Man, it's awesome how I just posted one tiny post -- a civil post, at that -- and Bonknuts keeps mentioning me. I guess I'm just that damn memorable!
Separating your opinion when judging if a game is high production, is key. I personally didn't care for DKC at all, but I can recognize that it's a high production game.
Awesome, we now have the "enjoyment boils down to opinion, but it is a FACT that the game was technically high quality" argument... another snerd favorite.
Well, guess what: in my personal opinion, DKC is
not a high quality game. Claiming that it objectively has "high production [values]" is a clear sign of snerdery. It had a lot of money thrown at it, but the production values -- aside from the tech to create the graphics -- were low, low, LOW. The artistry is laughable, the creativity is barren, and the music is pretty damn typical.
Take a game like Blue Dragon, which has a trio of legendary designers... now that's high production values. Take a look at Linda 3 on PCE... they put together a KILLER team of highly-regarded game developers for that one. And you
dare to say that DKC, a game designed by a bunch of nobodies (at the time), was "high production" just because they used some Silicon Graphics tech?
HOW DARE YOU.