AMN's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, originally called "DK Bongo Blast," was first announced for the GameCube in 2006. The game was designed to make use of the DK Bongo peripheral for the Cube – remember those? However, the Big N quietly moved the GameCube project to its new-generation platform, Wii. GCN sales have been dropping off over the last year, and it would make little sense to release the title on a dying system. Barrel Blast is a racing game, similar to Mario Kart, that makes extensive use of the Wii-mote and nunchuck controller. It features both a single-player mode and multiplayer to boot.

What's Hot
Honestly speaking, there's not much about Donkey Kong Barrel Blast we can authentically say is "hot." For anyone who can manage to derive any kind of fun from the Mario Kart wannabe, there are a decent number of modes to play around in, including Grand Prix, Quick Race, Time Trial, Challenge and Multiplayer. In this sense, you have to admit that the developer has included plenty of things to do in the game. Even if the quality isn't exactly mind-blowing, at least there's a lot of content. What's more, we're very thankfully the game doesn't require you to constantly waggling the Wii-mote and nunchuck to keep moving – once you hit top speed, you can stop. In other words, it could have been much, much worse.

What's Not
Immediately, Barrel Blast feels broken and un-enjoyable. The controls are painfully bad – requiring you to quickly shake both the Wii-mote and nunchuck up and down to achieve top speed, and to turn, shake either controller to move in the direction you want to go. It just doesn't work well at all. Like Kirby's Air Ride on GameCube years ago, most the time, there's just no sense of speed (except for when you boost, which is admittedly fast). Once you achieve top speed, the only challenge that remains is to avoid slamming into obstacles, like barrels and rocks, which is done by either smashing through them with the A button or by maneuvering around them by shaking either the Wii-mote or nunchuck.

The level design is rather forgettable, and worse, the stages are just poorly designed – and can be irritating to navigate through. This truth coupled with the rubber band artificial intelligent, which ensures computer-controlled AI will always catch up to you, no matter how much further ahead of them you are, makes it difficult to enjoy Barrel Blast.

Final Word
It's impossibly hard to like Donkey Kong Barrel Blast; it's fundamentally flawed from the start. The Wii-waggle controls hope to compensate for what is otherwise a poorly designed Mario Kart wannabe, but it all backfires – they're the game's leading failure. The waggle scheme is something we might have fell for back at Wii launch, but almost a year later, they're recognizably shallow. Surprisingly enough, the title is published by the same house that made Mario Kart – so there's undoubtedly an element of disappointment when it comes to the racer. Indeed, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast is one of the worst Nintendo games it recent memory.