Donkey Kong Bananza Hands-On: Red Faction Gorilla

Donkey Kong is one versatile monkey. He's gone from one of the most infamous video game villains to a hero of his own platformer series, a rhythm game star, and more. His one attempt at a 3D platformer, Donkey Kong 64, was a bit of a low point in his storied career, but you can't keep a good ape down, and now he's back with another swing at the genre. After some hands-on time with the new Switch 2 game, I think Donkey Kong Bananza may just be his 3D platformer redemption.

Donkey Kong Bananza carries some noticeable DNA from another Nintendo game, but its central hook is all its own. The general feel and flow of movement around the world feels very similar to Super Mario Odyssey, but whereas Mario is a fleet-footed little plumber, Donkey Kong is known for being a brutish bruiser. He hits hard, and in this case, that means a playground of destructible environments to smack your way through.

Almost everything is destructible in Bananza, which at first can feel a little disorienting. DK's powerful punches can clear out a huge swath of cave wall or ground, so it's easy to just charge in a direction while quickly burrowing through obstacles. After a while you start to learn some finesse, especially when it comes to the controls. The directions of the face buttons generally correspond to which direction you smack--B for a downward, digging-like slam; Y for a forward punch; and X for an upward strike. You can start pummeling with intention, clearing away caves in the direction you mean to.

There are also things that can't be punched through--specifically metal floors and walls, which serve to guide you in the right direction. Still, in the way that any child naturally loves to dig up dirt, thwacking your way through the soil just strikes a primal part of your brain. It's fun to clear a room, and DK is just the ape to do it.

The environments are bright and vibrant, and the rock and soil terraform nicely with a satisfying crunchy feeling. Still, if any one aspect makes Donkey Kong Bananza a visual showpiece for the Switch 2, it's DK himself. Both the titular character and the monkeys and baddies he meets are rendered as adorably squat cartoon characters that squash and stretch with expressiveness. Donkey Kong has never looked better in video game form, and his look here bears an incredible resemblance to his appearance in the animated Mario movie.

In the context of the story, the metal floors and walls are there because this version of DK happens to be in some kind of monkey-world mining operation, where all of the monkeys happily labor away looking for gems shaped like giant bananas inside the earth's crust. Why a monkey would particularly want a banana that they cannot eat, I have no idea. Stop asking questions. A disaster befalls the mining operation and DK's adventure begins in earnest. He also for some reason loses his pants. That he ever had pants implies that this world recognizes nudity, but the other apes politely seem to ignore it.

At this point the digging through dirt gets a bit more direction, both figuratively and literally, as you burrow your way through stages and start to deal with enemies. You can sometimes punch them, but other times you need to grab a piece of explosive rock and hurl it in their direction. What happens when you hurl explosive rock in the direction of destructible environments, you may ask? Now you're thinking like a true destruction connoisseur.

This segment of the demo took place in a watery stage, and while there wasn't a clearly defined objective marker, all of the momentum and visual markers led upwards. So DK was largely making his way up a hilly slope, dispatching enemies along the way, to reach the story objective at the top. But DK semi-regularly discovered crystal bananas hiding in the rock, similar to how Mario finds power moons littered throughout the open-world stages of Mario Odyssey. The bananas even look similar to the moons, visually.

There is a platforming game in Donkey Kong Bananza, buried somewhere deep inside the recesses and soil and rock. From the small taste I played, I can tell that there will be objectives and crystal bananas and enemies to dispatch and directions to go and probably more than a few boss fights. The relatively small number of each of those that I saw in the demo seemed very fun. But Donkey Kong Bananza more than anything is a toy that lets you dig through solid rock and dirt as a super-strong monkey, and that's just the purest form of childlike fun.

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