Loads of variety... but is that enough?
And boy, what a variety of levels. I have to admit that after the easy opening levels, which really serve to acquaint you with how to play, I was expecting Donkey Kong Jungle Climber to get repetitive quite quickly. But Nintendo have been as creative as ever and stuffed this game with loads of different areas which, whilst not being the most original designs ever, add plenty of variety.You kick off in your standard jungle with stone pegs and lots of vines and trees in the background. As you progress you’ll encounter a weird garden with bouncy grapes and bendy sunflowers that fling you across the map, then there’s the obligatory haunted house with ghosts that can’t hurt you if you don’t move, a toy world where pencils form the spikes you’ll fall onto, loads of underwater sections with snapping fish and whirlpools and my personal favourite, the crystal maze type mirror section where you have to manoeuvre two Donkey Kongs at once, each with a slightly different set of pegs.
And, given all that variety, I guarantee you that the large number of lives you rack up in the earlier levels will get spent on the later levels as Donkey Kong Jungle Climber gets tougher and tougher. Timing your release from a spinning peg onto a single swinging peg whilst trying to avoid the spiked wasp flying up and down between them had me haemorrhaging lives… and cursing Nintendo, my DS and just about anything I could think of as to why I’d missed a jump yet again.
But in the way of all good games, I kept coming back for more. You see, even though Donkey Kong Jungle Climber frustrated me beyond belief in places, it’s just a lot of fun to play. And you really shouldn’t let all that kiddy Crystal banana stuff put you off, just skip over it all and get on with the game itself. The later levels get especially challenging and the ones prior to that are varied enough to keep you playing… plus there’s the attraction of getting a full set of all the collectables.
