Depending on your perspective, this is either a puzzle game where it’s actively tedious and frustrating to implement a solution, or a Platformer where Mario feels like dogwater to play and dies in one hit.

This game is fine, if underwhelming for the most part until you hit the last couple worlds (normal worlds, I didn’t even bother with the extra content), where the game just becomes a bullshit fest with projectiles everywhere. The thing about the difficulty in this game is that it’s not really hard. The problem is that Mario dies in a SINGLE HIT. And in a PUZZLE GAME, having the punishment of a minor mistake like a misinput or mistimed jumped being having to REDO THE LEVEL, you can see why this game’s indecision on whether it’s a Platformer or a puzzle game becomes a huge problem.

Donkey Kong’s boss fights are the opposite of fun. If you want the star, you have to take no damage, which means you hit him three times no problem, and on his last life he throws ten thousand projectiles that you can’t react to because Mario controls like a four-wheeler in the arctic, and you die repeatedly. It’s annoying when the hardest part of a fight is at the end, because then you have to go through the monotony of the rest of the boss fight again to even try to fix your mistake.

This game ranges from being mind-numbingly boring to being actively frustrating, and I didn’t have much fun playing it after the first couple worlds. It is at least a cute time for a little while, pick it up for an hour and drop it. Stop the second you hit the ice world.

But seriously, $50 for this shit?? A remake of a subpar GBA game with some bonus content? Embarrassing.