We didn’t like New Super Mario Bros. all that much. It’s funny that, when you look at something – or in this case play it for hours on end – and you actually don’t like it as much as you’re ‘supposed to’, how many people there are out there whose own, more positive perceptions, instantly brand you a swindler of some kind.

Donkey Kong Vice.

It’s okay guys, we don’t mind that you liked it.

To re-cap: our main concerns with the game were firstly how little it had changed in twenty years, and secondly that playing with more than one player was catastrophically irritating. More irritating than the loud chammy eater that at some point in your life you’re going to be forced to sit next to. More irritating than the two kids down at your local cinema engaging in a fart-off down their mobile phones. More irritating even than an ultimately fatal case of hives.

It was with this in mind that we approached Donkey Kong Country Returns; slightly sick of mind that we might be unremittingly punished for failing to keep up with our counterpart. Luckily, though, this game’s designers have actually put a few minutes of thought behind the problem of what happens when one player is edged out of existence by an overly eager friend. And it doesn’t involve docking a life each time.

I was born on a pirate ship.

Here instead, the slow-poke of the bunch simply walks back into the play area after a five second countdown. The rather odd decision Nintendo made to ensure that any contact made between the two (or up to four) players involved in a single game of New Super Mario Bros. was met with unnecessary bouncing – usually into a lava pit – here players are able to pass through one another, or better yet, Diddy can climb onto Donkey’s shoulders so they can rule the galaxy.

The set of levels we played through varied from almost criminally easy, through to fantastically hard. And while we weren’t facing any of the above problems, we hereby confirm that in order to add the necessary soupcon of rock-hardness we’d expect from Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo has been extremely miserly with the checkpoints. We’re still not sure whether the early, pointless death of our playing partner at the beginning of any stage was something we relished, or simply despised him for. Co-operation it seems, is not the lovely ‘human beans working in harmony’ concept Sesame Street would have us believe. Plain and simply; relying on others not to fall off tiny platforms can be downright infuriating.

But let’s not hit that negative road too hard; this game is after all, looking brilliant. Classic Donkey Kong gameplay with plenty of innovation thrown into an already crammed bag. For one thing, it might seem like a 2D side-scroller from the screens, but there are plenty of opportunities to launch a monkey or two into the third dimension.

For example, pounding a giant log raised an entirely new level from the bottom of the ocean which stood a good fifty yards Z of the standard field of play. We were able to reach it with traditional cannon barrels and reap its bananery rewards. In another area we were able to pound a switch which forced a distant whale to sick up a hundred bananas out of the top of its blowhole. In fact, we’ll never hate a game which has a banana-filled whale in it. Never.