"Just Beat It"

Nintendo is branching out its characters into everything and anything, and now that Donkey Kong has got his grubby mits on a set of bongo drums, players can join in with the rhythm game Donkey Konga. Inherently, it's a Dance Dance Revolution clone, working with a set of drums that get packed in with the game when you buy it instead of a dance mat on the ground. After a short while though, I found myself weary over the sheer lack of effort put into the overall project.

Gameplay:

Basically, there are four "notes" in the game that will make up everything. Tapping the left drum, tapping the right, tapping both drums simultaneously and clapping your hands. One major flaw with this system is that the game doesn't detract points for hitting the wrong note with the wrong beat, so to really ease up everything, all you need to do is just tap both drums simultaneously and clap occasionally. You can just avoid this though by playing "properly" and refrain from such cheating. Another problem is clapping; it wasn't long before my palms were aching horribly, forcing me to stop playing well before I would want to. Clapping was nice in theory, but when it comes down to it, there probably should have been fewer clap notes, or something of the sort to make the game more comfortable. You can substitute tapping the sides of the drums in place of claps, but it just doesn't feel as fun that way.

There are various modes, some of which are really pretty useless. Street Performance is the main mode in which you earn cash for playing songs, and has three different difficulties, as well as the exceptionally hard Jam! modes, which comprises of you memorising every note in a song and playing it accordingly without any indication of what notes you should be playing. Not really fun as such, but the Jam mode does provide a challenge.

Challenge mode is all but pointless. You play through every song in the game in a row, purely for points and you aren't rewarded with any coins for completing it. You may as well stick to Street Performance and just play through each one, as at least then you're earning money.

Jam Sessions involve you either playing songs by yourself, as a duet or as a quartet. Playing solo is completely redundant, as you may as well just play the song by yourself in Street Performance and actually earn coins. Duet and Quartet aren't nearly as fun with the CPU as they are with human players, purely because the computer plays so synchronised and robotic, nearly always obtaining a perfect score. You're only ranked against human players though, but it could have been better had they offered an adjustable CPU AI level and also allowed you to play with/against them.

Battle Mode is a strictly multiplayer affair, and one that only works truly well with two sets of drums. I have found it near impossible to win a drum roll with a GCN controller due to lack of speed, which does detract heavily from this mode. However, should you muster an extra set of drums, then this mode becomes a lot more fun.

As a bonus, you are able to purchase Mini Games with your hard earned cash, which are then played out using the set of bongo drums. Ingenious; or at least it would be had the Mini Games not been so boring and had exceeded a total of only three games. "Jungle Climb" involves you tapping the drums to proceed up a slowly progressing screen whilst collecting various pieces of fruit. To hinder your progress, enemies will pop up to bite you and knock you off the vines, but oddly enough, this process won't end the game, whereas dropping off the screen will. The game itself probably goes on longer than it should, and it's not particularly entertaining to play through more than once for such a reason.

"Bash K. Rool" acts like the Whack-a-Mole arcade games, bashing K. Rool as the name so aptly suggests. With only three holes, activated by tapping the left drum, right drum and clapping for the left, right and centre hole respectively, it's odd that tapping both simultaneously wasn't substituted in place of clapping. As the game is likely to do if the clap censor is set to a low setting, the centre hole will randomly be attacked when you had clearly tapped the left or right drum, which in turn wastes a good amount of time. One can easily just change the game's settings, but really, was tapping both drums really so difficult to input? It certainly would have made this Mini Game more playable, given the removal of a glitchy control system that can just as easily ruin the game for you.

"Banana Juggle" is probably more entertaining than the other two Mini Games, although this isn't saying much. You tap the drums to pass bananas and clap to add more. Like with "Jungle Climb", possibly goes on for a bit too long though, and becomes very dull after a few rounds.

Multiplayer only works fairly when both players are utilising drums, and unless your friend owns a copy of Donkey Konga, then chances are you probably will only have one set to play on; unless of course you want to shell out more cash to purchase a second set of drums, but given the rather focused market of rhythm based drum simulators on the Game Cube, I wouldn't go rushing to buy a second set of bongos, even if it will make games slightly more fun.

The sad thing is that given the lack of decent Mini Games and only a moderate selection of songs to keep you entertained, there's not a lot to do in the game. You probably won't end up playing it endlessly in a single day, more of a few songs then packing it up and playing something more substantial.

Story:

Donkey Kong and Co. find a set of bongo drums washed up on the shore, and they begin playing songs so they can make enough money to buy bananas. This story is told through a few boring still-frame shots that could have been better dealt with in at least a simple cutscene at the opening title screen. The story is so shallow it won't even submerge your toes. Fans of the Donkey Kong series will be surprised to discover that for some bizarre reason, there is an actual plot hole in Donkey Konga; despite Donkey Kong's confusion as to what a bongo drum is, the ape has actually used them in one of his prior adventures. This isn't rocket science here; couldn't the writers (if there actually were any) have put something at least logical?

Graphics:

Rather poor, if you take the time to notice. Across the board, it is difficult to determine any amount of real effort being put into the visuals. When playing songs, notes move fluidly across the screen with no real problems, and the repetitive backgrounds don't distract too much from the music, although at least they have taken the liberty to add several back drops, ranging from a ruined temple to a volcanic cave. During the Roll sessions, balloons and flowers will fly across the screen, thankfully behind the notes.

The onscreen characters are rather pathetic, admittedly. One particular haunting animation of the game is upon receiving a tip from hitting the right notes, the little Elephant next to the coin machine will jump a little in excitement. However, this Elephant only moves within about 3 frames of animation in the process, and looks quite terrible in contrast with how well it could have been done. Considering the same character had earlier appeared on the SNES, it's not out of place to state that in this respect, even the SNES had achieved better graphics.

The mini-games do not deviate much either. Fruit in the Jungle Climb game take on a striking resemblance to a 2D sticker merely slapped onto the screen. The area on which Bash K. Rool takes place is dull and has almost static images of K. Rool and Diddy popping up; unless of course you hit one of them, and their single frame will change to another frame instantly. Banana Juggle isn't quite as bad as the other two with its beach backdrop, but the characters are still pretty inanimate.

Sound:

A modest 31 tracks exist on the PAL version of Donkey Konga; Nintendo really lives by their promise of having "over a whopping 30 songs". The song collection probably isn't as big as it should be, and In contrast, the NTSC version does indeed have more songs than the PAL version, but at a moment's notice, one can see that it's not a case of just removing songs, but rather an exchange from certain sets for different ones. Both versions have some rather boring tracks that are shared between them, but the NTSC version does appear to cater for a younger audience with some admittedly, rather lame song choices, like "Itsy Bitsy Spider". Such a younger audience is in most cases though incapable of playing the game in the first place, so the idea of these songs is pretty useless. As for the good, well, it's really all based on opinion at this point, but there are only about 4 or so I can continuously play of the 31 on offer without getting bored within a single play through.

If one should grow tired of using the same old drum beats and claps, there is the rather redundant option of being able to swap sound sets for other "wacky collections." The downside? They sound unbelievably awful for the most part and only detract from the music quality. The basic bongo set that you start with is considerably better than the majority of the "joke" sets.

One glaring problem with the entire game is that in a lot of songs, the drum beats aren't even going along with the music, but rather, a basic pattern. The result leaves you feeling as if you are merely playing "Simon Says" with tapping specific patterns, and not playing along with the songs.

Overall:

Gameplay: 8/10
+ Drumming along is quite fun, even if it's not in time to the beat.
- Mini Games are dull.

Story: 1/10
+ It's over quickly enough to lessen the burning pain in your chest.
- How on earth does a Donkey Kong title get a plot hole?

Graphics: 6/10
+ No slowdown during songs.
- No effort put in anywhere else.

Sound: 8/10
+ A fair collection of tracks in the PAL version that I personally feel surpasses the NTSC list.
- Sound sets are a waste of time, and only ruin the songs.

Total: 6/10

As you see, the overall score itself seems poor, but this is really only because of the story and graphics, or rather, lack thereof. Whilst the Gameplay and Sound would supposedly make up the most important factors of purchasing a game like Donkey Konga, it is important to note that the other factors that have been neglected emphasise a lack of effort that could have been put into the game.

If you are considering buying Donkey Konga, check the song list carefully and see if you like what you would consider to be enough to warrant a purchase. Buying Donkey Konga for the sake of it will cause some regrets. It also wouldn't hurt if you are already a fan of the Dance Dance Revolution genre.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/05, Updated 01/25/05