I hate to pull a Jeff here, but yup, this game is totally Donkey Kong Country.  There are barrels that you can throw, and barrels that fire you like a rocket through a series of other barrels.  You can pound the ground.  You can play 2-player with Donkey and Diddy Kong.  There are enemies and you can stomp on their heads.  The only things that were different, as far as I could tell, were:
 
1) Diddy has some kind of gun.  I think it shoots peanuts?  Was that in the original?
2) You blow on dandelions to reveal secrets.  It's kind of odd.
3) At one point a barrel shot us into the background where we played back there for a while before being shot back to the foreground.
 
I'm one of those guys that insists the original Donkey Kong Country was one of the best SNES platformers around, so I will probably get this when it comes out, but from what I've played so far, it doesn't really innovate or distinguish itself from the 16-bit games.
 
 If you have any questions, comment and I will try to answer.