Diddy Kong Racing's Krunch -- Designing For Frustration

foreign [Music] Racing's cast is great you've got four known criminals the man who blew up an entire Island an accomplished choir director and loving father of 20 a drumstick actually perfect I'm so bonded to him now I would die for this man the cast of DKR might be silly little cartoon animals but they're fun and Goofy and somehow memorable despite this being their only appearance and that's really neat however there is one member of the cast Whose level of Love is a lot more questionable and I'm not talking about the elephant in the room now crunch the kremling is cool because he's a kremling and kremlings are inherently cool but he's also garbage like just unforgivingly excessively bad as a racing game character and specifically as any Kid's Choice for Bane in Diddy Kong Racing it's rare you get a character so antithetical to the basic mechanics of a game as Crunch and yeah I I just want to talk about him crunch is one of two heavyweight Racers available out of Diddy Kong Racing's initial cast of eight cart racing heavyweights are pretty well known Commodities being able to bump other Racers around really easily and having high top speed but accelerating incredibly slowly and having very poor handling [Music] you go fast you punt everyone out of your way you get the most optimized and fastest times on a good run and any mistakes you make or hits you take are devastating enough to ensure that you lose pretty straightforward however with the exception of bumper and Conquer every member of Diddy Kong Racing's cast has slightly different stats differentiating the gang and letting players really latch onto a main that fits their style and crunch's heavyweight contemporary banjo really nails down what it means to be a risky but rewarding Racer the Bears got poor acceleration and handling at two out of five something that you can definitely feel compared to the rest of the cast in simply trying to adjust racing lines but he makes up for that with a 3.5 in speed making him marginally faster than Timber bumper and Conquer banjo has to take tracks a lot more carefully than his other furry friends but if he can get a good run-in it pays off and feels really good you have a slight disadvantage at the start of a race but can be uncatchable by its end crunch looks at the idea of banjo and is supposed to take it to its logical extreme bottoming out his handling and acceleration stats to one out of five crunch is the only character in the cast with a one in either of these stats giving him a wholly unique game feel compared to the rest of the cast a bold New Direction called unplayably Bad crunch just outright can't make turns that every other member of the cast can needing to break in order to clear him making him the character most reliant on his acceleration stat to get back up to top speed you know the one that's the worst in the game even on straightaways crunch isn't always a safe bet the simple Act of trying to avoid an oil slick made unnecessarily Difficult by the kremling cardist crunch turns at wide angles or not at all and slightly adjusting to avoid obstacles is way above the minions pay grade playing the game at a basic level nah that's not what crunch does but hey that's the cost of being a heavy right sure banjo is actually capable of turning without brakes lighting and his brake slides at a bare angle and he hits max speed faster out of a brake slide and he doesn't feel like a glacier of Frozen molasses with training weights onto control but crunch is min maxed when you get gray at the game when you're an expert you're gonna pick crunch obviously he's gonna Blaze past with his massive top speed stat of four out of five huh not only does crunch have the overall lowest base stat total in the game he is only marginally faster than his closest companion in Banjo granted this does put him as much faster than a lot of the cast Diddy Kong Racing's starting roster leans on the slower side in general but he controls so exceptionally poorly that No One's Gonna Wanna pick him for such a marginal boost but hey say that you're someone like me I love kremlings want to celebrate that this is the second playable kremling ever behind this one random Crosshair bonus game from dkc3 I'm willing to give him a shot unfortunately Diddy Kong Racing is not a forgiving game for drag race Specialists not only does it feature many obstacles that bring you to a dead stop the tracks begin featuring tight corridors and sharp turns a lot more quickly than Mario Kart 64 or crash team racing do the game's tracks are mostly designed for crunch to fail and that's before you take into account silver coin challenges that explicitly drag you off the beaten path and towards obstacles that slow you down further while playing as a character who can't afford to slow down any more that he already does it but you know what not every character has to be friendly to beginners crunch actually has some pretty decent advantages having the fastest barrel roll in the play now the starting cast being able to take advantage of zigzagging in the hovercraft and again fastest starting character in the game theoretically if you really mastered crunch you could get some excellent times and smash this game wide open and that is absolutely true if Diddy Kong Racing accommodated for it at all while crunch has relatively excellent stats for the hovercraft his high weight gives him a lot less air time off of jumps because gravity meaning that he benefits from Green zipper turbo boosts less than other characters as they're launched further into the air he may be bare on straightaways but where it really counts crunch again falls short this leaves the plane as crunch is only real advantageous vehicle and in all of the 27 race tracks in Diddy Kong Racing the plane is the default vehicle of seven hot top volcano everfrost Peak windmill Plains the Smokey the dragon boss race space dust alley Spaceport Alpha and wizpig Strikes Back Now the first three of these tracks are all in different cups meaning that bringing crunch to any of them gives the player a disadvantage on the other three tracks and the boss race compared to just bringing banjo or anyone else Smokey's race is also a no-go featuring a lot of tight corridors and Fireballs to avoid Q can optimize it but by the time you're getting good enough with crunch to nail this race you probably could be doing it with any other character too bad luck that leaves just the two space tracks and the final boss and actually crunch is totally a fine pick for these there's a lot of obstacles in all three but the plane is really maneuverable as long as you hold the R button down there are straightaways and all three of the tracks were crunched a barrel roll in Dark Moon caverns and Star City have a lot of tricky turns but you're probably far enough in the game and better at handling crunch yeah it would be perfectly reasonable to take crunch to close out the game and show off your Mastery of Diddy Kong Racing except drumstick exists drumstick is a secret character in DKR unlocked only after beating whizpig for the first time and running over a frog to free him from his gamer shame and drumstick is an absolute Beast of a character sporting a 4.5 in top speed a 2 in acceleration to match banjo and perhaps most insultingly of all a 1.5 in handling in every single category drumstick completely outclasses Crunch and while 0.5 might not seem like much let me tell you it makes things significantly more playable oh my God and to add insult to injury drumsticks unlock conditions are met directly before unlocking future Funland meaning that unless you are very very bad at running over frogs there is no chance that crunch ever gets to have a crack at the circuit he'd benefit most from before unlocking drumstick his potential moment of Glory robbed from him crunch is left with absolutely nothing I have never seen a game be quite as mean to a character as Diddy Kong Racing is to Crunch every facet of the game from its track design to its Cup selection to its unlocks to its side modes seem to be built to make things as hard on the Croc as possible and the only time he's ever gonna get a sniff of success is win an AI who none of the control issues a player is gonna have is controlling him he is designed to make you want him to lose and I just think that's kind of funny speed runs don't even use this guy Diddy Kong Racing Runners instead choosing the secret character TT to really thrash courses rather than starting with a fresh save file and the funny thing is TT actually has the same stats as crunch while in a plane crunch is good in theory he just never has the chance to show it Diddy Kong Racing DS would correct crunch's sorry state by upping his handling and acceleration to two but drumstick doesn't sound like an unhinged lunatic in that game so I don't care about it I'm drumstick instead crunch just serves as a testament on how simple stat manipulation can ultimately wreck a character and how creating a great game built around mechanics that they just can't handle can hilariously design for frustration [Music] [Music]

Channel: Designing For

Views: 138,866

Keywords: Designing For, Game Analysis, Video Essay, Video Game Analysis, Game Review, dunkey, Diddy Kong Racing, Krunch, Kritter, Characters, Donkey Kong, DK, Donkey Kong December, Drumstick, TT, Banjo, Heavyweights, Worst, Bad, Racing Game, Racing Characters, Worst Character, Low Tier, Wizpig, Designing For Nostalgia

Id: HdYkqunIvAY

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022