Review: Diddy Kong Racing DS
Revived from a decade-long deep freeze in Rare's N64 vault, and allowed onto the Nintendo DS through a handheld loophole even though Microsoft swallowed up Rare whole about five years ago, Diddy Kong Racing DS is at once a disappointing alternative to Mario Kart DS and an absolute wreck of a game to play, depending on whether your inclinations are toward multiplayer or single player, respectively.
Ten years later and Diddy looks fairly middle-of-the-road for an N64 port, but the cutesy characters, graphics, and essentially ignored sound don't fluff it up from "meh" to "neato," on first impression. While the core gameplay is the same, some new "features" have been added to take advantage of the DS' unique capabilities and without fail, they worsen the experience. Ten years ago, a multi-vehicle racer with kart, hovercraft, and plane levels might have stirred some interest - and, to be fair, a little variety in that direction isn't at all unappreciated.
But the overall experience is so needlessly repetitive (unto death) and uninspired that it feels more like a chore just to experience the game, let alone get anywhere with it. So much of Rare's legendary and punishing repetition and mind-numbing forced-collection is packed into this game that by the time you're into the meat of the single-player Adventure mode, you'll likely wish you'd never started. On the flipside, if you and your friends are looking for a kart racer that isn't Mario Kart, Diddy Kong might be what you want...for a while.
Make the jump to read on.
Graphics and Sound:
There's not a lot to be said either in praise or condemnation of Diddy Kong Racing DS' visual appeal: it's got the clunky, over-bright look of many N64 games, and like others from its generation has made the switch to the DS with a minimum of fuss. The models are chunky and the textures, which one never expected to be terrific, aren't impressive - on the whole the game has received a gloss similar to Super Mario DS. If you played that game, you'll know what to tell your eyes to expect here. Unfortunately the graphical mediocrity actually interferes with the gameplay - jaggies obscure important ground-based items like boost pads and oil slicks until it's nearly too late to change course.
The sound is disappointing, and although the voices have been re-recorded, they're some of the most annoying voices in a game to date - Diddy's own infantile mewling made me want to poke my stylus through my eardrum, a bit. The game's music is repetitive and forgettable.
Single-Player:
Speaking of repetitive and forgettable, the Adventure campaign is an excellent example of why racing games should not have stories. A giant magic pig named, dear god, "Wizpig," has taken over the island, whose adorable inhabitants beg Diddy to save them. Naturally, Diddy's idea is to summon his friends, race them, and thereby defeat Wizpig. Then a flying elephant-genie named Taj floats by on a magic carpet to help out. Yeah.
The single-player Adventure mode is, I'd imagine, the part of the game most DSers will be wont to avoid entirely, as the whole Kart-racing genre is more or less a social experience with a little lonely solo-racing tacked on for kicks. Only in Diddy, that solo action takes the form of some punishingly repetitive racing in a handful of beyond-cliched environments. The game makes use of location-themed hubs (Jungle World, Water World, Ice World, Medieval World and, of course, Outer Space World). These hubs are spread out over a rather large, empty island, which means you'll be driving pointlessly from hub to hub, and by the time you realize it, you'll be sick of pointless wheel-spinning.
Within each hub there will be doors to tracks that require a specific number of balloons to open - you collect balloons by winning first place (and only first place) in races and by completing Taj's special challenges. For cart races, you'll need to spin a wheel with the stylus before the race starts to get a special boost (similar stylus/mic-blowing mechanics intrude on the hovercraft and plane races) and then make the immediate switch to button-and-D-pad driving, which is frustrating to say the least.
The races themselves play much like Mario Kart, although once you've cleared all the areas in a hub you'll have to race a boss monster. Once you've done that, you get to repeat every course in the hub again while racing on Taj's autopiloted magic carpet: this time popping balloons on the screen with your stylus or dragging coins into a wallet found in a corner of the screen. After balloon-popping, you'll race the hub's boss again. And after that, you'll race all the hub's courses a third time in one long marathon. After THAT? You race the boss a third time, from a top-down perspective, by spinning a wheel for speed and navigating with the stylus...until you need more speed, at which point you spin the wheel again.
It's not fun. It's the opposite of fun. And to take advantage of some of the cooler new features such as upgradeable karts and a custom track editor, you'll have to race and re-race old courses to earn enough money to unlock these features. Who knew you had to grind in a racing game? It's an unpleasant idea and seems to actively discourage players from enjoying the game, which is a curious design decision.
Multiplayer:
Finally, things get better. Diddy Kong Racing DS lets eight racers race via download play, which is generous, and doesn't restrict any of the drivers or too many of the courses in that mode, either. Power-ups are stackable, meaning you can upgrade the rocket you'll snag from a red balloon (color-coded balloons take the place of Mario Kart's rainbow boxes) by holding onto it and catching another red balloon or two. Power-ups also don't scale according to your rank, so the racer in first place isn't necessarily punished for being good - but since only the first-place winner gets a point, there's no incentive for failing players to stay online.
Wi-Fi works decently and can be played without friend codes, with a nice lobby system for finding friends to race and compare stats. Otherwise, what makes multiplayer enjoyable is that it simply isn't a problem like the rest of the game - you get online, race, and that's about it. It's not an adult game, but neither is it broken. It is what it is: simple, cutesy, and not terribly well thought-out.
Nutshell:
If you play a lot Mario Kart DS and are bored to death of its environments, Diddy Kong Racing DS will give you and your friends a few hours of alternative kart-tastic fun that will under no circumstances be memorable. If you're a racing fanatic or a Diddy Kong superfan, then of course you'll find more to love here than the average gamer. Lastly, if you're intrigued by the idea of a kart racing game with some semblance of a story, by all means, indulge yourself: but be forewarned, y'all...it's gonna "drive" you crazy. So crazy you'll end up making terrible puns on the internet. Which is pretty crazy...
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 20 April 2007
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: diddy kong racing ds, ds, nintendo, rare
Jeez Tiny, did you have a giant bowl of Crankios this morning?
Diddy Kong may be a simpler and goofier affair than Mario Kart, but it's a great alternative to Mario Kart's straightforward racing paradigm, and hardly "an absolute wreck of a game to play".
The game has more "meat" to it with the addition of boss battles, challenges, and trophy races, unlike MK's pretty straightforward style. You have the option of 3 different kinds of vehicles (sometimes on the same track) which add a lot variety and a whole lot of fun (and let's not forget the joy of nailing your friends with a guided missile or making them spin out on an oil slick).
I suppose a lot of this is down to taste and preference, but I always found the music to Diddy Kong to be some of the catchiest in a Nintendo game, and the sound of Pipsy, Tip Tup, and Diddy giving their shout-outs still makes me chuckle.
Ok, so trying to spin a wheel to get a get a launch boost is a stupid conceit, and the N64 graphics aren't going to outshine Gears of War, but it hardly damns the whole experience.
I want you to get a good night's sleep and re-write this review, dammit.
thanks for the review, tiny. i didn't pick up this title, mostly because i did pick up the n64 version and was, to be frank, appalled. while spaz is right about the central conceit of the three vehicles as a good idea, i was always struck in the n64 version about how difficult the vehicles were to control, especially the hovercraft. compared to the tight controls of the mario kart series, diddy kong racing felt like reinventing the wheel, but deciding along the way to make it hexagonal.
I have to side with tinydancer. The DS features were tacked on and a bastard to use. The plot sucked majority.
I guess somethings just don't age well
Blowing blows!
Any/all DS developers forcing players to blow into the mic this far away from the platform's gimmicky launch need to have their license taken away. This crap is no longer acceptable. The DS is capable of more!
Not surprised. I remember this game being disappointing when it was released on a console. I was very surprised when you guys were offering it as a contest prize due to my recollection of it not being a very good game to begin with, originally.
oh noes the m$ fanboi dont like DS or non-360 Rare games.
never saw that coming.