I don’t remember if I’ve written about this before (my blog’s been going for a while now! woo!) but I went back and cleared Jungle Climber to 100%, so I’m writing about it now. (To reiterate, a game is “finished” when the story is cleared, or I see the credits. “Completed” is 100%, most often according to the game’s metrics.)

This is one of those games that the DS seems to have a lot of; an IP revival of sorts that seems built around a new mechanic. Most of them were trying out features of the DS itself, but this one isn’t actually reliant on the hardware, except for tall stages that span both screens I guess. Anyway, the “difference” or you could say “gimmick” about this game was the peg-swinging central mechanic.

Based on the old NES game Clu Clu Land, the idea is of controlling a character’s arms independently to grab things and use your momentum to change direction based on spinning and swinging. This idea was used in 2004’s DK: King of Swing combined with gravity and physics to make a hybrid platformer-style game, of which this game is a sequel. Compared to KOS, JC fleshes out and expands on a lot of gameplay stuff, and brings the artstyle more in line with the Country games with its 3D pre-rendered sprites, compared to the bright, cartoony flat sprites of KOS (which are very appealing in their own way too).

These two games, developed by Paon, kept the light alive for the Donkey Kong series in its dark years. They were somewhat maligned at the time for their nontraditional gameplay, but at least they were faithful to the characters and spirit of the franchise. This is compared to what we got on the home console, with Jungle Beat throwing the series’ history under a bus and 3 bongo rhythm games with terrible licensed music. And on the handheld front, the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games were muddying the identity of the franchise and DK himself, not to mention the strange gameplay tack that series also took after its first installment. So seeing Paon treat the characters and setting with such respect is something I really appreciate about their games (the third of theirs was Barrel Blast/Jet Race on the Wii). They tried something new, but they made an honest attempt to make it fit in.

And that’s why I like Jungle Climber. The reason I stopped playing for a while, before getting to 100%, was the DS-breakingly frustrating difficulty of the extra challenge stages. Also I was trying to get good ranks on the minigames, which was also infuriating. But getting any rank was enough to score the completion percentage, so I have a C in some modes but I don’t mind! Finally beating those extra stages was satisfying, and I got a cool cutscene!

The peg-swinging mechanic is strange, yeah. And maybe it’s not a “true” platformer. But like any new control mechnism, like when I first started Metroid Prime or Katamari, once I got the hang of it it became very natural. And mastering a new skill is one of the fun things in life, even if it’s so minor as a variation in player control.

The plot of this game is silly (wouldn’t have it any other way), but it’s great how it takes you to so many different places. Each world (island) has its own identity, and the weird dimension stages are also unique—but they can be repetitive (too many mirror stages, not enough farm stages) and their reuse of some environments on islands that have interesting environments is an annoyance. JC handles the progression well though by having cutscenes at the end of each island, where the protagonist group catches up to K. Rool and they have a chat, with sufficient ham and cheese. The world map is really cool too, DK smoothly jumps around the island’s geography between stages, like an extension of the Country’s world maps.

That’s a point where we can compare this to Donkey Kong Country Returns. Returns was an awesome game with totally interesting levels and backgrounds, and smooth platforming gameplay that was quite similar to the Donkey Kong Country series, but pared back in some respects, was a bit lacking in characters and the world map was just tokens on paths (that’s totally a legitimate complaint!). Compared to this game, whose actual gameplay was quite unlike the Country games but did the characters and world very well. Ok I think I’m exaggerating here but there’s aspects of each that are great for a Donkey Kong Country fan.

Compared to the previous game, King of Swing, Jungle Climber is super-tightened up in mechanics and gameplay, it’s a bit less floaty which is good and I think the collectibles are better. Better music too. One factor it falls down on though is the boss battles. KoS by comparison had very interesting boss fights with cool, flavourful characters, whereas JC’s bosses were mostly transformed Kritters which I found disappointing. They also reused a few in JC like the giant robot. Another lesson to be learned: don’t imitate DKC1 on everything, its boss fights were dull and shallow. I just don’t get how they took a step back between the two games—of course, that’s only my opinion.

Well, anyway I had heaps of fun with this game. It has lots of other odd mechanics involving Diddy that are used only a bit, but I guess they don’t overstay their welcome you could say. I think it does a lot of fun things, and there’s plenty to replay levels for with the collectibles.The difficulty is quite steep at times, especially in the final boss battle, but stock up on stuff and turn on the “cheats” to make it a bit easier. The swinging and pegs can actually be frustrating when it doesn’t go your way, but it’s so unique. I’m really glad I could experience it, I think it was my first pick for DS game when my wife got her DS and I borrowed it from her. I don’t regret that decision at all. Actually cos I played JC so much she made me get my own! So yes, I bought a 3DS for Jungle Climber. Anyway, goodbye for now. Jump in my jet and jive, Clive! Ha, Funky Kong.