It’s been far too long since Donkey Kong’s last 3D adventure, but Donkey Kong Bananza is about to set that right on Nintendo Switch 2. This is a big, brash, counterpart to Super Mario Odyssey, a smash-happy 3D platformer where it feels like anything and everything can be destroyed.
Playing through the opening stage of the game, we find DK down in the mines with all his simian pals, digging up gold nuggets while hunting for surprisingly tasty jewel-encrusted golden bananas to smash and gobble up. While everyone else is toiling away with pick axes, though, DK can just punch his way through the deformable scenery.
You know exactly what kind of game this is when you’ve got three different face buttons all dedicated to smashing in different ways. One will smash around you, another with punch down, and finally, you can punch upwards. Whether it’s enemies or deformable parts of the world, a lot of the time, things will just hurry up and get out of DK’s way when he punches.
It feels like something inspired by the likes of Red Faction or Deep Rock Galactic as you barrel your way through this opening stage, and there’s an initial thrill to the rambunctious chaos that you create in your surroundings. It doesn’t take too long to start to find the limits of what you can punch your way through, this underground level still having plenty of deformable terrain, but also unbreakable walls and floors boxing you in to keep things a little constrained – this underlying structure will ensure that you can’t get stuck.
Another of DK’s abilities is slapping the ground, both to trigger hidden elements on the floor to raise up – platforms, for example – and do a quick little sonar pulse to reveal nearby secrets hidden away in the dirt.
Jumping ahead to a later level at Ape Cape – after DK finds a huge haul of golden bananas, just in time for the villains to turn up and steal them all away, of course – and we’re out in the open and the bright sun. There’s some enemies you can’t actually smash here, flying Buzzoids that will damage you with their blade-like propeller if you get too close. Luckily you can just rip up big chunks of the ground and throw them at things that have offended you.
That can also include enemies that have encased themselves in rock and other matter, needing you to throw chunks of rock at them, or punch your way through to their skeletal forms inside before you can defeat them. They were featured in a mini battle arena, a little diversion from the main level as you fight multiple enemies against the clock. Alongside fossils, buried treasure chest and other secrets that you’ll be searching for.
Sometimes not even throwing ripped up rocks will do the trick – concrete is pretty much impervious to your regular attacks. That’s where the handy, shimmering purple explosive rocks come into play, sprouting from certain parts of the level. These are great for just blasting holes in the level and through heavier enemies, exploding on impact and doing a lot of damage. After going through a section of revolving concrete and finding it thoroughly unpunchable, I doubled back, grabbed some purple rocks and embraced the TNT excavation technique of old.
The one problem with all the dig-punching is that it feels like the camera is a bit too close or not quite framed to DK to capture the world-smashing carnage you’re unleashing. It’s entirely possible to get a little bit lost in all the smashing and get turned around, especially when you’re in the tighter confines of the underground mine level. A neat trick that does work to keep you oriented, is when the camera can clip through the ground as you dig straight down and let you see the rest of the level, so you know where to dig towards to get yourself back out. I hope that longer play gets past this feeling, or that it can be tweaked through the final rounds of polish before release.
The game does look good, though. DK has that newer character style, similar to his appearance in the Super Mario Movie and in Mario Kart World, but still turns up to work in dungarees and a tie. That particular get up changed for the second level, and there’s bound to be plenty of costumes and dress up through the game.
There is quite a chunky feel to the deformation, but it’s good to see that even where you can’t dig through, say, the ape-shaped mountain of the second level, your punching does still often disturb a surface layer and give a little bit of visible, physical feedback.
If your kids are fans of Hulk smashing his way through earlier Avengers movies, then they’ll probably go bananas for Donkey Kong Bananza. As Nintendo and their partners explore platformers in all their forms, there’s some neat ideas built around the frenzy of punching and adding deformable world to the genre. I look forward to seeing how this can be explored in different ways, to hopefully avoid DK becoming a one punch ape.
