A team focused on gaming technology at Digital foundry have taken on a new project examining Donkey Kong Country Returns HD launching tomorrow on the Nintendo Switch. One of the first things that comes up is their reservations about Forever Entertainment, given some of the company's previous projects, but Digital Foundry says that this is “the best work to come out of Forever Entertainment to date,” which should reassure those who on the fence. Here's a selection of things you might want to know about.
“I was a little nervous about the game's prospects given Forever's track record, which includes slightly weaker remakes of Panzer Dragoon and The House of the Dead. However, I needn't have worried – this is essentially the best work to come out of Forever Entertainment to date.”
“The focus here is on new textures, modified effects and updated character models, with the basic scene geometry remaining largely unchanged. The new textures are much sharper, they hold up well at higher resolutions – 1080p in docked mode and 720p in portable mode – and the image quality is reasonable. I like the new sky textures and I'm glad they sharpened the background to avoid the low-res look. Rain and water rendering has also been significantly improved.”
“There are two more questions. First, the load time. They're not too bad, but they're almost twice as long as they were on the disc-driven Wii version. Sure, asset sizes have increased, but this still feels like a big step backwards. The second is the number of frames per second. It's worth noting that we've seen Unity games run at 1080p 60fps on Switch – including Yooka-Laylee and Impossible Lair with better visuals – but most Unity releases tend to run with performance issues or at lower resolutions, so 1080p 60fps is still always worth celebrating. But the Wii version of this game basically runs flawlessly, so a few areas of slowdown stick out. I don't like the fact that this game performs worse than its more technically advanced sequel.”
“So what's the takeaway here? The reality is that this release is both good and disappointing at the same time. Attempts at remastering mostly succeed, but the areas where it fails seem less acceptable given the age of the original. When you consider the technical precision expected of a true Retro Studios game, it's arguably even more disappointing.”
