Donkey Kong 64: A Collection of Personality

hey gerard when are you gonna re-complete donkey kong 64. i can't wait till you recomplete donkey kong 64. it's my dk-64 is an overrated collect-a-thon you should re-complete it i love the hilarious and unique beaver bothered definitely worth it donkey kong 64. okay [Applause] dig this gamer crew i'm a big guy with a big heart i've kicked my share of ass but not without a good friend in my back i love to rock out bang on drums got a lot of hair and i'm disappointed to my elders i have a cool brother with the business sense and i'm pretty sure i own a red tie and i collect things hey everyone and welcome back to the completionist new game plus where i am re-completing the first 120 games i ever featured here on the channel for all aspects of myself that i just mentioned identify myself with the big man donkey kong more than any other video game character out there he has been the gorilla embodiment of me since childhood so when they turned him into a 3d force of destruction i turned into the most excited kid in the neighborhood i mastered donkey kong 64. no joke i was the dk-64 guru all the other kids came to during recess every boss i advised them how to defeat him every banana i told him how to get him friends will let me leave their houses until i beat that one annoying challenge for them even though their parents were getting a divorce dude let me go home i'm ready to go home anyways there was a local toy store that was doing a donkey kong 64 competition and i showed up and i wanted spades you know what i got this guy right here recognize it from the intro to that that uh the intro you just saw you've been seeing it for years come on man well at the very least i'm ready to share my expertise and knowledge with you guys today when i recomplete donkey kong 64. okay so you got a sense of how hyped i was for donkey kong 64 way back when it came out and i know i wasn't alone despite needing a huge overhaul after banking on the n64 disc drive and the fact that the n64 was entering its twilight years nintendo and rare proved that the console still had big titles to dish out but i mean why wouldn't we be excited the donkey kong country trilogy was the main staple of the snes and we were lucky enough to get a new game three years in a row three years and a console later just as the thumb sticks on our n64 controllers were losing resiliency we finally got the news that dk was coming back not only was his return overdue he was coming back for the first time in 3d we all knew was gonna happen eventually and it finally happened mario got his 3d treatment and people were like man this is the best mario game ever link got his 3d treatment and people were like man this is the best zelda game ever by 1999 we were entitled to this new 3d donkey kong game furthermore the news that the game was so big and beautiful that it needed an expansion pack to run properly and that it was bundled with the game at no extra cost merely added to the excitement and it was cool to already have it by the time majora's mask rolled around but that's beside the point the point is that it was exciting to see our ape friend in his own 3d game and that excitement i felt as a kid is what made me want to complete it in the early years of the completionist so what sort of villainy is king k rool up to this time around king k rool starts by accidentally crashing his giant floating mechanical island into the home of the kong's dk isle this damages his blast-o-matic destruction rate and delays his plan to level the kong's home king k rool's kremling army fervently begin repairs but in the meantime they kidnapped four of dk's friends tiny lanky chunky and our good old pal diddy to add insult to injury they've also stolen dk's hoard of golden bananas and scattered them across the aisle donkey kong must free his friends one by one in order to team up retrieve the stolen bananas and send king k rool and his army a pakken now dk 64 draws numerous influences from its predecessors and not only its predecessors but other rare titles like banjo-kazooie for instance but being on a whole new console dk64 plays much differently than the original games it is a 3d platformer through and through barring much of its controls from the pretty much perfect mario 64. you know a is jump za is higher backflip jump runs ea is long jump that sort of thing however this game went a step further by giving each kong unique abilities and weapons all of which need to be utilized in order to solve puzzles defeat enemies and progress and i'll point out that this game relies heavily on backtracking as much as inaccessible until you free the proper kong or obtained or upgraded the necessary ability or weapon between the build of the game's release and the pride i felt as the dk64 guru back in the day donkey kong 64 is and probably always be one of my favorite 3d platformers however when i first completed it for the show i found myself less patient for all of its repetitive qualities that led me to give the game a ranking of benept as we were still in the days of half ratings and now i've done away with those i'm guaranteed to change my stance here so it's safe to say that this game's either going to get a finish it or a completed a finish it or a complete it is on the horizon replay let's just knock this out real quick okay time will pass opinions will change but the dk games will always be full of charm not only does donkey kong 64 uphold this sentiment but its characters are absolutely overflowing with personality don't believe me turn the game on just simply turn it on okay tell me that voice doesn't exude really really really cool dude vibes i immediately know the vibe i'm gonna get from this game when all i've heard is one word and seen the logo alright so still not sold just wait a few seconds and you'll witness one of the greatest things in video game history the dk rap now this dk rap is very divisive amongst everyone in the world they either hate it or they love it or they're in for the cheese of it and i am legitimately on the beloved side my man grant kirkhope absolutely nailed this work of art it encapsulates the whole tone of the game and perfectly conveys each kong's personality as a kid whenever i power the game on i always face the dilemma of whether or not i was going to skip it and i often held off it got me excited to play as each character and i was kind of bummed the first time that i played the game and realized i couldn't mess around with all the characters immediately i now consider singing along to the dk rap completion criteria so you bet i did that for my original playthrough and i'm doing it once again for this playthrough too i was actually surprised when i heard that this song got a lot of crap back in the day and over the years for being a sub par rap song i'd like to respect everyone's opinion but it's my opinion that that opinion is a opinion i mean was there a movement pushing for this song to win a grammy that i wasn't aware of were people arguing that it was the same level as dre or fiddy i just knew it as a silly song to introduce the characters and anyone choosing to criticize it as attempting to be anything more is kind of missing the point here it's merely there to show us the kong personalities like lanky being a doof and chunky being a big oaf all in a fun here we are run dmc sort of way d k donkey kong d k it's tricky trick get triggered okay so i haven't even touched on how the kong's personalities exude through the gameplay yet before this game the dk tag barrels were just a way to retrieve your lost partner but this time we get a glimpse inside that barrel collecting five golden bananas in every level with every kong plus all the other collectibles plus the fact that one kong is often required to help another kong gain access to their respective bananas means that the player is constantly jumping to the tag barrel to swap characters but the tag barrel isn't just a boring static screen no the game turned this dark void into an opportunity to let these characters shine each one you highlight has a unique animation that says choosing me is the right choice my dude it's always satisfying when i highlight dk and he gives me this yeah cool by highlighting chunky you see an exception to the eagerness that all the others share then there's the plethora of unique abilities that are tailor made for each character tiny kong is cool and stylish and her hair twirling ability allows her to reach areas others can't while also paying homage to her older sister dixie from the previous games diddy's chimp charge is right on track for him as he is literally running head first into things to solve problems this is done with no regard to his personal well-being proven by the exasperated grunt that follows and lanky's ability to inflate like a balloon and float to higher ground shows off the carefree attitude of the most cartoonish guy in the bunch now guns were an unexpected addition to a donkey kong game but what made them work was that they were less as weapons and more as a means of activating switches funky kong returns as a shop owner in this game and provides each character with a weapon that reflects their attributes chunky's pineapple launcher is powerful yet slow tiny's feather crossbow is weak yet fast you get the point it also cracks me up how jazzed each kong is to bust out their firearm with me feeling slightly more uncomfortable about it in my current playthrough if at this point you're digging the personalities of each character their musical instruments will make you love them even more like funky candy kong appears in each level and gives the characters an instrument that they can rock out with to defeat certain enemies around them open doors or just do a bunch of other random things you can do anything with the power of sweet sweet jams not only are the instruments necessary to progress but they once again give life to each character dk bangs in his bongos and gets so carried away that he ends up standing on them by the end of his animation diddy's brash and nothing but a loud electric guitar will do chunky's triangle reflects his ironic gentleness as he is the most physically intimidating of the crew now i found myself using the instruments way more on this recent playthrough than the previous ones unless there's a platform that requires a specific conch instrument in order to activate something i kind of forgot about them this time around i made it a point to use them more effectively rocking out was a great way to take out a cluster of bees overhead and i use them way more on the splat enemies there's one of these in every level for every kong and defeating them will cause them to drop a blueprint these are then traded to snyde who gives you a golden banana for each one making their collection necessary for completion cause splats take multiple normal hits to defeat and are often on pretty small platforms where one wrong move can knock you right off you can shoot them from a distance but if you don't get to the blueprint in time it disappears forcing you to wait around until the enemy respawns i found it much more effective to get right in their face play some sweet jazz and watch the blueprint fall directly in front of me it was a time saver and allowed me to enjoy the fun personas much more often i feel like i barely scratched the surface in regards to how much character was infused into this game k rool was more humorous than we never seen him before as was the cast of other non-playable characters like cranky and funky despite lacking that moodiness i loved from the previous games it massively transitioned to match the tone of whatever environment you were in and that deserves a shout out at the very least in my eyes dk 64 has a lot of wonderful things going for it for every bathroom there is that exists there's a lot of quality stuff here and collectibles lots and lots of collectibles [Music] collectibles backtracking more collectibles duplicate bonus stages more backtracking and more collectibles the perfect 3d platformer exists within donkey kong 64 but it has padded the hell out with repetitive gameplay granted a lot of it can be avoided by simply beating the game but for all of you completionists like me expect to get bogged down with some heavy repetition it's hard to figure out where to begin as most of the completion criteria is intertwined with each other so let's start with the most basic collectible regular bananas there are 500 of these in each of the seven main levels 100 for each character yellow for donkey red for ditty blue for lanky purple for tiny and green for chunky you only need a certain collective amount in order to make a hippo heavier than a pig so that the pig can turn the key to unlock the door to the boss fight which is weird but that's a separate conversation all together that i'm pretty sure your parents should have with you if a character collects most of their bananas in a level they get a banana medal if a character collects all of their bananas in a level you hear a little monkey sound this doesn't do anything but since they are there and i didn't want anyone to get mad at me i made sure to collect all of the bananas in the game okay so let's talk about those banana medals collecting 15 allows you to play cranky's retro jetpack games there are way more than 15 throughout the game though and you'll need all of them to get to that 101 completion but since you get the medals by collecting most of the regular bananas and i've already decided to collect all the regular bananas we're gonna get all the banana medals anyways and between all the characters there are nearly a thousand banana coins which are used to buy abilities weapons and instruments only a tiny fraction are needed to progress but i got them all and of course then there's the five golden bananas for each character in every level plus the overworld itself we've also got the banana fairies scattered throughout the game that need to be photographed in order to get the bonus golden banana and a part of those five golden bananas for every character one of their golden bananas is tied to the ka splat blueprints i mentioned earlier and you also hear i'm going with this there's a reason why this game is negatively labeled as a collect-a-thon and i can't argue against it it's a lot my dudes and collecting it all gets old and it's not like you can get everything there is to get in a level and then leave it in your wake no so much is inaccessible until you unlock the proper kong or obtain a necessary ability causing you to constantly backtrack to previous levels now personally i don't mind a little bit of backtracking here obviously metroidvania games utilize it the best in how even if you're technically going backwards you do so in order to open an entirely new area it's like taking one step backward to go five steps forward some of the backtracking in dk 64 was okay but a lot of it felt like taking one step backward and one step forward a few golden bananas are obtained by beating bonus stage mini-games some are fun and provide a decent challenge yet they overall feel like filler compared to the rest of the game i won't say they don't belong in dk64 but here's the thing halfway through the game they just repeat these challenges provide mild amusement at best but i guess the developers felt the need to fill space so they double downed on them so if beaver bother gave you trouble guess what it's coming back in the game later with two higher difficulties fun can't wait to get to that again it's so interesting to discover how as i get older i become more patient with some aspects of games and less patient with others collectathons and backtracking are definitely geared more towards young gerard as i found them far less enjoyable when i first played this game for the show i probably would have disliked them even more for this current playthrough had it not been for one thing modern gerrard is all about exploiting and finding glitches yeah baby give me those sweet sweet speed run juice papa cause pop is going through stuff okay so you know those banana fairies you have to get the photographs of well normally you have to pass up any you find early in the game until you unlock tiny kong get her shrink ability access the banana fairy island and receive the camera this of course forces you to backtrack to find those early game fairies and snap photos of them but not anymore there's a glitch that allows dk to swim into the fairy aisle and get the camera at the very beginning of the game this time i see a fairy i snap a fairy done deal additionally there's the crystal cave level that isn't meant to be accessed until late late late in the game since you should have nearly all of your weapons and abilities fully upgraded by the time you access this level visiting cranky candy or funky in the crystal caves will allow you to receive any of the weapons and upgrades you may have missed up to this point however there is a glitch known as the moon jump or moon kick to some that allows dk to soar straight up into the air and bypass the gigantic boulder blocking the entrance to crystal caves once inside there's a second glitch that allows you to bypass the b locker standing in front of the level's portal door it's kind of confusing to explain but it involves positioning and pressing b a certain way that eventually the game just pushes you through the door links know how to do that and the box is down below doing so allowed me to go to crystal caves way early and unlocked substantially almost every major ability for every character once i've unlocked them it reduced the backtracking significantly and it made the game more fun in my eyes so i've already started the game with dk and i already have a fairy camera and all the weapons and upgrades i needed now whenever i unlock a fellow kong they can immediately get all the weapons and upgrades i love donkey kong 64. but this is how i play from now on i'm much happier with the more linear path i had this time around than i had on my last play through completing the game in the old-fashioned way cause even with the glitch exploits there's still a ton of backtracking and there's still tons of collectibles padding out this game it's too much stuff too much stuff too much stuff sell the lamp stop sucks you can stop ted's trash gerard it's napkins too much what no it's not no you've you're literally just collecting garbage at this point you're right i guess all of the good things got covered by all the other things i've been collecting i'll get the dust buster george we don't have a dust buster review [Music] okay so we got the nanners banana coins the nano metals banana photos the nano fairies nana blueprints we've got the nano everything my friends so let's see what kind of rewards we get here starting off with the blueprints that were collected and given to snyde now they actually serve two purposes in addition to getting a golden banana in exchange for each one by giving snipe blueprints he's able to delay the blastomatic from firing towards the end of the game it's kind of this endgame escape sequence the more blueprints you give him the longer you have to dismantle the blastomatic giving him every single blueprint in the game provides more time than i needed but it's nice that the game gives you that for your efforts there is a bigger reward for giving snide every single blueprint however remember those bonus mini stages i mentioned earlier once you beat them there's no way to play them again that is until you turn over all 40 blueprints once that's done you can visit snide in any of his locations and he allows you to replay any of those mini games that you want thank you for the reward dk64 i will never be doing that again now as a kid i loved this so much that i wanted to live in this world for as long as i could that meant i was ready to jump back into a few mini games and maintain my dk64 guru status but times change and now i'm looking to get my nostalgia fix and move on need i remind you these mini games already repeat within the game so i've already played each one twice it's a nice gesture donkey kong but my heart must go on now i went back and forth on whether or not i needed to collect every single regular banana and banana coin in the game and i decided yes i have to go for it beyond the 75 bananas each kong needs order to get a banana medal in every level the remaining 25 are superfluous you get nothing for having them aside from your start menu showing 100 bananas and hearing a little chimp sound when you get the 100th one similar story with the banana coins between all characters there are over 900 of them in the game but you only need a six of them to purchase all the abilities weapons and upgrades the rest are just there if you want to get them you don't even get a chimp sound for these things neither the bananas nor the banana coins count toward the 101 progress percentage on your save file so they're really just there if you want to get them again this is where i split ways from my childhood self there was a time where i was happy to explore every single inch of this game switching back and forth between characters to get stuff for no other reason besides the fact that it was there but i had grown out of enjoying collection for collections sake of my original episode and i'm a little more jaded today then there's everything else that is required for that 101 on your save file all the golden bananas collected that extra golden banana for photographing all the banana fairies all those banana medals earned and battle crowns earned by surviving battle arena stages the boss keys and the two special coins earned by beating the two retro games within dk64 are technically completion criteria but they're also required to merely beat the game you couldn't get the last boss key to fight king k rool unless you got those two coins honestly i think the game could have benefited from some slight reconstruction especially with those two retro games i mean i mean look they were tough and my heart went out to all the other kids out there who just wanted to be donkey kong but were stuck on donkey kong i mean i was fine because you know even back then i was the completionist you know what i mean you know what i'm saying you know you know i always will be a completionist i always was a completionist so you you know my you know my vibe you know my drift you know what's up but those retro games were not what most of us were looking for and i feel like they would have made a fantastic completion bonus for something like getting a whole bunch of banana coins or something like that maybe that would have made some of those less essential collectibles worth it but anyways you get to 101 percent and you beat the game what do you get besides that beautiful number on your screen you get a cute little scene of cranky kong holding quote unquote auditions for donkey kong 64. it's fine it's silly i like it i would say it's not worth it though up until this point the game found clever ways of repurposing the same animations and sound clips to form new entertaining moments this bonus scene felt a little too slapped together as much as i wanted more of the kongs just being themselves some of the humor didn't quite land with me i feel guilty for even saying this because this game gives me so much since i'm bringing you the completion perspective it does warrant criticism in my journey recompleting donkey kong 64 there were 22 hours played fewer than normally would be thanks to those awesome exploits zero deaths i never even came close to dying and i never will 201 golden bananas collected 200 from all the levels in overworld and one from photographing all the fairies 20 fairies photographed shot with a camera not with a gun 10 battle crowns earned by surviving king k rules battle arenas they're pretty easy and provide a nice combat center diversion 40 blueprints recovered from ka splats i melted their faces with music and i took their loot 40 banana medals earned mostly from collecting regular bananas but some you get from beating challenges in hideout hell 3 200 bananas collected that's 100 for each kong in all eight levels one nintendo coin for beating the og donkey kong arcade one rareware coin for beating cranky's high score in the old school jetpack game 949 banana coins collected even though i only needed 150 13 faberge eggs 500 pokemon cards four calling birds three french hens two turtle doves 8 000 stamps we're collecting everything at this point you can't stop me i'm a hoarder and i have a problem if you're a fan of 3d platformers play donkey kong 64. if you're a fan of donkey kong play donkey kong 64. you will have so much fun and trust me you won't fall in love with these characters there's no completion criteria tied to multiplayer but even that's great for goofing out for the friends for a few rounds for me this game falls under the category of a forever jam i've loved it for so long and i will love it forever however i can't in good conscious recommend completing it all of that backtracking is a young man's game that modern gerard isn't down for anymore even with all the glitches and exploits that i found and while all those banana coins and medals and whatnot gave this game a guinness world record back in the day for the most collectibles in a game was that a good thing maybe things will change in the near future i don't know not only was donkey kong 64 the first 3d donkey kong game ever but it was also the last true 3d donkey kong game maybe we'll get another one soon that will capture the spirit of the franchise without it being such a collective bond of really pointless things but with that being said i'll leave it to you guys personally i think the game is great and it gets way too much hate nowadays but in the end completing it that's a whole other story so with that in mind guys i still get this game my completionist rating of finish it [Music] finish it [Music] foreign

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 427,424

Keywords: donkey kong, donkey kong 64, donkey kong review, donkey kong gameplay, gameplay, review, game review, game reviews, gaming, nintendo, nintendo 64, n64, retro gaming, retrogaming, retro games, n64 games, best n64 games, donkey kong 64 rap, donkey kong 64 gameplay, donkey kong 64 review, mario, mario 64, super mario, super donkey kong 64, donkey kong country, rareware, nes, snes, completionist, jirard khalil, king k rool, diddy kong, cranky kong, dixie kong

Id: LqWWNybHa40

Length: 26min 23sec (1583 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/FragMeNot]

DEE KAY

[u/Celestial_Blu3]

Does anyone know how many of the original 120 he’s re-played on new game plus?

[u/NAteisco]

I've wanted to see a Beard Bros play though of this for years.

[u/orange_lambda]

DK64 is classic. I really enjoyed this video.

[u/resident16]

I felt seen in this video with the beginning segment.