Donkey Kong Bananza Review

Let’s address the ape in the room. Donkey Kong Bananza promised terrain destruction that has been unseen in gaming proper for decades. Where so many innovative systems got developed and polished to a mirror finish, the humble “smashing shit” gaming avenue sputtered and died, left as feature words on the headstone of games like Red Faction: Guerrilla. Sure, it appears in the odd stellar indie title (ROCK AND STONE!) but it has long stopped appearing as a spotlight feature in the AAA space.

Bananza busted its way onto the scene with a debut trailer that felt pretty ambitious in its effort to revitalise  the joy of percussive terraforming – and doubled down with a deep-dive Nintendo direct to really hit home with the idea that yes, you can smash it. So let me say it, loud and clear: Yeah, you really can smash it. Lots of it.

Starting deep in the mines of Ingot Isle, Donkey Kong is enjoying a regular day of blue collar (and red necktie) work – before his rock-smashing shift is interrupted by the entire island getting dragged underground by three sinister simians with a distinctively corporate-scumbag air to them. These shifty apes have helped themselves to the precious crystal bananas dug up by DK and his mates, using them to power a colossal digging machine that is heading ever downwards. Before our hero even has a moment to comprehend that the underground of the planet seems oddly spacious and livable, he encounters a talking rock and sets off on an adventure to save the day – but mostly to get his trove of Banandium Gems back. As DK chases after the Void Co crew, he plummets ever deeper into the planet’s crust – discovering amazing biomes that are doing just fine deep underground, or at least they were before the Void Co turned up and caused all manner of problems.

This is one of the most wondrous elements of Bananza, the spectacular environments that serve as rest stops on your journey to the core – each with a unique theme and local populace that was largely undisturbed before the events above ground. Some of these animal tribes even have their own enormous Elders, who are all too willing to share a Bananza Transformation with DK if he takes the time to help out with a local issue. It is never explained why every single one of these hulking spiritual leaders have become a DJ in their retirement, but it is a great excuse to enjoy a huge musical party scene whenever you unlock a new killer super-form. That, and I think retirement homes would do well with more music in them.

The first of these also manages to reveal that your odd rock friend is actually a young girl: a thirteen-year-old Pauline from other Nintendo media. This begs a ton of questions, but the game never bothers to answer any of them (or in some cases, outright contradicts any theories you might be forming), so you are far better off just “going with it.” The goal here is to have fun, not to plot out a comprehensive Donkey Kong history —and to be quite honest, I admire the audacity of Nintendo producers to not let something as silly as “timeline consistency” ruin an adventurous romp with a lunkhead ape and his darling singing child companion.

The dynamic duo

Immediately, your main tools are DK’s mighty ape fists, and the devastating potential at your disposal is apparent. The voxel based environs yearn to be beaten into submission, and I dare you to not fall in love with the absurd chaos that comes from burrowing through, down, and around anything that stands in your path. One of my first orders of business was being casually directed to climb over a hill and survey where Pauline and DK had ended up, and in true journalistic fashion, I decided to instead smash my way through whatever resistance was on offer. I absolutely love pushing a feature to its limit to see exactly what the developers intended for me to do with it. There is a strange mixture of satisfaction and disappointment that comes from uncovering the boundaries of a gameplay feature that promises you the Earth – you feel like an explorer reaching the very end of their journey.

So imagine how I felt when I discovered Bonanza was entirely invested in its gimmick. Burrowing around, Looney Tunes style, is not just accepted, but in the vast majority of cases, it is encouraged. Striking the ground uncovers riches, secrets, and no end of special challenges to the observant, made all the more simple by the genius addition of a ‘Hand Slap Sonar’ that will ping and highlight things nearby. Coupling this with DK’s ape dexterity to infinitely climb on any logical surface means that no matter how deep you delve or excitedly you excavate, you can always find your way back out. Hell, the game even throws a robust map and freebie teleport (t-eel-eport) system at you to make sure your caving exploits never truly result in a tragedy. It’s an endless set of bespoke systems that feel ready to be pushed to breaking point, and even then, they let you go just a little bit further.

Literally singing your problems away

In stark contrast to your destructive capabilities, Pauline’s lovely singing voice rounds out the duo’s capabilities. The most common use for this vocalising is to get rid of purple Void Co zones that impede your progress, one of the few materials that can’t be readily dug through. Hitting a few high notes near one of these Void Terraformers will compromise it, letting you turn the terrain back into its malleable potential once more. Similarly, this same metallic gunge blocks access to the many challenge rooms that you discover on your travels, an easy source of skill checks and sweet, sweet crystal Bananas.

Pauline’s biggest contribution is by far the Bananza transformations, where Lil’ P can croon one of the Elder’s music tracks and have DK turn into a hybridised creature powerhouse, with a unique moveset for a variety of occasions. The marketing for the game had me thinking that these super forms would basically turn the game into a pseudo Metroidvania, with all manner of neat goodies appearing just out of my hairy arms’ reach until you get the requisite beast mode. The truth is far more exciting, as your powered-up transformations instead serve as a readily accessed tool in your gorilla utility belt – unlocking more opportunities and further expanding the world’s potential. Any other game would put such an impactful mechanic behind a cooldown, or a restrictive resource that forced a little consideration before hitting the ‘go’ button – but I can’t stress enough how little Donkey Kong Bananza cares about this kind of limitation. If you want to turn into an enormous mega-ape, and quite literally go bananas with destroying the entirety of a puzzle room for the sake of removing any perceived obstacles, go for it. Getting that super meter filled happens in a snap, so why not.

Mega monkey mad

With this breadth of options at your disposal, the game settles you into a loop of exploring these magnificent open-zones and shaping them however you see fit – organically solving puzzles either by destructive creativity or the far-more-mundane regular creativity. While the actions of Void Co are concerning, in typical younger-audience facing fashion there is no immediate sense of urgency, freeing up the story to let our wondrous Ape n’ Gal team take in the sights and cultures of every landscape. Straying off the narrative path to dig around whatever corner of the world you are currently navigating never feels pointless – which is a signature of a Nintendo developed game, but the sense of reward within Bananza feels so much more poignant as you are literally digging up exciting things to see or do.

This all plays beautifully into the other surprising element of the game, being that the leader of the bunch is packing a full-blown skill tree this time around – filled to bursting point with impactful upgrades and exciting player growth opportunities. I always feel that there is a delicate balancing act at play with a game trying to offer upgrades that feel worthwhile, and doubly so if that game is supposed to be a lighthearted romp through to the Earth’s core.  One wrong move and you start off feeling so weak that you regard the skill tree with scorn for the entire game, a wobble in the other direction and you might feel so readily powerful that upgrades seem pointless. Go figure that the incredible team behind Super Mario Odyssey understands this perfectly, offering a slathering of exciting and fun options to pour your hard-earned bananas into. Want your Bananza transformations to last a staggeringly long time? Go for it. Feel like you are getting beaten up a little too often? Upgrade your health pool or invest in apple juice revive canisters. I personally dumped my first dozen bananas into fist strength so I could dig even faster, drooling like an excited puppy at what the verdant dirt might be hiding.

The hamster wheel works up a hell of a nanner appetite

A big swerve in the standard Nintendo formula is how the Banandium Gems do not directly tie into game progress. You have likely grown quite familiar with DK’s overall wearing nemesis carefully coveting every star, shine or moon that he uncovers – with each adding towards a total that dictates whether he can progress to the next location. That is entirely not the case here, with the big ape instead just gleefully scarfing down the crystallised banana segments and tucking them away as a skill point currency. Hell, I’d argue that the game might even have the capacity to be beaten without using (or collecting) any banana gems as some kind of nightmarish, rudimentary hard mode, but I will leave that to the true masters. For the rest of us casual explorers, your banana income will be generous enough to net you a ton of great upgrades – especially helpful when you realise that each of your transformations also has vast and varied new toys tucked away in their skill path. Like sure, I said ‘hard-earned’ bananas in the last paragraph, but these things are literally buried in the ground all over the place – you’ll likely trip over them. Oh, and the frenzied eating animation never gets old, whether it’s your first ‘Nana or your four hundredth.

It’s not just nanners under the ground either, with the game offering collectible fossils on each layer to collect. These range in size and actually serve as a currency for DK and Pauline to update their look, be it fur colour or clothing. I was surprised to see that the outfits actually offer stats to your pair, but don’t get it twisted – an RPG this is not. You won’t be pitching a +2 to punching damage, think more basic stuff like ‘10% Swim Speed ’ – which has its uses but also leans into the truth that you can absolutely dress up for fun and need not worry about any kind of optimal monkey build. You will also gather gold throughout your digging, which ends up a fluid resource for consumable lifesavers such as apple juice containers (an auto revive) and balloons that serve double duty as a fun nostalgia callback to Donkey Kong Country’s past and brilliantly rescuing you from deadly pitfalls.

You’ll also use your gold stores to influence the world, contracting rock people named Fractones to build helpful doodads to assist your travels—such as a minecart track or barrel cannon to add a quick shortcut to the more sprawling levels. Specific geo-dudes will even offer to build you a retreat, basically a little micro-apartment that DK can use as a small base of operations, allowing remote access to shopkeepers, the dressing room, and even a bed if you want a quick mid-level nap. After a short kip and a delightful sleepy-time chat with Pauline, you awaken refreshed and ready to rumble once more. You even get some bonus health as a reward for this act of self-care (there’s a lesson in that for all of us).

Oh and if you skip the nap time dialogue: You are a monster.

DK finally getting a taste of his own barrel rolling medicine

With how much of the game’s problem solving is derived from beating up the landscape, you’d be shocked to discover that this becomes a readily transferable skill when dealing with enemies. You’ll find that most of your foes, be they boss or bog-standard, are crafted out of the same materials that you crush through on a minute-to-minute basis, so you can react accordingly – often by way of thunderous punching.  The same looming stone dude you easily punched through at the start of the game will turn up later, now crafted out of lava, quickly asking you to think on your hand-like feet on how you wish to handle this concerning turn of events. Maybe a more challenging area will see the enemies crafted out of an indestructible metal, so now you need to think of environmental ways to dispatch them – like destroying the floor they stand on so they plummet into a pit. There are even conditional materials that change their behaviour depending on some creative external factors, and you better believe that you will encounter bad guys made out of this stuff. I was hours into the game and still found myself saying “Wow!” like an excited Owen Wilson at the sheer breadth of goofy opponent manifestations.

It would then come as no shock that bosses follow a similar formula, albeit with a much larger scope afforded to them. These enormous machinations of Void Co often take a theme that is relevant to the current layer you are playing on, and incorporate some of the unique mechanics that you might have encountered recently – such as using snow to cool down a superheated something so you can punch it properly, or environmental hazards that you have just learned how to overcome. Sprinkle in a dash of Bananza transformation mechanics to push the ante a little further, and you got a real groovy boss battle going on. These encounters are well signposted, affording you a chance to spend skill points or buy up on helpful items before jumping into the fray, where you can then dispatch the big-time baddies in proper gorilla fashion.

This isn’t Mario deftly ducking and weaving for an opportunity to arse stomp someone three times – this is Donkey Kong unloading both barrels of primate punching power, beating the living crap out of his target as he ought to do. It’s oddly cathartic for a game to openly invite you to rain haymakers on your problems, and I am deeply on board with it. Crack the shell, then smash the nut that is inside, Kong-style.

It’s like that meme of the dude explaining something to the concerned looking woman

This is a game that is offering so much mechanical brilliance, you could almost forgive an overtly conscious effort to dial down the presentation and make sure things run extra smoothly – but in reality, the aesthetics of Bananza are spectacular. Knowing what the Switch 2 is truly capable of, it is amazing to see the hardware properly delivering – like sure, Mario Kart World is a pretty game – but it is still just Mario Kart at the end of the day. Bananza is a lush forest one moment, then a glittering metal labyrinth the next, bursting at the seams with colour and lighting. There is also a very deliberate measure taken with music within the game, which is unsurprising given that it does form a reasonably large part of the titles identity (shout outs to the elderly DJ cast once more) and it results in a hefty selection of earworm bangers that are welcome every time you hear them. There are even a handful of remixed classic tracks that are incredibly good, for all the old schoolers out there.

Really, the only true negative I can muster is that the game can really start to stutter when you seriously turn up the destructive carnage—but I have to clarify this is not a common thing. The situations that lead to these choppy framerates are ones where you entirely understand why such stress could occur, with a screen full of particles and terrain being magnificently manipulated in catastrophic fashion. It is just a bummer that these events often take place when a huge set-piece moment is on screen, with a climactic scene playing out and you understanding that, “Yup, that looks like a terrifying graphical event to wrangle.” The only way to solve this problem would be to scale back the annihilation and stress the system less, but to do so would rob the moment of its awe-inspiring potential. Hell, maybe it will run just fine on the Switch 3.

Oh, and Photo-mode is really barebones, but I am not taking points off for that.

That banana is looking very ape-peeling

Final Thoughts

What Nintendo has built here is magnificent, but its beauty only really starts to shine when you smash it to pieces. Every mechanic is cleverly designed to interface with your destructive adventure in so many ways, you find yourself looking not just in your toolbox, but at your surroundings and considering the vast possibilities at your command. It’s an entirely unique feeling of freedom, one where restraint is a luxury – a ‘sometimes’ food at a buffet of mad, delicious morsels with no limit to your frenzied feasting. I deeply envy the generation of kids who will grow up with Donkey Kong Bananza as their cornerstone gaming memory, because man, those little bastards are eating so, so good.

Reviewed on Switch 2 // Review code supplied by publisher

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