I only got this a few days ago for my birthday. Been busy so I've only gotten through the first world thus far. I like it but it is quite hard. I don't think I did any levels in the first try and this is only the first world. In the original DKC I didn't start having a tough time until the second world at least. When you're busting out minecart levels in world 1, you're not fooling around.
So far the game has been fun and it's gorgeous. I'm impressed with a Wii game's graphics. This pretty much never happens. It seems very much like Nintendo of Japan no longer even tries to make their games look nice, they're content with the bare minimum. But Retro has some pride in those visuals and this game looks great! Good Feel also makes pretty games. And I've also noticed that Donkey Kong Country converts to 2.5D graphics a lot better than Mario does. The old rendered graphics had a 3D look anyway so this looks like a natural progression of that.
The big con however is the controls. Why am I ALWAYS right about that? It's like every time Nintendo shows off some game at E3 with stupid waggle controls and I'm all "I don't know about this" and I am right every single time. IT ALWAYS HURTS THE GAME! STOP DOING THIS STUPID BROKEN CONTROLS BULLSHIT! The rubes who are impressed by stupid motion controls suck too much to succeed at this game anyway! They wouldn't get past the first barrel shooter level. I don't even attempt to roll. Early on I saw a group of enemies in a row, figured it would be an ideal time to roll through them, and died because it didn't recognize my shake so I stupidly walked right into them. Ever do that with normal controls? Ever play a game where you try to jump on an enemy, you push the button, and the guy just stands there while the enemy hits him? Back in the days before waggle that was a sign of a horrible junk ass game. You NEVER saw that kind of sloppy bullshit in a Nintendo game. Nintendo games were tight. And the most annoying thing is that in DKC the grab, run, roll and ground pound were all performed with the same button. There was no reason to introduce a third button and thus be "forced" to use waggle in the first place.
I associate Nintendo with **** controls these days. Every time it's like there is some good game hidden away behind a frustrating broken control scheme. Can I even consider these to be good games? I would never cut any slack for **** controls with any other developer. Normally **** controls = **** game. You can live with poor graphics, poor sound and poor story but controls are too important to gameplay. A game with irresponsive controls is pretty much the same thing as a game full of bugs.
I typically never buy remakes of games I already own but I would gladly rebuy numerious first party Wii games if they supported the Classic Controller. MegaByte, what is this Gecko patch you speak of? Is it some sort of hack? Map shake to a button and you fix like 90% of Nintendo's Wii titles.