I played it all day. The DK Bongo controller is really, really well made, feels good, and its microphone is very sensitive (adjustable in-game, also). Controller gets an A+.
The actual game has an incredibly whacked song selection, ranging from dorky (to me) kid tunes to great new renditions of the Mario and Zelda themes. Tons of "golden oldies" also. I'm a fan of the more J-pop, techno, anime music style of DDR and some other rhythm games, but this is a -great- average American family songlist. Nintendo knows what they're doing to appeal to the masses, which is what rhythm games were designed to do in the first place. Would a n00b rather play a six button arcade fighter or ... dance? But I digress. It has a hearty number of songs and none are actually bad.
The graphics are pretty weak, consisting of just a Donkey Kong Country-esque background that cycles through about 5 different locations (cave, temple, jungle, beach) and Donkey Kong Country looking Donkey and Diddy and banana bird and that elephant from 3 running around. Balloons and flowers shoot around when you do rolls. Basically, the graphics are weak but who cares in a non-plot-type rhythm game?
The interface that tells you what to drum is pretty good. It's the standard drumming game one line with circles scrolling right to left. It took me about three hours to get to the point where I didn't have to think at all about what my hands were going to do. It would have been better still, though, if they would have had a column per drum and put the clap symbols in the middle of those columns. Gitaroo Man and DDR prove the effectiveness of different columns/areas for reading different buttons. B+
I haven't tried any multiplayer because the separate DK Bongos don't come in until tomorrow. Each store in the US apparently right now only gets 2 DK Bongos to sell seperately, though. After the clerk told me this, I "reserved" one. Hee hee. Two player should be cool, though, because I believe the drum parts are different. It also adds POW blocks and slot machines and roll competitions. I probably won't get to play 4-player until Christmas break, though.
Difficulty: It's hard for me to judge difficulty because I'm such a grizzled rhythm game veteran and I had absolutely no problem beating the very hardest songs (It's going to be a bit rough getting a Gold on each, though). Observing other people play, however, taught me that Chimp is easy enough for pure rhythmless n00bs to learn on. Difficulty scales nicely upward from there. Since you have to unlock the Hard difficulty for all songs laboriously and separately, I saw my fair share of what the easier versions are like. Don't worry about Donkey Konga being too hard for you or anything.
Major complaints: #1 They cut off the last two verses of the DK Rap. That is horrible. It just stupidly fades out. I am really annoyed at this faux pas. Many songs are way longer, so I have no clue why they butchered one of the coolest songs in the game.
#2 The different drum sets you unlock are cool, but many of them have sounds that are much too long to be a drum "beat". I suppose it wouldn't matter on low difficulties with more spaced out beats, but since I was playing mostly on Gorilla (hard), using something like the Car Set resulting in not even hearing the song, but instead a nonstop ruckus of cars screeching and crashing and honking. Cool in a way, but not hearing the song makes it hard to play well ;).
Some Sets sound fantastic with certain songs, though, resulting in many a dopy grin on my face at their sound. Some recommendations:
Dog Set w/ "Bingo" When I first played Bingo I didn't really like it, but when I played it with the Dog Set, it was Super Fun ^_^
NES Set w/ "Super Mario Bros. Theme" The NES Set is Donkey Kong sound effects.
Whip Set w/ "Whip It" Devo's Whip It is one of the most fun songs to play and with a set where clapping (which they put on the whip crack parts) makes a guy scream "YeeOUCH!" is sadistic and gratifying at the same time. Or maybe just mostly hilarious.
Most of the coolest sounding sets I haven't gotten yet because I spent all my Coins on getting all 33 songs' Gorilla difficulty unlocked for the longest time. Mario Set, Zelda Set, Kirby Set, Orchestra Set, and others are very expensive but could provide even more potential coolness.
Minigames: Haven't gotten them yet
Conclusion: This game is super-fun. I hope it becomes very popular and Ninty cranks out the sequels. I also really like the DK Bongos themselves, so I'm hopeful that more games will come down the pipe that use them. Let's hear it for innovation.
[Editor's Note: Lizard Dude needs sleep badly due to a horrible sequence of events last night that resulted in him being locked away from his bookbag and having to redo a bunch of Japanese 101 homework that was due the next morning and staying up until 5:00AM and then not getting to nap because of the insane power of Donkey Konga. We apologize for any weirdness in form or grammar or syntax or style or look of this post. Thank you.]
“I’m a stupid fatty and I love to play with my Easy Bake oven.â€
