DK: King of Swing (Game Boy Advance) review on HonestGamers

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Review by R. W.
August 18, 2005

Picture yourself climbing a rock wall (or, if you're the typical pot-bellied member of Nintendo's flock, picture someone else climbing a rock wall while you gorge yourself on ketchup sandwiches).

Note the fact that your arms bend and contract, and the wide range of motion this allows. You have options; you're not limited to only grasping at protrusions exactly arm's distance away. You can inch yourself closer to make ledges more within your grasp, increasing your likelihood of successfully scaling the structure. You can maneuver yourself around any difficult spots with relative ease, spots that would be next to impossible if your motion was limited by unbending limbs.

Picture yourself trying to scale that rock wall without this ability. Imagine how imprecise and difficult your movements would be, how many times you would fall flailing toward the ground. It'd be utterly ridiculous! It's so ridiculous you probably can't even picture it, rendering this whole example useless.

That's DK: King of Swing.

King of Swing aspires to bring innovation to the platforming genre, to lift it to newer heights, but in actuality its a regression. Retardo-regression. It's Super Mario Bros. if you leapt the same preset distance with every jump. It's Castlevania if Simon Belmont slayed vampires with a corkscrew. It's Final Fight if Mike Haggar had to take a breather every five seconds due to chronic back pain.

If those examples sound outlandishly dumb, it's probably because King of Swing IS outlandishly dumb.

You control Donkey Kong almost solely with the shoulder buttons of your GameBoy Advance. It might be hard to envision how this works, so some explanation is necessary.

To make DK jump, you press the R and L buttons at the same time.

By then pressing L or R, the dumb ape will grab hold of a peg, and proceed to infinitely swing around in a circle until you a) grab onto another peg located along the circumference of his swing or b) hurl him into the air and hope you aimed properly for him to grab... another peg.

Should you miss, you can then use the L and R buttons to control which way DK flails toward the Earth!

All these moves and more come as naturally as typing with your feet, which I will demonstrate now:

sdsdjdl;cxx 'v]bo/;p"89705, mdckldslk;psldsklhlohkjl

Yes, it's THAT easy!

On this adventure, Donkey Kong is again out to reclaim something stolen by the thorn-in-his-side King K. Rool, this time it being banana medals that were to be given away as prizes at some upcoming event. This event can't go on without those medals! What I wonder though is if it's about time to introduce a long lost brother of K. Rool -- S. Tool would seem to be a more aptly named nemesis for a game such as this. And the big lug is certainly losing his ambitions. Not long ago he was holding hostages and threatening to blow up Kong Island; now he's content temporarily delaying a sporting event. Not exactly nefarious.

It's hard to feel like you're the underdog in a situation where the villain has seemingly gone out of his way to facilitate your triumph too. Levels are again set in all sorts of exotically stale island locales, such as temples, jungles, rain forests and tropical woods. I also noted a few settings featuring dense thickets characterized by heavy rainfall, and there were possibly a couple overgrowths of tropical vegetation as well. All these varied locales had one common feature though: pegboards. Everywhere. Inexplicably hanging in mid-air. There were also a lot of modern levers and gadgets randomly skewered about these settings that had to be utilized too, adding a primitive puzzle solving element, but what I found most puzzling is why the jungle has suddenly been supplanted by a lavishly decorated cribbage board.

What will strike you about this game with the subtlety of a sledgehammer is the gracelessness with which you negotiate the levels. Even after conquering some formidable climbs and topping a few bosses, the game was still characterized by its uncouthness; nothing ever felt natural. King of Swing is defined by its tactless control scheme the same way the Resident Evil series once was, but whereas that franchise was dark, morbid and provided some respectable horror and storytelling, King of Swing is yet another cheery amateurish platformer, one that can only boast its slow, sloppy control scheme as its niche appeal.

Because what else here is honestly the appeal? The fact that in order to dispose of the simplest enemy, you have to aim yourself at him, hold down L and R, and wait until you glow before you can release the buttons and barrel roll into him? The fact that the "realistic graphics" the series was once known for are now crudely drawn sprites that look like they were slapped onto the GBA screen with paste? A barely there soundtrack that unnoticeably thrums in the background? Incredibly short levels personalized by reused locales, tired-yet-irksome obstacles (in an especially annoying one, a tornado constantly pulls you to the left), and DK's propensity to undo all progress by tumbling back down to the beginning of levels, crashing into any indisposed of foe along the way?

Donkey Kong Country may not have been a revolutionary series, but it at least had the decency to copy the right ideas. DK: King of Swing throws every established archetype out the window for the sake of creating something new, the inherently flawed title that results a barbaric test of both patience and good taste.

Rating
3	Poor For the most part, there are no redeeming qualities to speak of. This game does some things right, but not enough.
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Title: DK: King of Swing
Genre: Action (Platformer)
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: September 19, 2005
ESRB: E

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