{"id":69466,"date":"2025-07-16T22:03:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T12:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/?p=69466"},"modified":"2025-07-16T22:03:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T12:03:52","slug":"review-donkey-kong-bananza-nintendo-switch-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/2025\/07\/review-donkey-kong-bananza-nintendo-switch-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Review: Donkey Kong Bananza (Nintendo Switch 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was so sure that Nintendo would launch the Switch 2 with a new Mario adventure. So, Nintendo being Nintendo, of course they launched with Donkey Kong instead. Mean Mr. Kong hasn\u2019t been in a 3D adventure of his own since way back with the N64, and that effort was\u2026 polarising, at best. So polarising Nintendo hasn\u2019t deemed it fit to make it available on the retro consoles yet. But then, we\u2019re not here to talk about that one. We\u2019re here to talk about the Donk\u2019s second 3D outing and, thankfully, Bananza is much less likely to be polarising.<\/p>\n

Donkey is underground now. Deep underground. Mining for\u2026 bananas, I think. And then his world is turned upside down when a meteorite falls from the sky and a rock thing joins him on his quest. That rock turns into a teenage girl (Pauline), and the D-man and his pal start descending deeper and deeper underground.<\/p>\n

Yes, in the screenshots you can see very above-ground-like environments. Nintendo seems to have been inspired by the woeful Godzilla vs. Don\u2026-Kong cinematic universe, where, for some reason, the planet is hollow and sunlit inside. So, as you complete your main objective on each of these underground-but-not-really environments, you\u2019ll be able to travel on to the next one, and that\u2019s how you move from oases to beaches to forests to snowy mountains.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll level with you all \u2013 I couldn\u2019t find the narrative or setting of this nonsense engaging in the slightest. The levels and environments are colourful and vibrant enough, but I was playing through them rather than finding them particularly immersive. I also preferred when Pauline was a rock. The good news is that Donkey himself is a highly endearing character with the Switch 2 pumping out a lot of personality through his immaculately groomed fur. He\u2019s an idiot, but a playfully funny one, and the cut scenes were worth watching just to see how he would (over)react to the next thing he encountered. Nintendo obviously understands what an utterly nonsensical character Donkey is, too, and the development team had their tongues firmly in cheek right throughout. The best joke is how one of the main unlockables is a series of pants for the big ape-man. For years now, Donkey Kong has had the \u201cDonald Duck effect\u201d where people are very aware that he\u2019s wearing clothes on his top (in this case, a tie), and that makes us all wonder why, exactly, he\u2019s not wearing pants. Well, now Nintendo has given you a solution, ya puritans.<\/p>\n

In short, I was having fun with Donkey Kong\u2019s character, but I didn\u2019t really care for the narrative or context of the game beyond that. That\u2019s also okay because this is a platformer, not an RPG or visual novel, and what actually matters in this genre is how much fun they are to play. Bananza is so much fun to play.<\/p>\n

The first thing you\u2019re going to notice is how destructible everything is, and this is no doubt why Nintendo figured that this would be a good title to launch the Switch 2. If you can see something, it\u2019s very likely you can dig, smash, tear or break it, and there\u2019s just no way the original Switch could handle the complexity of the voxel art that the developers have used for Bananza.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Because you\u2019re capable of, quite literally, levelling a mountain if you\u2019re so inclined, the next objective marker is rarely the most interesting thing in Bananza. Instead, you\u2019ll be spending so much time looking for little secret loot caches and nooks on the other side of walls. This is, in an odd way, vintage Donkey Kong. Remember how, back with the Donkey Kong Country trilogy on the SNES, there were bunches of bananas hidden every few paces in the scenery that Donkey could draw out by slapping the floor? Or that there were all kinds of hidden treasure room barrels that just required you to take a leap of faith off a cliff? That same heritage really powers the way that you\u2019ll be relentlessly terraforming Bananza\u2019s environments to find the hidden goodies.<\/p>\n

The Mega D is also able to climb just about every surface you can imagine, and has a reasonable skill tree that gives him access to even more abilities. Later on, it\u2019s also possible to transform into alternative forms, each with even more abilities. Of the many platformers I\u2019ve played over the years, few have felt as totally open and free in how I can move and explore as this one. The only minor downside to all of this is that the camera can struggle to keep up with the combination of your pace of movement (and destruction), and the fact that you’ll fairly regularly end up down holes in the scenery or smashing your way through a wall and disappear behind it. Reorientating is easy, though, and in the moments that matter (like boss battles), the camera is unobtrusive.<\/p>\n

This focus on freedom is also why it\u2019s also so impressive that the game\u2019s puzzles and challenges are so well calibrated. Bananza starts off a touch too easy, perhaps, but soon enough you\u2019ll be scratching your head as you figure your way around the space. Given how many tools you have for movement and removing obstacles, I can only imagine how much work went into designing the world to still challenge players while giving them that freedom. In typical Nintendo style, it seems like every new place you visit challenges you in a different way, too. The creative variety in Bananaza is genuinely impressive, and that\u2019s even considering Nintendo\u2019s own standards here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Donkey Kong Bananza is the perfect launch window title for the Nintendo Switch 2. It highlights the kind of creative whimsy that Nintendo can achieve with its new hardware, demonstrates that the Switch 2 really is more than a slightly bigger Switch\u2026 and is just a very fine game on top of all of that. Donkey Kong has finally appeared in a 3D platformer worth a damn.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was so sure that Nintendo would launch the Switch 2 with a new Mario adventure. So, Nintendo being Nintendo, of course they launched with Donkey Kong instead. Mean Mr. Kong hasn\u2019t been in a 3D adventure of his own since way back with the N64, and that effort was\u2026 polarising, at best. So polarising Nintendo hasn\u2019t deemed it fit to make it available on the retro consoles yet. But then, we\u2019re not here to talk about that one. We\u2019re here to talk about the Donk\u2019s second 3D outing and, thankfully, Bananza is much less likely to be polarising. Donkey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,16577,104,17],"tags":[16836,12873,16399,12935,16814],"coauthors":[12758],"class_list":["post-69466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nintendo","category-nintendo-switch-2","category-platformer","category-reviews","tag-donkey-kong-bananza","tag-nintendo","tag-nintendo-switch-2","tag-platformer","tag-switch-2-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69471,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69466\/revisions\/69471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69466"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}