DK Country Tropical Freeze -- DONE!

Wow. Just wow. Honestly, someone more sane than me would have moved on from Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze when they saw the difficulty of that final boss, but I finished it up today at the beginning of my lunch break.

Celebrating with the kong clan.

So, what changed from Saturday to now? Here's the story: I went and did what any person would do when they're stuck on an old level from an older game -- go watch a video of someone beating the boss. That did a couple things for me. I was able to see that in actuality, I was really close to beating the boss already.  There wasn't any great strat or new thinking I got from the video. Zephiel810 basically flexed in that video by showing it could be done without any special powerups or anything. The real win for me was reading the comments to their video. 

It's not just me . . .

That gave me a bit of confidence just knowing that it wasn't just me that struggled with that end boss, but also it gave me a pretty interesting clue that made all the difference.  I was buying invincibility potions, I was using Dixie Kong for the heart boost, I was even using the roll-into-penguins trick to get hearts back . . . the real difference was ditching the invincibility potions in favor of extra Dixie Kong barrels.  

He was my Internet hero!

The finishing cinematic scene was pretty epic. You punch that walrus back to his fleet of ships and basically cause a huge explosion that sends them plunging to the depths and steal his magical horn.  You then use that magical horn to blow away the snow and ice and instead bring a magical slide of flowers to your island as all is restored to its natural order. Roll the credits.

After the credits roll there's a little secret cinematic that shows the Kong clan receiving a big gift box.

What could be inside?!

What's inside is apparently a "relic." So if you collect all the KONG letters in each and every level, you get a relic . . . you combine those six with the one from beating the end boss and it opens up a hidden level for you to play.  So . . . no . . . you're actually NOT done with the game, but . . . yeah . . . I am done (at least for now).  That final boss actually gave me nightmares in real life.

68 percent complete is done enough for me . . .

This has always been the beauty of the Donkey Kong Country series to be honest. If you didn't have the re-playability from finishing all the extra challenges in the game, this wouldn't feel like a true Donkey Kong Country game. 

Thanks again to Angela Shadowgarden for the great game suggestion.

Happy Dueling!

DK Country Tropical Freeze -- That last boss though!

My right thumb . . . HURTS!  Hours later, it still feels like all the blood has been squished out of it repeatedly. I hate to admit this, but, I can't beat that last boss in Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. I'm out of money in game and I can't afford to buy more invincibility potions. I've played the level at least 40-50 times so far. I . . . can't . . . beat . . . it.  WHAT?!

Blow your evil horn, Walrus King . . . you are victorious . . . for the moment

I know what I need to do to overcome this level, but I really really don't want to do it.  sigh.  Funky Kong has a shop and he sells items in exchange for coins that you collect while playing.  For Boss fights, the best item you'll want to buy is the invincibility potion. I believe it might be the most expensive item in the shop at 15 coins for one.

Delicious Banana Juice!  Why do you have to be so expensive?

I fully believe the designers made this last fight so difficult because they knew you'd need these potions to beat it.  It's an absolutely unforgiving fight where you have very small hitboxes to deal with. I've beat all the other bosses, but this guy is wayyyyyy tougher than all the others, and I mean, he should be, but WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?! Why can't I kill this guy?!

I've battled through an underwater nightmare with a angry octopus.

He was really really angry! I've survived a myriad of maze-like minecart tracks. 

So maze-like! I've even punched a purple popsicle loving polar bear in the face.

. . . and boy did it it feel good! But this final boss is absolutely the stuff of nightmares for me.  I think it's going to drive me crazy until I beat it. Up to this point, most levels I could figure out and get past in 15-20 minutes. It's a seriously great game (as I've already said in my previous posts). BUT THIS?!?!

I just need to beat that final boss. *cries*

Can I get some well wishes?  Also, can I get some ice for my thumb?

Happy Dueling!

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze -- Punching Bosses in the Face!

I played a good couple of hours of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze tonight, and it did not disappoint. It honestly feels like I've been starved waiting for a good platformer to come around and DK was here to save the day for me.

When I started the game play session I was sitting on stage 2-3. The first thing I noticed was, as soon as I logged in, the game said happily, hey! I see you're low on lives . . . how about we just give you 4 more because we're nice.  Thank you, game!

Only 12% completion!? Nice!

Now that's the way it should be . . . my son at one time must have paid good money to buy you, dear game, and it's only right that you don't let me suffer when I log on with a measly one life. I mean, if I die this level, you're just going to give me four more anyway.

After besting "Horn Top Hop" (which featured a lot of bellowing horns that floated you up into the air), the next level was "Sawmill Thrill."  That one took a lot of doing. Man, I love these minecart levels so much. It was an absolutely blast of a level that eventually had me jumping my cart over obstacles that were being thrown out as the level progressed and a giant Saw Blade chased me from behind.

Eventually the second world came to an end and once again I faced an unforgiving boss fight, This time against Skowl the Startling. Skowl is a giant owl who commands an army of owls that he rains down upon you.  The fight works in three phases: on the ground, up higher in the trees, and finally up in the clouds. It took me quite a while to figure out that I needed to pick up one of the owls he threw at me and chuck it back at him when he dive-bombed me.  Once I figured that out, it was just a matter of time till Donkey Kong punched him in the face and I could move on to the third world.

The third world is all about being in a Savannah Grasslands, and it is so cute. I mean, when the baobab trees started swaying to the music and you started swinging on large puppeteer giraffe necks . . . that was it. I was dead from cuteness overload. There's so much charm to the Grassland Groove level, I honestly cannot stand it. YOU'VE GONE TO FAR, NINTENDO! . . . and I love you for it.

World 3 didn't seem to pose as much of a problem as World 2 for some reason, which was fine with me. The Rhino mount made a return in the "Frantic Fields" level. The "Scorch and Torch" level featured a lot of burning trees and mechanics that involved not standing on one place too long. Twilight Terror featured vampires . . . just kidding . . . it featured a rocket that you had to keep in the air by continually tapping the jump button. 

Eventually I was facing off against the boss for World 3. Dubbed "Triple Trouble" on the World Map, this boss involved three devious Viking Monkeys that would swoop down at you . . . sometimes wielding hammers . . . sometimes exposing their butt to be stomped on. Again this fight had three phases to it where eventually the monkeys would throw spikey fruit bombs down at you until finally they'd throw a watermelon bomb instead, and you could throw that one back at them.  Again, I got to give the boss a satisfying punch in the face, and soon I was on to World 4.

World 4 seems to be all about the Underwater swimming just from looking at the map, and I do believe I see some scary kraken tentacles peeking up from the water. Oh boy, this one is gonna be fun!

Time to buy some blue balloons from Funky. I think I'll be holding my breath a lot here.

Thanks again to Angela ShadowGarden for the great game suggestion. I'm having a blast with this one!

Happy Dueling!

Now Presenting -- Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze!

I stole my son's Nintendo Switch and re-downloaded a game that he had purchased but uninstalled, and that game is none other than Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze!

What is this high resolution world of Donkey Kong?

I mean, I was even impressed over the logo splash screen here! After playing the original Donkey Kong Country the other day, this was pretty mind-blowing how crystal clear and smooth the characters and animations were.  Not to mention that the front of the game had a simply amazing cut-scene animation to really set the story and stage.

Beware the mighty bellows of the Viking penguins!

The Viking penguins approached the happy home of Donkey Kong's Island, led by a terrifying shadowy Viking over-lord. With a mighty blow of their Viking horn, a frosty wind blew across the ocean causing fierce ice to immediately form in their path and punting poor Donkey Kong and friends miles into the air like they were team rocket blasting off again. So high quality. So high budget. I loved it.

The first level of the game alone showed just how much evolution has happened with platformers over the past 20 years. Immersive things like music shifts when you swim underwater . . . heck, just having an underwater portion of a platformer in the same level . . . heck, having an insane 3D barrel shooting ride in the same level. I mean, this game really puts its best foot forward (as it should) right away.

It seems simple, but camera movement coupled with Barrel shooting adds so much depth

The same familiar mechanics are there from the original DK Country game, namely roll attack and jump attack, but now they've also added ground pounding, rope pulling, vine hanging, ducking, and double jumping as standard features. There are a lot more buttons to keep track of, and because of this, they have a super intuitive background character that pops out exactly when you need him.  What I mean by that is there's a little pig that sticks his head out of the background and says what buttons you should press to overcome this obstacle in front of you, and then it seamlessly fades back into the background. Unobtrusive tutorial moments like that (especially at the start of the game) are absolute genius. They also reused the pig character as the NPC that grants you a mid-level waypoint for when you need to restart.

Yesterday when I played this game, I ended up on level 2-3, and that was the spot where I first ran out of lives. I was actually excited to see if they were going to punt me all the way back to level 2-1 to make me start over like they used to do in the old Donkey Kong Country, thankfully no -- this is yet another huge difference between old school torture and new school thinking. Nobody likes feeling like they lost progress. Well done, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. Well done.

There was also an old familiar minecart level during the first set of levels that hailed back to the original Donkey Kong.  This thing was amazing. You were going in loops as giant obstacles fell down at you. There were cut-scenes mid-level! The ground was crumbling from out underneath you, and the excitement was 100 percent there.

The first boss fight was also super impressive. In the original Donkey Kong Country, you fought against a giant badger and really all you needed to do was bonk him on the head five times and you were done.  This boss fight had a huge cut scene before it and felt more like a boss fight from Cuphead than a simple Donkey Kong Country fight. Basically you were stuck in a half-pipe as a Viking seal swooped down on you . . . yes, you'd bonk him on the head, but then he'd sit off to the side and throw fish at you or command his viking penguin hoard to dive bomb you. After about 15 hits and a variety of side attacks, you'd finally get to punch his lights out and grab your prize.

All in all, I have to say (and it must be obvious since I've been gushing here), Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is a really solid game. I wish I would have played it seven years ago when it was originally released on the Wii U. 

I'll be playing through the game a bit more and reporting my progress here as I can. Again, thank you to Angela ShadowGarden for the awesome game suggestion.

Happy Dueling! 

Gettin Kooky with the Donkey Kong Country

I've got a new game suggestion to write about from none other than Angela ShadowGarden from the Legends of the Spiral website fame! She mentioned a certain obsession she has with the Donkey Kong Country series, and wondered if I'd be interested in giving it a look. 

Yup . . . taking a good look!

It was funny because as soon as she mentioned Donkey Kong Country, that old familiar happy tune from the game crept into my head like the earworm it is! YES! I LOVE ME SOME DONKEY KONG COUNTRY!!

After finishing Pokémon Red, one of the first things I did was hook up the old Super Nintendo upstairs and plopped in the Donkey Kong Country cartridge and started hitting those old familiar platformer levels from "the good ol' days."

To me, Donkey Kong country will always be side-related to being newly married to my wife.  Right around the release of DK Country, we had another young married couple that we started hanging out with on the regular: Dan and Melissa.  A couple of nights we took our Super Nintendo over to their apartment, hooked it up, and we all played DK Country the whole night.  Those are really happy memories. Donkey Kong Country with Dan and Melissa was epic. 

The game itself was pretty revolutionary at the time for platformers. The characters looked 3D in a 2D platformer world, the jungle-themed levels started out easy enough, but eventually you were taking on all kinds of different challenges from riding swordfish under the water, to minecart tracks that defy the laws of physics, and then back on over to a nuclear power plant. Not to mention you were introduced to a whole crew of new Donkey Kong characters like Candy Kong and (in typical 90's fashion) Funky Kong.

Oh man! That vernacular! That funky pink cap! That surfboard! That name!

And . . . this little platforming game even spawned a strange little animated cartoon series that lasted 2 seasons. The stranger thing is that supposedly this little 1997 cartoon was the "first all CG TV show made using magnetic motion capture."

I actually remember watching a couple episodes of this on Fox. 

Anyway, playing this game yesterday kind of made all these memories flood back to me, and remembering all the difficulty I had with the minecart levels came rushing back to me as well. The really interesting gate in this game centers around lives and save points. The game liberally gives you new lives in the form of bananas, red balloons, and special animal collection levels, and you're going to need them as there are some really unforgiving jumps and timing involved to get through all these levels. If you don't make it to the next save point, you'll have to start the whole chain of levels over again from the last save point. Brutal! I love it! I could hear my old super Nintendo controller's plastic stressing under my firm and panicked grip running through these old levels. 

I audibly was groaning in pain a few times when I was so close to beating a level and failed at the last moment.  IT WAS GREAT! No, seriously, it's nice when a game still manages to entertain and give you a challenge.

The Stop & Go Station level stopped me -- game over

I took a break from the painfully delightful gameplay and called my local GameStop and also the GameOver Videogame Store (super cool local used game store) to see if they had copies of Donkey Kong Country 2 or 3 . . . or even the Donkey Kong Country 3DS game, but alas . . . they did not.  Then I checked Ebay -- man I really don't like getting into bidding wars with people, but there are two copies with bids on them that would go for about 20-25 dollars right now and arrive here in a couple weeks.

The happiest discovery I made in my hunt is that . . . my son already purchased the Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze game for the Nintendo Switch a year or so ago! I've yet to find some free time to try out this newest Donkey Kong Country game, but it sounds like my review of this series hasn't come to a complete halt just yet.

Happy Dueling!

A Reinhardt type of a weekend

I had a lot of fun over the weekend, both in real life and in Overwatch. Lemme break that down for you.

First up, it was my beautiful wife's birthday on Sunday, so we all celebrated with outings to a couple of great food locations like Waffle Love and Kerby Lane. We also worked hard planting a new tree and improving on a backyard project we've been working on this Summer.

Tearing up all that grass and laying down all that mulch was not easy, my friends

Secondly, the kids scored the new Super Mario Party game for the Switch. While I haven't had a chance to play this yet, I did spend some time watching over their shoulders, and it looks awesome. I'm thinking there will be more to say about this in a future blog post of mine.

Third, I worked just a bit more on my Roblox level finishing up the walls of level 2 from my epic Maze creation.

That big open area in the maze will be a "zombie village" eventually

Finally, after a break of a couple weeks, I played a lot of Overwatch over the weekend! Vanessa Mythdust and I finished up our Competitive Placement matches (yeah, as expected, I'm still in silver), and just had a lot of quick play fun, which is mostly what I do anyway. To those ends, I mostly played Reinhardt . . . it's what I do.  I sprinkled in a few bouts of Mei, Doomfist, Junkrat, and Pharah, but it was pretty much a Reinhardt type of a weekend.

A better version of me would purchase a new computer and spend time filming or streaming a lot more of my Overwatch play, but I'm happy to at least be able to show you a few of my highlights.

It's a lot of me swinging my hammer on or near the point. ;) There were a few great moments in there like when Leala and I combo'd our ultimates (totally planned . . . we wish) for an amazing quadruple kill and like when Ana boosted me up right after a shatter and many hammer swings brought me the tears of my enemies.

Unbeknownst to me, there was even some streaming going on where Chris beheld my more competitive side.

All in all I'd give the weekend, 4 Reinhardt Hammers out of 5.

Happy Dueling

The week in review 9/22/2018

Hey all,

I haven't blogged in a week, and I'm not sure if anyone really missed that or not, but hey! A lot happened over the week, so let's take a moment to review.

TellTale Games Layoffs

Quite sad to see this happen to any games company. To be honest, I hadn't played many Telltale games aside from Minecraft Story Mode with my kids, but I did play a lot of LucasArts games back in the 90's, and from what I understand, TellTale was a break off of LucasArts.

Anyway, it was big news and you could hear people talking about it all over the KingsIsle offices expressing that "hushed tone of sadness" for the fine people now out of work. I've heard that same reaction every time a new bout of layoffs was announced somewhere. You always hope the best and know that it could happen to anyone. It happens too often in this industry. The worst part was hearing that a staff of 250 was brought down to a staff of 25 and no severance package was given to the employees. 

Super sad news.

Animal Cove's next 100 levels

On a totally different topic . . . whew, we worked super hard last week finishing up the final touches on our batch of 100 levels that hit the streets on Friday! I know that some of you may be a bit disappointed no story came along with those 100 levels, but not to worry, more to the story is on its way while the level design team keeps chugging out new puzzles for you. :)  I really hope you enjoy them.  We're already hard at work on more levels  . . . and other surprises!

A week of limited gaming

So, there are several reasons why I haven't been playing many games this week, but the major reason is my son took over my computer so he could play A Hat in Time. My computer is the only one in the house where the game isn't a complete lag fest.

This game looks really fun though and he's been having a blast with it.

I'm still logging in to Paladins every day and at least grabbing my daily reward, which was extra amazing this week with a 2x bonus.  It was pretty awesome on the Crystal days. Gotta love that x2 rewards!

Of other news, I re-downloaded Elder Scrolls Online . . . why? I miss my scaley boys!  This is my "Stingite" creation.

I gotta do something about that awful hat though

He's a sorcerer focusing on Summoning and using big weapon attacks. I logged on, re-familiarized myself with the game's controls and even completed a quest chain where I saved the King of a place called Daggerfall?

Nice goatee my dude!

I may get back into leveling a bit in this game, so more blog posts about ESO are on their way I suppose?

Nintendo Switch Online

Other big news this week was about the new subscription service for Nintendo. Polygon had a great FAQ article about it here if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Picture compliments of Polygon's Article here.

OH THE COMPLAINTS FROM MY DAUGHTER about this new online service. I spent the majority of two mornings (the time we get to talk most together) hearing all about the injustice of this new fee for online game play.

OH THE MOCKING I heard from around the net (careful with that link . . . it goes to reddit) about how silly it was an how it doesn't provide any value.

Well . . . we're now subscribed as a family . . . so . . . complain and mock all ya want, my dudes. I can't wait to check out the extents of the sub plan and also, I'm just glad my daughter can play the online portions of Splatoon again. She's all about this game, and I hate to see her not be able to play with her buds.

I suppose you can hear more about that here too. :)

Wizard101

I'm anxiously awaiting the release of episode 32? 33?  32.5? of my Wizard101 walkthrough with The Art of Warlord. Morgrim hasn't uploaded it to YouTube just yet . . . but we're busy questing through Polaris together at the pace of one hour every couple of weeks. BLINDINGLY FAST SPEED RUN!

If you haven't caught the series, or just need to see our wrap up of Dragonspyre, you can check it out here.

ALSO, don't forget to tune in to Morgrim's stream of us playing Jackbox TV with a few KI Devs this week. Sure to be a lot of fun. :)

And that's all the catch-up news I've got in me this morning! WHEW!  Thanks for reading and as always . . .

Happy Dueling!