Quote:
It’s Donkey Kong, ruler of the jungle. The original giant powerhouse makes a triumphant return!
Looks like his giant punch is still the haymaker you remember. Don’t doubt his strength or you’ll end up with the ultimate headache!
Looks like his giant punch is still the haymaker you remember. Don’t doubt his strength or you’ll end up with the ultimate headache!
Gimpyfish's E4All Impressions
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Character Impression
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Donkey Kong was not the subject of a lot of attention this weekend. People wanted flashy characters with cool moves and they wanted to see overly effective easy to use Final Smashes. Donkey Kong is not flashy, his moves haven’t changed much (visually speaking) and his final smash was absolutely horrendous, not just in application, but it just wasn’t very fun to watch. With that being said, we did try our best to get some DK info.
First off let me say this. Donkey Kong CAN cargo up throw up air in this game. This throw combo appears to be intact, which is very good. His up air has seen IMPROVEMENTS oddly enough; it seems to kill at lower percentages than it did in Melee, which is odd because most characters live longer in this game on average. DK has mostly the same move set, and is mostly the same speed. The reason we didn’t spend much time on him was… well… he’s pretty much the same character in this game. This might not sound like a bad thing, but when you look at the physics of the other characters and the overall “floatiness” of everyone you’ll notice that DK’s combos are mostly reduced to only a couple hits. DK’s cargo up throw up air DOES work, but there isn’t really a big heavy character that falls quickly so it only hits with the up air once in the actual “combo”. However, it seems like once DK is below an opponent, he is more dangerous than he was in melee because of his improved but very familiar up air. Most of his airials act the same was as they did in melee. Back air up air neutral air forward air and down air – almost all of them have the same effects. You might be expecting changes in his forward air as far as the speed of the moves goes, but no, it seems to mostly be the same thing speed wise, but with a little less range. His tilts and smashes are also mostly the same thing from what I saw, though most of his moves did have reduced range.
Moving onto Donkey Kong’s Special moves it seems like these have all remained basically the same as well! Donkey Kong is easily the character who saw the smallest amount of change in Brawl from melee, but doesn’t expect him to play exactly the same; this is a new game folks. Donkey Kong’s up b has the same traits. I didn’t see many people landing this move while he was on the ground however. There weren’t a lot of natural DK players who had the instinct to get that to work, but if I’m remembering correctly it works almost the same way in this game as it did in melee, but unfortunately weaker. DK’s side b seems to be a little bit buffed. It comes out faster in Brawl, and the applications of it are far nicer. Rather than keeping them grounded while you pound on them, this basically gets you a free smash attack or charged punch, knockback and all. Just think of the new grounded characters system as working like M2’s disable. DK’s down b looks to have massive buffs in damage; it seems like it’s just generally better and will have more applications. A little bit faster to start, a little bit faster to finish, and it does a lot more damage. The most unfortunate change to me, because I really like this move, is the small nerf that went into Donkey Kong’s Giant Punch. Unfortunately, DK’s giant punch just doesn’t have the knockback you would think it would. It kills at higher percentages than in melee, and it also has a lot less range. That coupled with the inability to turn around your neutral b removes a lot from your giant punch game, and it is really a shame.
Overall DK is very similar to the way he was in Melee, at least, as similar as a character can be during the transition between games. This seems like it would be a good thing, but overall it seems like it makes Donkey Kong a little worse because of the new physics system in this game. Sorry guys, but maybe things could change a bit by the time that the game comes out. Also I’d like to note that, with the unfortunate exception of Ike, all of the characters seem usable at this point to an extent for the singles game, it appears to be less broken this time around (at least as far as we got in our 4 day demo experience).
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Final Smash
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Final Smash
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Alright… Donkey Kong must’ve drawn the short straw here. His final smash is completely immobile and has almost no range whatsoever. You can press buttons on the beat to increase the range but it still seemed mostly useless. We did think of one way where you could apply this however, if you knock somebody off the stage you can use this final smash as basically an unbeatable edgeguard. The shockwaves that come out do a lot of knockback in the direction that they are moving, so if you used this near the edge it would basically be a free spike every time, nobody can stay in the air for THAT long. And yes, I’m including pit and metaknight in that statement. Generally this one isn’t that good… maybe in teams?
