We have absolutely no qualms recommending Donkey Kong Bananza to anyone with Nintendo's newest console, even to those still on the fence about picking one up. Bananza is a game so brimming with confidence at its stellar world design and platforming skills that it'll allow you to demolish the entire thing without even breaking a sweat. We've had the occasional performance dip – who hasn't – but nothing that detracted from our amazing experience with Nintendo's latest and greatest 3D platformer.
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Gameplay
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Visuals
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Performance
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Soundtrack
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Replayability
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Mechanics
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Value
It’s frankly astounding that Nintendo had the gall to withhold Donkey Kong Bananza from the world as long as it did, particularly in the face of the R1,530 Mario Kart World it served up at the Switch 2’s launch instead. We had our fun with World, but we can’t deny that Donkey Kong Bananza is the best excuse yet to pick up a Switch 2.
With the original Super Mario Odyssey team at its back and a more palatable R1,330 price, it was almost impossible for Bananza to fail. We’re pleased to report that Nintendo’s latest not only met our already high expectations, but blew them out of the water. It’s perhaps not as mechanically technical as Odyssey, but Bananza innovates nearly everywhere else, solidifying itself as one of the best 3D platformers ever.
It really is that good.
Cooler bananas will prevail
Donkey Kong Bananza adopts an “if it’s broke, don’t fix it” mindset in its core gameplay loop, even if it doesn’t follow in the exact footsteps of Nintendo’s iconic red plumber. You play as the titular Donkey Kong, plonked into vast and picturesque worlds that show off what the Switch 2 can do, with a singular goal in mind: find bananas. Of course, you’ll encounter some bosses along the way before you can indulge.
Almost from the get-go, you’ll be paired up with a thirteen-year-old Pauline atop your shoulder, whom you’ll remember as the mayor of New Donk City in Odyssey, essentially making Bananza a prequel in the MGU (Mario Gaming Universe). This unlikely duo’s motivations are fairly simple – find a way home, and eat every banana imaginable – and it’s this that sets the pair on a grand journey to the centre of the… planet.
It’s no The Last of Us, but the relationship kindled between the two characters over the roughly 30-40 hours it took before the credits rolled (sooner if you aren’t easily distracted or worried about finding every banana there is) is a compelling one, if a little cutesy. It’s not nearly as straightforward as it seems, either. Chasing down the pack of apes who serve as this game’s villains will reveal a couple of interesting twists.
Levelling levels
Where Super Mario Odyssey relied on a new red hat to deliver the game’s biggest gimmick, Donkey Kong’s fists are all that’s necessary to get around in Bananza. Every single detail of these elegantly-crafted worlds can be beaten to a pulp — usually to push the game forward — but usually just because you can. It’s not often Nintendo hinders this with arbitrary red tape, but when it does, it’s more than a little disheartening.
You’ve only got a handful of actions that’ll see you through the game — jump, punch, grab, ground pound, and punch up — which might seem a little lacklustre compared to the wizardry you can pull off in Odyssey, but it works wonders here in tandem with the destructible environment. Nearly everything is climbable, save for the few icy or glassy environments, forcing you to think outside the box to reach your destination.
Easily the best bit of Donkey Kong’s fairly limited repertoire was the ability to grab, well, anything. Standing on a bit of mud? Pick it up and hurl it at something nearby and watch it stick. Or, toss it beneath your feet and slide across the ground ala Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom. It adds a level of slick movement that was hard to shake, and had us digging holes just about everywhere we went in search of a new surfboard.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our pick for last year’s Game of the Year — Astro Bot — in regards to proper worldbuilding. We can’t definitively say that Bananza beats the glorious worlds Team Asobi managed to cook up, but it does come close. Where Bananza takes the cake is by making the explorable worlds larger and more densely packed with things to find — from regular gold to full-on T-Rex remains.
We wouldn’t call Bananza’s skill tree (it has a skill tree, by the way) overly complex, but it’s certainly brimming with abilities that’ll keep the game feeling fresh even as you near the end of the game. You’ll unlock a skill point every five bananas, meaning you’ll want to explore to keep levelling up. Beating a big-bad-boss will hand you five bananas, but if you’re serious about levelling up, it won’t be enough to satiate that appetite.
Bananza is a 3D platformer at heart, and with it come the gripes we’ve experienced everywhere in the genre: boss fights. Nintendo’s gone all-out on the design, creating memorable villains that unfortunately don’t get enough time on stage, owing to them being blasted off the map in minutes. It’s not a Nintendo thing — platformers struggle to create challenging bosses worth your time, and Bananza is no different.
It’s BANANZA time!
At the heart of Donkey Kong Bananza lies the Bananza transformations, timed power-ups that’ll have DK turning into various ape-looking animals to help him through an area. You’ll need gold to unlock these short bursts of extraordinary power — something that slowed us down in the game’s earlier stages. Once we learned to let go (there’s plenty of gold to go around), it helped Bananza live up to its name.
Almost from the get-go, you’ll have your first Bananza power — Kong Bananza — which essentially turns you into a bigger, far more capable ape that can tear through the terrain with fewer punches than your regular self. Next up is the Zebra Bananza, allowing you to sprint over patches that would usually crumble under your weight.
These aren’t the be-all and end-all they’re made out to be, and won’t help you plough through Bananza’s levels. They’re fairly limited, at least in the early stages, and can be honed via the skill tree. Do it right, and these transformations will become almost unrecognisable by the game’s end. Still, we always felt more engaged with DK’s more simplistic moves as he pounds his way around and through the intricate levels, but we admit that Donkey Kong Demolition doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like Bananza does.
Went off without a hitch
We spent roughly half our time with Bananza in handheld mode, and the rest docked. Both offer stellar experiences, let down only by the console’s battery chops, which unsurprisingly take a hit. Bananza’s vibrant and entirely destructible worlds, running at 1080p 60fps (in HDR), take it out on the Switch 2. It’ll see you through a flight from Joburg to Cape Town, but anything longer… pack an extra power bank.
Like Astro Bot, Donkey Kong has so many particles and physics bouncing all over the screen that it’s a miracle it runs as well as it does. Only rarely did we experience performance dips. Those moments where a little too much is happening on screen can cause the occasional frame dip. We had more issues with Bananza’s landscapes constantly popping in, something that hardly affected our enjoyment — and likely goes unnoticed by a casual fan.
More annoying than anything else was DK’s camerawork, which becomes muddled when you have nothing to latch on to. Digging too deeply into the world generates some unpleasant camera angles that didn’t quite follow DK the way they should.
For the most part, though, Donkey Kong Bananza kept up with our demands and then some. There wasn’t a single moment that we felt hindered by the technology tucked under the Switch 2’s hood — something we can’t say for all of Nintendo’s first-party titles on the original Switch (lookin’ at you, Korok Forest).
Donkey Kong Bananza verdict
Donkey Kong Bananza can be had for R1,330, on top of the R12,500 you’ll fork over for a new Switch 2. It may just be the Nintendo fanboy in us speaking, but Bananza is easily worth the pricetag, assuming you’ve already had your fill of Mario Kart World and are tired of replaying your favourites on the brand-new console. Bananza is packed with more than enough to keep you coming back even after the credits have rolled, and has just enough versatility to make a second playthrough look vastly different to the first. And we haven’t even mentioned that soul-cleansing soundtrack that’ll outdo all your favourite Ninty games.
