,000 coins. I forgot to mention the difficulties. They are: Monkey (easy), Chimp ( Medium ), and Gorilla ( hard ). Some of songs on gorilla mode got so hard that I found myself REPLAYING them over and over until I finally cleared the song. In conclusion, the replay value all depends on how much time it takes for you to get sick of it all. ( give it time though, you might end up liking songs that you used to hate. :) ) I'll give this category 7 out of 10.

Overall: I think this game deserves, at the very least, 8 out of 10. I wouldn't give it 10 because it's not perfect, and I wouldn't give it 9 because there are no Heavy Metal songs in the game. :(. But as the title of this review says... Donkey Konga is a GREAT game!

Rent or Buy: BUY! DKa is very fun/addictive and you get a free pair of DK bongos with purchase of the game. That's an 80$ value for only 50$!!!

Final word: Lets hope this sells well enough so that America can get Donkey Konga 2: Hit song parade. ( It's already out in Japan! )

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Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/11/04