RARE doesn't stumble; they careen off a cliff in a burning vehicle, exploding on impact at the bottom of the canyon.
In keeping with it's spirit, RARE took a familiar base: Super Mario 64. In that game, you are dropped in to a hub world, and must unlock new levels by collecting Power Stars. Power Stars are gained by completing objectives in levels you already have unlocked. Slowly, the game opens up to you in this manner, giving you a greater access to the world and the levels that populate them. RARE successfully replicated this formula in Banjo Kazooie, and were looking to do the same in Donkey Kong 64 - infact, DK64 can almost be called a copy of a copy; it borrows more from Banjo Kazooie than it actually borrows from Mario 64. So much so, you'd swear DK64 was to be "Banjo Kazooie 3" tweaked and repackaged with the Kong Clan in place of the Bear and Bird.
But there was a critical flaw in their plans. Donkey Kong Country already forced the player to wander around levels and collect a pile of doodads; Hero Coins, Bonus Coins, Bananas, Banana Birds, Bear Coins, and much, much more. Donkey Kong 64 ups the amount of swag you must collect - and it's here where the game hits the biggest snag that undoubtedly has turned so many people off from the game. Before I continue, allow me to clarify one thing: I loved Super Mario 64, and I thought Banjo Kazooie was a great game; I am not the sort of person who "hates" collect-a-thons.
Almost everything in Donkey Kong 64 can be collected. It's immensely overwhelming at first. Taking the place of Mario 64's Power Stars are Golden Bananas. Golden Bananas can be collected by finding them inside levels, completing puzzles, or exchanging them for a large variety of different currencies. You get Gold Bananas by finding Blue Prints, Banana Faeries, Banana Coins, and much, much more. In addition, there are regular collectable bananas, color-coded for each of the five playable characters. A character may only pick up the banana of his corresponding color; DK can only pick up Yellow Bananas, Diddy can only pick up Red Bananas, so forth and so on. You collect regular bananas to open up the boss at the end of each stage. You must feed a giant hippo a certain amount of bananas so that he will weigh enough to elevate the Pig on the other end of the scale far enough upwards to turn the key to open the door to the Boss. You also can collect film for your camera, multiple ammo types and grenades for your guns, crystal coconuts for special abilities, and melons for health. In addition, you also have your standard Donkey Kong Country staples of tons of Minigames. Most minigames are character specific, too. Rounding off collectables are unlockable goodies in exchange for finding certain numbers of aforementioned Banana Faeries; a cutscene viewer, invincibility, etc.
What this eventually ends up meaning is you will spend a lot of time in these levels - often times several hours in a single stage, constantly switching between playable characters just to get a Golden Banana that only Tiny Kong (Or DK, or Diddy, etc.) can acquire. Levels are painfully expansive; among some of the biggest and most complex levels on the Nintendo 64, I'd say. And it's not the fact that there's an overwhelming amount to do that's the problem: It's the fact it's presented in the most tedious, frustratingly boring way possible. You better like backtracking; because this game is full of it. Even with the quick-access warp pads littered around levels, it still takes unnecessarily long to traverse these maps just so Lanky Kong can get those last 10 blue bananas. Compared to a game like Grand Theft Auto, which handles the "100+ hours of gameplay" claim rather well, Donkey Kong 64 simply piles too much on you to do all at the same time. Everything about this game feels slow and takes forever to do. I remember thinking, by the time I got my first Golden Banana, that this game would take me ages to finish - and it honestly has. You're always running around somewhere, to an area you saw as character X that you need character Y for. This game is as far from streamlined as they come.
That's not to say the game is completely worthless. The Boss battles is where this game truly shines, assuming you have a long enough attention span to push your way through the tedium. Each boss is clever, inventive, and mostly unique (although you do refight some bosses more than once). And, in typical RARE style, this game is gorgeous. You'd be hard pressed to think this is actually a Nintendo 64 game. Amazing lighting effects, lots of polygons, even some pretty nice textures (for a Nintendo 64 game, anyway). These visual effects make the epic boss fights all the more impressive through clever usage of all available visual effects.
Overall, what we're looking at here is a game that, at heart, feels like RARE was trying it's hardest to stop you from finishing it; they just pile more and more and more stuff on your shoulders to collect and do. The real challenge of Donkey Kong 64 isn't it's levels, or even it's bosses, it's fighting off the massive tedium required just to see the last level. Even getting to the final boss chamber is one of the most excruciatingly vague and tedious things to do - you need two coins, found in some of the most obscure of places. The game may take you over 100 hours to complete, but generally, the majority of it feels more like work than entertainment. I'm not impressed; infact, I'm repulsed.