Donkey Kong has returned for another adventure, it’s way better than you can imagine. Donkey Kong Bananza is full of color, fun and destruction. The team behind Mario Odyssey have put their heart and souls into another fantastic open area game. Ripping up the ground in search of NPCs, Banandium gems or to just see what is down there, is ridiculously fun and addictive. The gameplay loop if tunneling your way through the world as DK and Pauline is a side focus to the plot and main aims of the game. Learning from the Switch era of games, DK Bananza comes crashing on to Switch 2 for an adventure where you can choose how many side bananas you go questing for. With hundreds of bananas and fossils to be found there is plenty for you to find and explore, if you want to. In Donkey Kong Bananza, you play as Donkey Kong himself accompanied by Pauline (who can be controlled as a player two similar to Cappy in Mario Odyssey), to get to the center of the planet where wishes come true. Stopping you along the way is Void Kong and his gang of bad guy Kongs. In their wake, they’re leaving corruption throughout the civilizations that live beneath the surface. With freedom to explore and travel between the layers, across each area, and tunnel your way around there are plenty of collectibles, puzzles and challenges to be found.
What’s a Bananza? It’s a great question. With as few spoilers as possible; a Bananza is a power DK gains from the Elders of different civilizations you meet as you travel to the center of the earth. You first learn the power of Kong Bananza which turns you into a giant super powered gorilla that can smash through surface’s your standard DK can’t. As seen in the trailer, you also learn the abilities of other animals such as an Ostrich which are no longer flightless birds… This is a timed power up, as you collect Banandium gems you can progress on the skill tree which makes the Bananza power-up last longer as well as powering up your standard DK form. I actually really like having a skill tree in the game, you can increase your health, gain stronger punches, unlock cool combo moves. It adds a little more individual personality to the game to separate it from Mario Odyssey and Donkey Kong Country. They’re a key part of the narrative that you collect them and help free the people of each civilization from the damage Void Kong has left in each area. They do make boss battles easier (at least so far) but as always we have to remember that Nintendo makes games for families that are accessible to everyone and you don’t have to use them all of the time.
As usual with Nintendo they build a game around the mechanic and the characters. It’s often why their narratives come under criticism for being simple. But when it’s so fun to just exist in the levels and environments they built, there is plenty of content and world building to grab you. It’s not all about smashing everything to pieces. Before I started, I thought after a while the smashing everything would get tiresome or feel one dimensional – I was so wrong. The variety of terrain types allows you to build and experiment with how to navigate the world as well as encouraging you to find your own way to complete puzzles or challenges. Much like how Tears of the Kingdom, was a game with a building mechanic. Bananza is a game with a destruction mechanic not a demolition game. This game doesn’t run at a constant 60 fps, any game with this much change to the environment would struggle to maintain it’s frame rate, but the dips aren’t huge and generally very consistent even if it’s at a lower frame rate of 40-50 fps. I’ve found it also looks better in handheld mode but that could also be my TV. When you’re moving through the layers at a normal pace and not trying to challenge the system and the game you’ll likely find very few issues with how the game runs and nothing that would detract from the quality of the game.
Each layer has a diverse ecosystem with new NPCs and enemies who build out each layer as its own world. New NPCs, towns of people and some faces you might recognize are to be found in each area; to play hide and seek, sell you items and have problems that need monkey-fist solutions. The limitations in Mario Odyssey are smashed to pieces in Bananza allowing you to explore in a whole new way. You can destroy as much or as little as you want. You have to travelling through the main story to get to each layer, you can’t just smash your way straight down, they are impenetrable floors to each layer, this isn’t a restriction, different areas of the ground are different depths, if you hit the bottom in one spot, you can tunnel forward or find a new spot. If you’re prone to overwhelm or just feeling lost in big open world games, this might sound like a lot but each layer is confined and built with direction. Nintendo as usual has built the levels to guide you in a certain direction. With plenty to do and explore around it, each area does have a main pathway that is pretty clear. You may only get lost when under ground, but you can punch up and return to the surface to get your bearings again. Every wall could hide secrets and that is where this game really grabs you, what could be behind this wall? Or under the floor? It will keep you hunting for ages for secret rooms and, importantly, bananas. I have been going full monkey brain mode trying to find as many Banandium gems as possible and I’m still hundreds away! With 777 Banandium gems to find, there is plenty to keep you occupied if you’re looking for more outside of the main story. At 15 hours and 6 layers into the game I have found 111 so I have a long way to go. This development team at Nintendo have perfected driving players to want to collect all of the little pieces that we could possibly get.
You may recognize a way to traverse the world in DK Bananza from the Legend of Zelda. Donkey Kong is a big guy, he’s not always the fastest moving Kong, (at least not in his base form) so what else is there to do but rip up a huge piece of rock or turf and surf down slopes and across plains. I love how they evolved this mechanic for Donkey Kong, you have control over speed and you have to consciously keep spinning to gain momentum rather than just running on gravity. Once I got the hang of it it’s a great way to travel and take out a mob of enemies if they’ve clustered together. Having that extra piece of control so you can move around the environment is great fun and your surf turf of choice reacts with the environment it’s in so play around and you might just find some extra bananas.
Pauline is a fun companion in the story, she’s 13 here and gets stage fright but she’s full of personality and puts herself out there. DK takes the classic role of the silent protagonist – apart from ‘OH BANANA’, he’s got his priorities. I think this works well, Pauline is the narrative voice and DK and the player is how she is getting to the center of the planet. It’s a cute team up that bring two distinctive personalities. It’s nice to have some voice acting that is pretty good too, just to add something new to the game. After Pauline sang a BOP of a song in Mario Odyssey, it’s good to almost see her prequel.
A Donkey Kong game as a launch title on Nintendo Switch 2, you’d be forgiven for thinking Nintendo had lost their minds; especially with the sheer amount of banana puns throughout the world. Some fans were asking where’s the Mario game? Where’s the launch Zelda title? And well, it’s here, just with Donkey Kong. So far, at 6 layers into the game and around 15 hours, I am blown away by the experimentation from the Mario Odyssey team who have innovated on the game style they developed for Mario Odyssey and it fits so well for Donkey Kong too. Many of us were anticipating a Mario Odyssey sequel to be released with the Switch 2 and again, that’s sort of what we’ve got but with more. They’ve seen that audiences don’t always want more of the same in the way they think they do. When they’re motivating people to go out and pick up a Switch 2, Donkey Kong Bananza has everything we love about DK, everything we loved in Mario Odyssey and all of these new innovations on the enclosed exploration level staging we’ve loved seeing from Nintendo. Overall, it’s really good fun, what more do you want some a Nintendo title than something that’s fun to just play and run around in.
Happy Banana Hunting 🍌
