Section 3: Deep Space. After touring a handful of planets the Kongs are now travelling the cosmos to the enemy's homeworld. The overarching theme for this section is all the mysteries that can be glimpsed in space, featuring natural phenomenon and constellations, as well as slight nods to mythology where space is concerned. Unlike the 1st 2 sections there's almost no level taking place on an actual planet, and more of the main enemy faction will be found on the levels than not.
3-1: Starry Sky. As an introduction to this new Section, the Kongs trek across a night sky like they're celestial objects. They platform on constellations both fictional and real, sliding down crescent moons, swimming in the tails of comets that streak in periodically, and interacting with stars like they're harmless (which they are in this level). The aesthetic here is stylized; everything resembles artsy depictions of celestial bodies like it's some sort of illustration on an ancient chart. It doesn't have the exact feel of Van Gogh's Starry Night, but that comparison is adequate, and because of those stylized suns, moons, stars and comets, the level is strictly 2D; no dynamic camera here, and when you blast out of a barrel it leaves a trail like a streaking comet and the 1-Shot Barrels burst like a firecracker's explosion. A pretty level with a hemisphere-like layout.
3-2: Cosmic Stream. Here, the kongs are travelling forward on destroyed tech like derelict satellites and the remains of space ships, but all the wreckage is floating on a sparkling tide of stardust like a river, ie the titular Cosmic Stream. The wreckage drifts slowly on the "river" among the depths of space, and the platforms range from standard pieces to stand/walk on to medium-sized structures; the paths are a little fragile in this derelict graveyard, so traversing through the larger structures puts them at risk of collapsing on you. Luckily, the stream on this river behaves like water, so you can swim through the stardust, and when you do, you tend to swim faster than normal. This is a semi-platforming semi-water level; you can navigate the level using either the wreckage, the stardust, or both. The stardust is perfect for speedrunning the level though, and the aesthetic returns to the "realistic" (for DKC anyway) style of the previous levels that 3-1 left behind. Wreckage responds dynamically to the stream and Kongs' presence, and some parts of the stream bob up and down gently. The level's essentially a junkyard river IN SPACE.
3-3: Search and Destroy. Having learned of the previous 2 bosses' fate, the boss of this Section is actively hunting the Kongs and planning to annihilate them. You journey through an outpost on an asteroid field while the boss's battleship patrols in the background, blowing up the environment and launching lasers as well as deploying obstacles in your path to put an end to you. Using searchlights and sentries at the beginning to spot you, the battleship will blow you away if you're in its lights, while many enemies launch projectiles or use tractor beams to hold you in place for the ship to deal with you. After a certain point in the level the ship will just destroy things indiscriminately whether it knows you're hiding behind some asteroids or not, meaning you must move quickly. The layout of the level has platforming parts behind the floating rocks, which usually provides cover for DK as the walls often obscure the ship's visors, but the camera faces the side he's platforming on so we have nothing to block our sight of him. The level's tone is far more tense than the others, as it lets you know that the villains are done taking chances. Could be a Silhouette Level too, if it was made so that the parts behind the asteroid causes the silhouette effect and leaving cover returns you to your perfectly visible state, meaning you're vulnerable to be blasted.
3-4: Riding the Stars. Mine Cart level; you hop on an ethereal cart and ride along the lines that connect the stars of a constellation, then use those lines to intersect the ship from 3-3 and disable its cannons. You can't progress very far with that dreadnought dogging you, so you might as well give it some trouble of your own. As you ride the constellations the camera is 2D, but when you land on the hull of the dreadnought the camera switches from 2D to 3D at certain parts; when on the hull some cannons fire laser beams at you and you must jump up or down, or left or right depending on the camera. You're driving the cart straight into the turrets and cannons, but hopping off at the last second as it collides in a firecracker explosion, landing on another constellation with another ethereal cart, then riding the constellation onto another part of the ship and repeating the process. The level's very linear despite its premise, and at the end, the ship retreats, leaving you free to continue onward. The aesthetic mixes 3-1 and 3-3. When you start the level you see in the distance a bright yellow star zooming past with a cute pink orb on the top of it. A small asteroid approaches in the background; the orb immediately jumps off the star, letting it impact the rock as it seamlessly hops onto another star. It's unknown who this pink puffball may be, but it seems to be foreshadowing the stage's mechanic with a demonstration...
3-A: Neutron Stars. On this stage you're inexplicably at a fortress in space of barricades and locks that prevent you from going further, but also near a cluster of Neutron Stars. These are incredibly dense, but DK can hold these small things for some reason, and he uses them to break down the blockades. The level is mainly a fun destructive place where you create mayhem to move further. The stars impact obstacles like a boulder the size of a planet, despite being so small.
3-5: Creation Myth. Another surreal level. You begin the level in a star-less void where some...
"creature" made of smoke and stars in the background rips parts of itself off and flings them around while you platform in the foreground; the parts in the far distance explode and leave clusters of dust. It's simultaneously creating scenery and the rest of the stage for you to traverse; the pieces ripped off are giant nebulae and once you get to the end of the foreground you started on, you blast out of a barrel into the nebulae and continue platforming, reaching the end of one nebula and launching into the next. Inside, the rocky platforms found there are what you can traverse on, with the rolling clouds of the nebula obscuring certain paths and gives you the Silhouette Effect when obscuring you. Some portions of the cloud condense and form permanent rock platforms that you safely walk on, others temporarily making weird shaped platforms that disperse in a pattern, and some begin condensing to form pockets of heat that'd basically be stars, but DK-sized for the sake of gameplay. These stars are dangerous, and some form zipline points that you can use, but if a cloud is obscuring parts of the line, you must jump to avoid falling off as it was placed there to trick you. Has a secret exit,
no nods to religion, just mythological creation.
3-6: Gravity Well. This level starts with the Kongs navigating a long abandoned space ship. They start at the top, maneuver around the wreckage and work their way down, making this a vertical level like 1-2, but instead focusing on going downward. As you go through the ship, there's pillars of light emanating from the bottom of the wreckage, which you use to slide down on like a vine. As you go deeper into the setting your jumps become heavier and you land faster, but your jump height stays the same. With your jumps becoming more like groundpounds as you reach deeper layers, you continue along the fragile wreckage, and about 3/4ths of the way through you learn that this ship was drifting on top of a
Quasar, a pillar of light being sucked into an event horizon by a
Supermassive Black Hole, which explains your heightened fallspeed because you're getting sucked in with it. The Quasar's light was shining through the ship and being refracted by both the corridors and the monstrous black hole as well, bending the rays of light to be solid enough for the Kongs to swing / slide off of. As it becomes clear that you're being pulled into a terrible fate you must navigate what's left of the wreckage quickly before you reach the bottom of the Well. At the end of the level you get inside of a barrel as the footholds around you are crushed and all that is visible is a pitch black horizon beneath you. You must quickly blast out of the barrel, and when you do you're launched further and faster than the barrels from 2-3, but learn in mid-trajectory that it's not enough to escape as you're dragged back down. All you've done is rise to the higher layers; your jumps are less heavy, so you must find one more barrel as strong as that one to launch as far away from this apocalypse. The way the light flows here makes the stage beautiful, but the feeling of horror is what dominates the level.
3-7: Super Nova. The ending of both 3-6 and 3-A send you into a solar system with a dying green star. It is in its final stages of life and ready to blow, and every starship in this populated solar system is hauling a** to leave ASAP. The Kongs were lucky enough to land (relatively) near an evacuation star port, and many NPCs as well as enemies are fleeing in the same direction as you to leave. You must platform quickly and make split-second maneuvers to survive, as the sun in the background is sending out deadly pulses of heat and waves of lava that ripple across the level, and not just from the background to the foreground, but also behind you, below and above. The magnetic fields cause some vehicles to go haywire and crash into others as well as the level, machinery powers down far too quickly, and you see spacecraft taking off hastily. While 3-6's tone was that of melancholic yet graceful despair (facing the inevitable) and 3-A's was like a way to enjoy wrecking stuff, this level's tone is flat out panic and hysteria. Everyone here cares about completing this level just as badly as the Kongs. As you finish the stage, you find yourself aboard the ship from 3-3. Small world, huh?
3-Boss. It seems you cannot relax just yet, as you must now fight the boss of the section, aka the captain of 3-3's ship. Once he's defeated you're free to go onto the next section.
