A couple of months ago, in my review of Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, I stated that I appreciated Nintendo’s effort to support offbeat accessories like their bongo controllers by making sure that they wouldn’t just be useful for one game. While Jungle Beat wasn’t a perfect game, it at least validated my purchase of the bongo set (along with the original Donkey Konga), and it was a fun, different experience. I’m all for innovation in gaming, and I was happy to support Nintendo’s attempt to provide a different gaming experience.
Then I played Donkey Konga 2. If this game is going to be the result of supporting innovative games, I’m going back to playing generic first person shooters and EA Sports games from now on. Innovation shouldn’t hurt like this.
Well, maybe innovation isn’t the right word to describe Donkey Konga 2, given that it’s more or less the same game as its predecessor. The basic premise of clapping and hitting the bongos along with the on-screen beats hasn’t changed at all from the original. The same types of beats (left drum, right drum, both drums and clap, with drum roll variations for each) return unchanged from the first game, and there are no additions to speak of. Now, out of fairness, there aren’t that many additional control options afforded by the design of the bongos, but the gameplay still doesn’t do much to differentiate itself from its predecessor.
Where Donkey Konga 2 does set itself apart is in its music selection, and not really in a good way. The first Donkey Konga had lots of tracks that focused on drums and percussion, as one would expect from a drumming game. Donkey Konga 2, however, is all over the map in terms of its song selection. The overarching theme seems to be pop music circa the year 2000, with some random REM and classical tracks thrown in to appease the older set. The selection is extremely odd, though, because most of the tracks are more or less forgotten (Staind’s “It’s Been Awhile”) or just plain don’t fit the theme (Incubus’ “Drive”). If Namco was trying to lure the hip teens, then they failed because the teens have moved on from these songs ages ago; if they’re trying to capture older gamers’ sense of nostalgia, they didn’t go back far enough. It’s disappointing, because the original game had an excellent variety of songs, and so does Donkey Konga 2, if you don’t mind that the variety is five years old.
The odd song choices become even more apparent once you actually try to play along with them. While some songs, like REM’s “Shiny Happy People”, are laid out well for the most part, some songs just seem like the designers dropped some beats in wherever they wanted to, regardless of the actual rhythm of the song. This was occasionally a problem in the first game, but it’s significantly worse in this installment. The result is that trying to play along with many of the songs feels extremely awkward; your ears are telling you to do one thing while the screen is telling you to do something completely different, which is extremely disconcerting. While playing the game, I often felt like I was just hitting the bongos to some random rhythm while an unrelated song played in the background, which is not the mark of a good rhythm game.
To add insult to injury, the songs aren’t even the original songs. Instead, all the songs are remade, presumably by people that Namco found in subway stations singing for spare change. These versions of the songs range from merely disappointing to downright cringe-worthy; the worst offender, Good Charlotte’s “The Anthem”, features the lead singer’s voice cracking horribly midway through the first verse. I honestly was appalled that the track made it into the game in this state; it simply screams rush job.
(In fairness, remade songs aren’t always bad; the Karaoke Revolution games remake songs as well, and in those games, it’s acceptable. However, in Karaoke Revolution, not only are the remakes done well enough that you usually can’t tell without paying close attention, but you’re singing over the vocals anyway. In Donkey Konga 2, however, you’re listening to the vocals all through the song, and they’re so bad that they’re distracting and make the game considerably less entertaining.)
One other thing to note, regarding the song selection: Donkey Konga 2 is rated Teen. Not Everyone, not the new E-10 rating. Teen. The reason that the game is rated Teen is because of the lyrics in the songs. Now, honestly, you have Donkey Kong beating on cartoon drums with Dixie Kong jumping all over the place giving out inane advice; why not keep the content of the game family-friendly? In any event, the rating gives you a convenient excuse not to waste your money on this game for your kids or younger relatives. (It’s probably for the best, anyway; exposing them to a game this bad at a young age could scar them for life.)
The mini-games, an interesting and innovative addition to the original Donkey Konga, are just plain uninspired. There’s a Freestyle Zone, where you basically pick a track and just hit the drums, and various DK characters appear on the screen when you do so. It’s fun for about thirty seconds; I actually could have just as much fun with the GameCube off. (I’d have better music to drum to that way, as well.) The other two games cost 50 coins (earned by finishing songs in the main mode) each time you play them, and neither is really worth even spending play money. Barrel Race has you competing against the computer or another person to hit all the beats correctly the fastest. Rhythm Keeper gives you a series of beats to continue hitting at a particular cadence with no on-screen cues. They’re both as exciting as they sound. At least the mini-games in the original Donkey Konga had some interesting and different uses of the bongos, like whack-a-mole and moving Diddy Kong around a series of vines. These games are just the same as the main game except without the awful music.
Finally, there are some multiplayer modes included in Donkey Konga, like Battle, which has multiple players competing to see who can get the best score on a particular song, or Concert, a co-op mode where each player is responsible for a particular instrument. To be frank, I really didn’t spend a whole lot of time with these modes, as they’re rather pointless with a single set of bongos, and I wasn’t about to spend the money on additional bongo sets to find out if they’re any good. Even if they were awesome, they wouldn’t be enough to save the rest of this game.
Honestly, I was prepared for Donkey Konga 2 to be underwhelming, and even if it was just an expensive song pack, I probably would have been satisfied, given that I enjoyed the original. What surprised me was how Donkey Konga 2 managed to take a step backward from its predecessor in every possible way. The game is just plain sloppy, and smacks of being rushed out the door to capitalize on Donkey Konga’s popularity before it was too late. Do yourself a favor and leave this one on the shelf, even at the video store; there’s not enough here to justify a rental even if you already have a set of bongos. If you’re really dying for a GameCube rhythm fix, then go back and play the original Donkey Konga again, or hold tight for Konami’s upcoming DDR game. Whatever you do, though, avoid Donkey Konga 2 at all costs; all it’ll do is spoil your groove.
