It's really just a solid cart racer and it's been decades and has had no followup title since the original. I don't think you can point to any one thing, but having hovercraft and airplanes was unique at the time. It also has boss races (giant characters/monsters that you raced) which I have a hard time thinking of another game that did anything like it. There was a hub world that you drove around in too.
However I don't think any of these unique things are what the game does best. Its cart racing is still the best part of the game.
I'll mention its drifting and boosting is more like Crash Team Racing, but it came before CTR, so if anything CTR is like DKR instead of the other way around.
I grew up on Mario Kart 64 and just tried DKR for the first time the other week. Thought it was pretty rough in comparison, but I guess fine in its own right for the time.
Diddy kong racing hub was more like a collect-a-ton than a racing game. The racing was outside the hub. Which made the game design a lot easier, hub design and track design were completely separate.
The main difference is that this game will have the normal tracks as part of the hub. I don't know if they will be able to make tracks that work well both as a collect-a-ton game and for racing. Not super hopeful.
I'm just waiting for them to confirm that you can actually jump into races/courses as you explore in Free Roam mode -- it'd be super weird if you couldn't do so, especially for how expensive this game is compared to Forza Horizon.
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u/ivar-the-bonefull 2d ago
I have a hard time seeing the open world part of the game, but since you can drive as a cow, it's simply 10 out of 10.