Welcome to VC Weekly, N-Europe’s guide to the wonderful world of Nintendo’s download service. Written by Sam C Gittins

If you like your Nintendo games starring furry fan favourites then you're in for a treat with this installment which features two interesting spins on popular franchises. Anyway enough from me and on with the games!
 
Available for download this week we have...     

Star Fox Command
Donkey Kong: Jungle Climber

Price: GB £8.99, EU €9.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Q Games
Released: 2007
System: DS

It's hard to believe that this was the last new Star Fox game released over eight years ago, perhaps even more baffling to consider that only now in the year 2015 will we be receiving what would seem to be a more traditional entry in the series on the Wii U but until then anyone looking for something similar on the console will have to make do with this VC release of Star Fox Command which is hardly the same. The story takes a turn for the absurd as the original Star Fox Team - and Krystal who I'll never accept as canon - end up going their seperate ways for various daft reasons which would make sense in the real world but not in this fictional universe; in any case following the destruction of the forces on planet Venom a new evil has arisen from the acidic oceans - thought unable to support life - known as the Anglar who are now set on destroying the Lylat System, so after considering this the Star Fox team decide to get back together so that we can have another adventure based on flying, shooting, barrel rolling and defeating waves of enemies... or sort of at least.

Star Fox Command features two distinctly different types of gameplay with the first being more of a strategy-orientated variety which gives you a map along with a set of turns in which you must protect both the Great Fox and ROB 64 from enemy attack while getting the Arwings to the goal, to do this you need to draw a path for them on the touch screen; in this same turn the enemy units will move toward the Great Fox which is your main ship only capable of defending by using missiles which it relies on the Arwings to collect so if an enemy reaches this ship then it's Game Over. The fun really begins when your Arwing collides with an enemy ship because at this point the game switches to All Range Mode which lets you fly around in the Arwing shooting down enemies, flying gracefully around the area and doing an all-important barrel roll, except here it's all controlled by the stylus which makes flying more frustrating than fun; while it is possible to get used to this kind of setup I've always felt that it's not a compromise the player should have ever been faced with, controlling a game such as Star Fox with such a control method just feels counter-intuitive as motion control is one thing but the stylus just feels completely alien to me in this context.

Because this is a Virtual Console title on the Wii U you do at least have several options at your disposal but whether it's seperate screens, holding the Gamepad vertically or squashing both screens onto the pad, it just doesn't work well enough at all for my liking. I'm all for experimenting with gameplay within the Star Fox universe, I even feel that Star Fox Zero looks particularly intruiging as part of me welcomes its fresh approach invoving motion controls in addition to dual-viewpoints but here it just seems that there was more shoe-horning going on in order to make the game work on the Nintendo DS hardware which perhaps just couldn't handle a complete Star Fox game in the style we had become accustomed to so instead we ended up with a compromise which didn't really please anyone in particular; it would be another few years until we would receive a worthy portable Star Fox title which just so happened to be a 3D port of one of the best entries in the series to date.

While the visuals may have been the best that the Nintendo DS could muster at the time, these days they don't really stack up that well at all, it looks competent enough on the Gamepad screen but on the TV you'll really start to notice its various flaws even if it does run smoothly at least. Classic music which has become a staple of the series is at the very least present here which is obviously an excellent thing, there aren't any full voice overs this time though so the characters have sounds which sound more like they were taken out of Animal Crossing than something more akin to the original SNES title; although you can record your own voice using the microphone which the game will then jumble up making the characters sound a little more authentic if you like, it's a nice feature.

Overall this is an interesting entry in the Star Fox series which is probably worth playing if you can somehow get over the counter-intuitive control scheme which just makes you wish you were at least flying using traditional controls, there is a reasonable amount of strategy to it plus there are actual multiple endings should you find that you wish to replay the missions, trying out all the different options. Personally I prefer to think of Star Fox Command as not being part of the main line of games as it feels like a more awkward compromise as opposed to what fans really wanted from the series; at least Star Fox Zero looks like it has good things going for it in my opinion, so I would say it would be better to wait for the new entry to be released but if you really must experience this DS entry then by all means do but you'll need to go into it with an open mind and a lot of patience.

Verdict : You'll need to use a mental boost to get through this confused Star Fox title.   

Price: GB £8.99, EU €9.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Paon
Released: 2007
System: DS

Over the years Donkey Kong has become one of the most enduring Nintendo characters to date, like the best of them though the poor old Ape has has to endure his fair share of hardship alongside the multitude of spectacular titles; DK: Jungle Climber is most certainly one of those missteps even if it's a little misunderstood perhaps. As the story goes King K. Rool has nabbed all of the crystal bananas so it's up to DK along with Diddy plus a few Kong cameos in order to help a banana from another dimension imaginatively named Xananab. While I wish I was making this story up it's sadly all the plot runs to but in any case it just serves as an excuse for an adventure of sorts.

Some of the level concepts you'll encounter in this game will have you climbing your way to a goal while others will have you rotating a wheel with pegs on it plus other examples, though after a handful of stages you will sadly have already seen most of what this title has to offer. Interestingly though unlike DK: King of Swing where this game gets most of its mechanics from, Paon the developers have actually made a decent effort to add in enough variation in an attempt to make the whole adventure feel more cohesive which is why you'll find things like Barrels, varied themes including underwater levels and other staples from the DKC series so at the very least there is ample fan service here.

It's the controls which will make anyone not used to this type of game wonder what it is exactly they are playing if they were expecting a more traditional platforming title, pressing both the L & R shoulder buttons together will make Donkey Kong leap into the air, then once you're there you have dedicated control of each arm synced to the relevant shoulder button. If you grab onto a peg then DK will start to rotate around the peg which has been grasped, then if you grab two pegs simultaneously you'll be held in place which gives you time to think about your next move; if you then let go of both buttons you will then be propelled forward as if you were rolling with further momentum possible by pressing the A button for a flip which will allow you to dispatch certain enemies, but of course this will only get you so far which is why you can use Diddy Kong but only as an extra helper if you like. For instance you can throw Diddy in the direction of some collectables, use temporary invincibility by tapping the screen or even grab a hammer or flying machine power-up, both of which are only available to Diddy Kong... well it's nice to have options.

Much of the visual style clearly draws inspiration from the classic Donkey Kong Country games, it's here where you can see that a fair amount of work clearly was put in because it does at least do a fairly decent job of emulating the style which Rare popularised even if it doesn't quite have the same level of charm or sophitication, but then nobody expected it to. Obviously the music suffers a great deal though because there is no David Wise involvement here, the man is forever associated with Donkey Kong so any game that doesn't feature a score by him will always be a let down; having said that sadly the music isn't even up to normal standard let alone god-like status, no far from it in fact as the sound coming from this title just doesn't even fit well with the on-screen action at all, even if the sound effects are reasonable.

Ultimately you already know if DK: Jungle Climber is a game which is right for you or not because if you are made for the ape then you've probably downloaded it already, despite that though it's really not the choice of a purist as it even feels pricey by today's standards as if this was on any other device it would likely be a free or very cheap title. But let's not further encourage the already dispicable "Race to the bottom" mentality of titles we seem to have been inflicted with thanks to modern-day devices which just happen to play software of sorts, this is still a game originally developed for a Nintendo machine, it's just a shame that it would feel more at home on a portable console; at the very least the Gamepad has the shoulder buttons for it but then that's like saying a mediocre pinball table is suddenly better thanks to the quality of the flippers alone. This is not the apes finest hour but it is entertaining for a short time.     

Verdict : DK doesn't quite make it to the top, but he has a good go at trying.

That's it for another installment of VC Weekly which will return again soon. So until then, enjoy the rest of the week and Game On!