Donkey Kong is one of the most iconic video game characters of all time, and one of the earliest. Yet despite remaining relevant for the bulk of the past 40 years, none of the major Donkey Kong games since the 1980s have been made by any of Nintendo’s internal Japanese studios, meaning the character has become a bit of a nebulous B-tier entity next to Mario and company.
With the Big N solidifying its properties through movies and theme parks, as well as new games, a Donkey Kong reclamation was inevitable. The surprising part is that Nintendo threw its absolute best at the franchise. Donkey Kong Bananza is not only a contender for the best game the series has ever produced, it gives other contemporary games a run for their money when it comes to sheer fun, constant innovation and technological achievement.
In the first year of the original Nintendo Switch, the company reasserted its place among the best game-makers by combining industry trends such as open-world design with its Mario and Zelda franchises to produce unexpected, delightful and utterly inimitable games. And now at the beginning of the Switch 2, Bananza sends the message that it’s not slowing down.
Created by the team behind Super Mario Odyssey, it combines elements of Minecraft-like permanent terrain alteration with Mario-level control and acrobatics, an evolved take on 3D platformer collectables, heaps of fresh ideas and plenty of inspiration from the past Donkey Kongs developed by Rare and Retro Studios. It has the climb-anywhere style of the recent Zeldas, but also the cathartic ability to tunnel through and destroy just about anything you see. It also sets a new tone and visual design for the series and character, which feels current but is perfectly in line with the arcade original.
Every level can be deformed and reshaped by punching, and it feels great.
Bananza is set far away from DK Island, where our hero (and seemingly every other ape and monkey) is investigating a massive cache of underground gold. Donkey Kong is more interested in Banandium Gems, special jewels that look and apparently taste like the delicious yellow fruit, but unfortunately the evil Void Kong also has his eye on them. After a dastardly scheme sinks the mine deep into the ground, DK finds himself in a subterranean world populated by all sorts of weird creatures, and partners with a lost tween named Pauline (a young take on the damsel character from the arcade game) to head to the planet core.
DK’s abilities seem simple – you can jump, roll, punch forward, down and up, grab stuff, slap the ground and whistle – but it all adds up to a very satisfying arsenal that’s easy to deploy. You can smash directly down into the ground, or rip chunks of rock out of the wall. You can combine rolls and jumps to cover huge distances. You can surf on hunks of concrete over hazardous terrain, or use a kind of sonar to detect goodies underground and tunnel right through them. And it feels heavy, crunchy and satisfying, like the very essence of the character’s benevolent aggression.
There are mysteries, twists and story revelations surrounding Pauline’s role in the game, but DK’s just in it for the bananas and to help his new friend.
The central loop of the game is pretty simple too. You’re steadily descending through layers, each one with a wildly different theme and inhabitants, and each with a number of sub-layers. Most have an elder to meet, who is of course a DJ, and because Pauline has a talent for singing, she can learn a magical song from each one. That’s how you unlock transformations for DK. Several of these are just hideously jacked animals with angry faces and all the aesthetic appeal of the worst AFL mascots – an ostrich, a zebra – but intentionally and humorously so, and they come with abilities you will need to explore and progress.
And in truth, exploring is the best part. Getting through the main story of the game is breezy, and even the bosses (though visually and mechanically interesting) don’t pose much of a threat. But the worlds are filled with wonderful and whimsical ideas, most of them off the beaten path, that the game teaches to you and then tests in puzzles, varied combat gauntlets and even retro-style platforming levels. There are many types of terrain to contend with, and the idea of creating and destroying it is explored very thoroughly – for example there’s an enemy that creates an arcing, solid rainbow when attacked, opening up many possibilities – but you’ll only scratch the surface if you don’t dig deep and explore. And I mean that literally.
Honestly, the more I look at this banana-monkey-ostrich design the more questions I have.
At first, I was concerned that the digging would feel pointless; I’ve never run around as DK before and thought, “I wish I could get into the dirt under his feet.” But I needn’t have worried. Yes, it’s fun to just randomly ape out and dig up a bunch of ground, but any time you do, you’ll inevitably discover cool stuff under there. You might break through into an underground cavern you had no way of knowing existed. There’s a crack in the wall, and if you punch it, there’s a corridor on the other side, which leads to a banana or other goody, and often a path to some other part of the level. Inevitably, you’ll find your way to areas you’re not sure you were “meant” to arrive at this way, only to find that the designers somehow anticipated that you would.
Recently, Nintendo has been unparalleled among high-end game-makers for putting fun gameplay above all else and trusting that players will appreciate it. In Bananza, this is most evident in those times when you’re tunnelling in the ground. The camera is forced out into the solid rock, rendering DK, the tunnel wall behind him and any unbreakable elements nearby as solid, and all the rock around him as translucent space. This is, of course, the reality of the game – the substance of the mountain doesn’t exist, only the path you punch through it. But no other developer would intentionally allow you to see it like this.
Nintendo is not afraid to let its video games look like video games.
For Nintendo, the weirdness is worth it. Your brain accepts it immediately, and you just have fun digging – for the hundreds of bananas, each five of which will get you a skill point to upgrade your abilities, but also for gold that fuels your transformations, or the many fossils that serve as currency, or the randomly occurring treasure chests that give you hints to banana and fossil locations. Impressively, all your destruction is permanent (though you can reset it if you like), and represented on the detailed level maps. So you can go back a few levels and rediscover the hole you made 20 hours before.
It’s also worth mentioning that the game is gorgeous. From impossible floating grassy plains to a world of underground lightning storms, the setting is constantly changing but it’s always a treat to look at. DK himself has had a makeover, and I love how he can immediately transition from calm and dopey (complete with the happy eyes and dangling tongue of a massive puppy) to aggressively slamming a foe with an explosive rock chunk, and back again.
You can trade in fossils for different pants and ties, along with adorable themed outfits for Pauline, which all confer benefits or upgrades. Some character designs are nightmare fuel, but I really enjoy the cute crystal people that can turn themselves into arrows, platforms, or poor imitations of nearby animals. The whole thing sounds great, too, from the extensive foley audio of various crashing and crumblings, to some incredible toe-tapping vocal numbers to the ridiculous “oooh banana” soundbite that accompanies each gem, which everyone in my house has been imitating compulsively for a week.
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Like most modern Nintendo games, special effort has been put into making Bananza an experience for everyone. An assist mode points players to the next objective so they can’t easily get lost, while a second player can join as Pauline and make the game significantly easier. Pauline can copy any substance in the game (from concrete to explosives) and shoot it out at enemies as solid vocalisations.
At the other end of the spectrum, players looking for a challenge will find that there’s a significant chunk of content you can only access once you’ve “finished” the story of the game, and this is where your skill at jumping, rolling and managing the various transformations will really be tested.
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