Donkey Kong is back in a racing game with bongos. The strange thing is... the bongos are now invisible! Donkey Konga was a musical game on GameCube that enjoyed a level of success by bringing bongos that were so fun that even ended up gaining a plataform game, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat.

In the end of GameCube’s life cycle, new games were still anounced, like Super Paper Mario and Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, but those were passed to its sucessor, Nintendo Wii. While Super Paper Mario quickly became a hit, DOnkey Kong had a lot of bad luck...

Strangely, the game no longer offers suport for the bongos and all of its gameplay was transfered to the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, being necessary several pairs of those to play in multiplayer, something that could be solved by using the bongos.

Barrel Blast is a simple racing game, looking a lot like Kirby Air Ride, where the player follows automatically a rail and can move trough a limited space, but always going onwards. Since the game was initially thought to use bongos, this simplicity was understandable, but on Wii, it just gets strange.

To get speed you move the Wii Remote and Nunchuk as if you were using the bongos, and after you get max speed you can stop moving them, except something gets into your way and you have to regain speed, be an obstacle or an enemy attack. Moving left and right is acomplished by "beating" only one side, while pulling both up will make your character jump.

If we were using bongos, these controls would make sense, but it’s really hard to get into the players mind that you’ll have to shake your hands when there’s an analog stick right at their thumbs, being that it’s only used to activate a special move.

This special move is actually called Wild Move, and adds depth to the gameplay. Everytime you gather fifty bananas, you get a Wild Move. During this period, your character flies faster and can break normal objects without attacking, gaining speed by doing so, be it objects or enemies, becoming an essential technique. There are objects that can’t be broken, mostly iron barrels or TNT that can stop your combo.

Sometimes you’ll find some animals from Donkey Kong Country, like Rambi, the rhyno, or Enguard, the swordfish, that are like temporary invencibility.

The itens system is pretty much like the one in Mario Kart, trading shells and other gadgets by usual items from the Donkey Kong universe. There’s also a certain peculiarity, red and blue balloons, being divided into two classes, Kongs and Kremlings. Each balloon has better effects for it’s respective class, defensive itens working better with Kongs while offensive itens work better with Kremlings.

With the exception of some small things mentioned before, the whole game design is like a copy of Mario Kart, and obviously not as good as the original. There are tracks with obstacles, itens to slow down the other racers, shortcuts trought the track and stuff like that. Some stages are good, but the game caught us by surprise by having a really small number of tracks, mostly recycling the same with new obstacles, like unbreakable iron barrels.

The graphics are kinda nice, a lot more cause of the care and time spent than any abnormal talent. Considering what we have seen on Wii lately with lazy softhouses, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast could very well be considere pretty. There’s some enjoyable backgrounds to look at and the underwater parts are really nice, while some big creatures like sharks and whales could sure use better models.

The music is pretty repetitive and easy to ignore, with the exception of some remixes from some of the old classics. The sound effects are what you’d expect from a bongo game, beating sounds and the Wii Remote playing this sound. Some voices from the characters but nothing that we haven’t heard on other games.

Besides the main racing mode with three levels of difficulty and variating speed, there’re still some challenges from Candy Kong that keeps the experience a little fresher. We have a good amount of characters, starting with six, three kongs and three kremlings, with ten others to unlock.

Donkey Kong Barrel Blast is just a not so well made version of Mario Kart that could’ve been a lot better as one of the last GameCube titles using the bongos than a Wii Game. It does have some fun, but unless you can not wait for Mario Kart in 2008, there’s really no reason to spend your money.