Whoa, that's a cool theory. :O
Now then, I just beat CLOUD. Impressions!
The Jungle stage and Beach stage are excellent warm-ups. I like the new vistas, such as the river delta in the Beach stage. But the Ruins is where shit gets real. I love how you briefly escape the spiked wall of death (set to the Muncher Marathon theme!) via blast barrels into the background, only to be launched back into the foreground later, the wall immediately reappearing with a vengeance.
Then there's the Cave level, which is FANTASTIC -- utterly brutal in its final stretch, with a mine cart section that demands flawless execution, but the punishment is so gratifying! The Cave level is also notable for being a hybrid cart/platforming level, which is welcome indeed since the Cave world in the main game didn't offer many opportunities for pure platforming. It's nice to be able to wander around a bit in this crystal wonderland... although a new gimmick in the form of moles lobbing bombs from the background keeps the pressure on you!
The Forest stage was equally awesome,
taking my favorite song in the game and syncing the flipping and rotating of platforms with the beat. We also get to go ABOVE the treetops of the Forest world, something I don't recall seeing in the main game. The treetops are twisted, like something out of Dr. Seuss, standing in sharp relief against a golden sky. A fantastic level that does well by the high standards of the Forest!
The winning streak continues with the Cliffs level, which introduces a new gimmick in the form of falling balls of tar. At first they're nonlethal, simply muddying DK and inhibiting his movement, forcing him to find solid ground so he can shake it off -- or sink into the tar trying. But the tar balls become instant death later in the level where you have to clear increasingly intricate jumps -- off platforms that rise into piercing bone if you don't leave them quick enough, for that matter -- and if you're hit by a tar ball mid-air, you will fall to your doom. It's a GREAT gimmick. Also, is it just me or did the background in this Cliff level have more dinosaur bones, egg shells, etc, than the Cliff world in the main game?
In the Factory level, you assemble, piece by piece, a robot of Arcade DK. The bits in-between each assembly feature a variety of tropes from the Factory world. Just a fun, well-paced journey to the top of a brick-and-mortar building where your robot creation is finally unleashed! And then in the Volcano you have a new gimmick in the form of a rotating wheel, where you must platform across its spokes before they each plunge into the lava. At the end was a particular bitch of a stretch where, with only DK at my disposal, I had to run and roll along a sinking hallway, getting to a container with a puzzle piece before it sank below the lava. That bit took me like 50 tries!
In the end, I got all of the puzzle pieces, including those in the final level from the original game, high up in the sky across a series of floating fruit. The new and improved Cloud world is EXCELLENT, a perfect summary of the game's difficulty curve, starting out gentle enough and then ramping up the challenge. It's a great way to revisit each world theme, and yet the gimmicks are new and there are often new backgrounds, as well. Having a full-blown ninth world added to the game is SWEET.
I just wish we could have some sort of confirmation as to whether Monster was primarily responsible for the design of these new levels. If so, they have my absolute confidence handling a sequel all on their own. The new levels are excellent and perfectly in keeping with the integrity of the main game, and they show there is still so much they can do in terms of stage variety.
What an INCREDIBLE game!
