If only this game was more popular. Jungle Climber is well worth your time.
You use the L and R buttons to control DK's left and right hands respectively to climb up the pegged boards that float around the game's levels. That might not sound like very compelling stuff, but as you keep playing this game, it reveals a lot of depth to it. The pegged boards will have things like enemies crawling on them, they can be unstable and might fall after you grab onto them, and more. There is a lot of variety to the game's levels. In one of them, for example, part of a foggy level will be to hard to see the pegs, so you use the touch screen as a map to guide you on your way. Diddy will also come in to play, as he will be your bodyguard (without Diddy, Donkey will die within one hit), and he can be shot up at hard to reach places, and also grab on to things like a hammer to break rocks and stuff.
True to DK games, there are also a lot of things to collect, like oil barrels to gat Funky Kong to take you to a secret level in each world, banana coins that unlock bonus levels after you beat the game, KONG letters, and giant DK coins that gives you access to cheats. And while most of these items are in easy-to-find locations, that's actually a good thing, because Jungle Climber can get insanely hard (another good thing is that at first, you might stock up upwards of twenty lives. You will need them later on, trust me). This is one of those games that might make you throw your DS at a wall, since if you fall into a pit, or take damage from an enemy without Diddy, you will die, and oftentimes you will die really fast. But the challenge is never unfair. When you die, you will return to the beginning of the room you were currently in. And if you get a Game Over, you will only start back at the beginning of the level you were in. So with a little trial-and-error, you will eventually beat the game.
If you played King of Swing and didn't like the hand-drawn graphics, then I'm pretty sure you will like JC's graphics more, as it uses the Donkey Kong Country trilogy's pre-rendered looks instead. And though the touch screen is only used to activate a power up, both screens will give you a big view of level, giving you a good view as to whats up ahead. One of the biggest disappointments to this game is that DK: JC has a mediocre soundtrack. The music is OK at times, but most of it is sub-par, coming nowhere close to being as fantastic as the ones in the DKC games, DK64, or even Jungle Beat.
What I don't like most about JC is what Nintendo did to most of the characters in this game. This game isn't story focused at all (it's just about Donkey, Diddy, and Cranky teaming up with this funny looking banana alien to stop King K. Rool from taking over the world, nothing more), but the characters have been made really stupid in this. For instance, Diddy has some bad dialouge, and will often call K. Rool very stupid insults. The alien, or Xananab as he's called, will often speak a word with a verbal tic of the song 'The Name Game' (don't ask me why; Nintendo did it). Also Cranky, for some reason, doesn't act all cranky any more (Why Nintendo? You can't have a character named Cranky and doesn't act like his name implies). And lastly, Donkey has joined the legion of silent Nintendo protagonists. These things are minor at best, but they still are annoying.
All in all, DK: Jungle Climber is a great addition to your DS library (you'll have to go on Ebay or something if you would want to find this game, though). Let me finish this review by saying this: Nintedo, PLEASE don't stop making Donkey Kong games after this game. We haven't heard of a DK game in years, and if you stop making them, you just might lose a Nintedo fan! (No you won't, actually. I won't stop loving Nintendo just because of that).