We didn’t get a shiny new Mario platformer with the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, but having spent a few hours punching my way through rocks in Donkey Kong Bananza, I’m now convinced that Nintendo has given us something much better. The plumber is out. The big monkey is in. Bananza is the Switch 2’s killer game.
Only the second 3D platformer in the series – it’s somehow been 26 years since Donkey Kong 64 – Donkey Kong Bananza sees the newly cartoonified ape wreaking merry havoc across a series of mostly destructible levels in search of golden bananas. It’s part Minecraft, given your ability to burrow through the terrain at will, and part Super Mario Odyssey, with its puzzle-based objectives, special challenges, beautiful environments and hidden collectables.
The game is an impressive technical spectacle. Almost every part of Donkey Kong Bananza can be smashed through, allowing you to carve your own path towards an objective or tunnel your way through mountains without restriction. The holes you leave in your wake remain etched in the environment until you leave the level, too. Performance stays smooth, and the Switch 2 doesn’t sneakily undo your hard-earned destruction to free up memory as you go.
Donkey Kong Bananza: £58.99, Nintendo.co.uk
Levels are densely packed with things to see and do. As you dig and explore, you’ll unearth secret caves and hidden treasure, with maps that lead to collectable fossils of varying degrees of rarity. Collecting stuff in Donkey Kong Bananza feels like endlessly scratching a hard-to-reach itch. The game’s main currency, gold banandium ore, pings in a deeply satisfying way as you pummel it out of the earth and hoover it up, delivering a constant trickle of sweet, sweet dopamine.
Not only is it compulsive to collect, but all that gold can be used to buy new outfits for Donkey Kong and his shoulder-mounted assistant, Pauline. Revealed during the most recent Nintendo Direct, Pauline can sing to trigger voice-activated switches and uncover hidden items around the map. In the basic co-op mode, a second player can use the Joy-Con as a mouse to launch rock chunks as Pauline, a bit like the Cappy controls in Super Mario Odyssey.
Music, and specifically vinyl records, is a big theme alongside all the excavation. Records appear as collectable items, often buried deep in the dirt. They can be added to Donkey Kong’s ever-expanding music library at home, while at least one challenge has you lugging a car-sized vinyl across the level to pop on a giant deck.
Challenge rooms are liberally dotted about the levels we’ve seen, whisking you away to classic side-scrolling sections that will be familiar to Donkey Kong fans, with barrel launchers and hidden rooms behind destructible walls. Other challenges have you clobbering enemies or destroying structures within a time limit.
Then there’s Donkey Kong’s ability to temporarily transform into one of several different super-powerful animal forms once you’ve amassed enough bananas. We saw two: the first a mega-sized monkey capable of punching through steel, the other a distractingly buff ostrich that can glide and drop exploding eggs on enemies. It’s chaotic, amping up the destruction and leaving parts of the level in tatters.
Though you’re free to obliterate large swathes of each level, crucially, they retain enough shape and character that Donkey Kong Bananza doesn’t descend into simple, aimless destruction. The world is made up of materials of varying toughness – like sand, metal and concrete – that might require you to use explosive chunks of rock to break through. Later areas add impenetrable obstacles like poison lakes and thorny vines that offer a more guided and challenging platforming experience, while still giving you ways to improvise with the destructible environment.
Donkey Kong Bananza seems to successfully walk this line between open-ended destruction and laser-focused world design, with the ability to quickly move between previous levels hinting that replayability will be a key part of the experience too. Even during our brief playtest, each level’s map ended up littered with the icons of rare pick-ups buried deep in the dirt – and regardless of whether they’re meaningful to collect, the simple joy of burrowing your way through the earth to find them is worth the time.
The Switch 2 might not have had a Mario platformer at launch, but Donkey Kong Bananza is already shaping up to be this generation’s Super Mario Odyssey. Stupidly silly fun, technically impressive and gorgeous to look at, it’s destined to be the console’s first must-have game. Donkey Kong Bananza launches 17 July, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch 2.
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