I just don’t think I resonate with the Nintendo style platformers the way most people do. Donkey Kong got reviews that were off the charts, positioning it as one the best games in recent times but to me it’s just…. fine. I can recognize it's a good game and I enjoy playing it but it's nowhere near what I'd consider a master piece. The same can be said with Mario Oddessy, I just don’t get why people hold these games in such high regard. It’s not even an aversion to platformers on my end because a game like Astro Bot blew me away but these Nintendo platformers just don’t resonate the way they do with most. All that being said I still wanted to fully experience Donkey Bananza because it’s such a landmark title for the Switch 2 so I kinda felt like it was required gaming on my part.
While Mario is all about jumping this whole game is about smashing, that’s the gameplay and everything is designed around it. The mechanics are going to have you punching through just about everything. Whether that’s the terrain, enemies, or collectibles, you are doing some flavor of smashing. It’s hard to quantify because the easiest way to categorize the game is that it’s an action platformer but not in the traditional sense. The platforming in this game is more of a fight, the action is the platforming. You might not always be fighting enemies but you are always fighting the level itself, ripping through it to reach your objective. You’ll never not be punching pathways or grabbing, throwing, surfing, fighting and jumping with chunks of the world, all the moves that are based around that idea of smashing and just fighting everything. DK is an absolutely unstoppable unit that blows through everything and just like with Mario, mastering his move set will grant crazy mobility and gameplay opportunities.Thats all is expanded upon 5 fold with the different Bananaza transformations which are the other big focus of the game apart from the destruction. There’s a Kong Bananaza that basically magnifies the base Donkey Kong, making you a lot stronger in everything. There’s the Ostrich Bananaza that lets you fly and drop bombs, the Snake Bananaza gives you a super high jump and the ability to slow time. The Zebra Bananaza makes you mega fast and able to run on surfaces you normally can’t, and finally the Elephant Bananaza lets you suck up everything like a vacuum and store materials in your trunk. All these Bananaza transformations have their own move sets and feel completely different which is where a lot of variation and creativity comes from in the gameplay. They will present you with challenges that cater towards certain transformations or combinations of transformations. It always keeps the gameplay fresh because you’ll be swapping back and forth and each one is so different in feel and changes how you play ... except for smashing……you’ll always be smashing.
Being that smashing is so core, of course all the levels are completely destructible (to a certain extent) and the fact that the developers made a game and challenges around that concept is extremely impressive. Sure sometimes you can just ignore the intended gameplay experience by just smashing through everything but that's part of what makes this game so unique and when they want to challenge you, they do, much like how the new Zelda’s work with their shrines. I think a lot of those isolated challenges can get a bit repetitive and I could have done a lot less but for the most part they are at least enjoyable. Plus I’ll give them credit for creativity with switching perspectives to 2D or forcing you to use a certain Bananza or fight an enemy under circumstances you’d never normally be under. The endgame dungeon challenges especially get elaborate and take the difficulty from 0 to 100 real fast and require you to really master the move set of each Bananaza. But the more fun challenges are the player-made ones and just all the stuff in the levels where you can really just sink your teeth into the sandbox mechanics, explore these detail rich levels, and chase after all the collectibles riddled in the environments in both easy and hard places to access.
The set up for the levels is that you're traveling deeper and deeper to the planet's core and each layer is a new level. Now It makes no fucking sense because these layers all have their own atmospheres and what not but that besides the point. I’ll really give them credit because every layer is doing something different in looks and design. As you progress throughout the game unlocking those Bananaza transformations the layers are able to get more and more complex because there’s more mechanics for the player and certain layers are themed entirely around one Bananaza transformation so they can really fine tune the design. It can really get interesting when you throw in all the little variables and mechanics that I'm not mentioning here in this review like weather, terrain materials, and just bat shit crazy architecture. You’ll go through a poison swamp with an egg hotel and massive vines, a rainbow island packed with giant fruit, a tornado-invested rock island with storms, lava rain, and hot springs, and plenty more crazy concepts such as those. There really is a lot going on in these levels but I still just felt bored while playing a lot of time. There’s the occasional boss fight to break things up that are fun and smashing through big enemies is cool but they are over pretty quick. The core gameplay of just endlessly punching and collecting just couldn't hook me enough for 35 hours+ i spent with it. A game like Astro Bot was such a great platformer because they completely revamped the game each level so it was always fresh. You literally got a new set of mechanics every 15 mins and all of them felt great plus it had way more interesting level design. Donkey Kong just does the same things over and over, and while there’s still lots of variety within what it does, it's still just the same broad experience of smashing and collecting. So if that gameplay clicks then it will be a great time but for me I just fell into this weird state of play where I didn't ever hate the game but I never loved it either.
On the other side of Donkey Kong Bananza is the collecting which is the main progression of the game. While Mario Odyssey has moons strewn about the game Donkey Kong has Bananas. It’s what you're chasing and the core reason for playing the game. Banana’s, once you have enough will turn into skill points that you can use to unlock and upgrade moves and abilities for the Bananazas. The skill tree is pretty good and sneakily big, you have to collect pretty much all 999 bananas to get everything (that might be a lie but I got 800+ and didn’t unlock everything). The other collectible is fossils which will unlock cosmetics for DK and Paulina, fur colors are just visual changes but the outfits for both of them give bonuses which is nice but honestly the outfits really suck in their design. Both of them are fun to find though and my monkey brain made me find each and everyone of them before I moved on to the next level. There’s also banana coins which can be used at a vendor to buy bananas and just the standard gold currency you can use in shops, pay to have shortcuts built or barriers destroyed, and the occasional challenge requires you to pay gold. You get the gold and banana coins by just punching through the environment which makes sure that no matter what you are smashing you are progressing in some way. I just wish there was a little more, there are music disc that enemies drop but I never used those because you can only play them at rest spots that you sleep at for 10 seconds for hearts and move on. More cosmetics would have been a good start, I think having outfits for the Bananaza transformations would have gone a long way and just more outfits for base DK and Pauliana would have engaged me more. Because I was just collecting everything because Im a completionist not because I cared.
I haven’t even touched upon the story yet because I simply didn’t care but I feel like if you're a long time Donkey Kong fan then there’s a lot of fan service and cool moments. The only thing I connected with is that it's a prequel to Mario Odyssey and fleshes out Paulina's role in the world which is cool I suppose but I don’t give two titty licks about Mario lore. The gist of it is, Pauliana and DKare both screwed over by a mining organization called Void CO and are racing them to the center of the planet’s core because it’s said to have magic powers. Paulina wants to get back to her home New Donk CIty and DK want’s Bananas so they work together and DK helps Paulina gain her confidence to sing in front of people. It’s simple and not much to it, but it works and I suppose its Donkey Kong fans want because from what I see people love how it ties all the games together and has a big plot twist that was a nothing burger for me but others seem to like it. The only thing that really pissed me off about the story is that each big moment where Paulina sings, they reuse the same cutscene and the songs themselves aren’t much of actual songs but just jingles for each Bananaza. I would have liked to see more focus go into the soundtrack since music is the focus of the game, the only real song we get is at the very end of the game.
I think that's all I have to say Donkey Kong Bananza was fine, I had some fun and I got a little bored. I won’t knock anyone for loving but I don’t understand it.
