Donkey Kong Bananza owes a lot to Mario Odyssey – in all the best ways. During a recent
Those watching the game’s announcement trailer carefully might have noticed more than a passing resemblance to Super Mario Odyssey in its overall design and aesthetics. As Donkey Kong, you enter strange new worlds of bright, vivid colours, and must collect a crescent-shaped object (bananas) while on a mysterious quest of danger and intrigue.
Well, it turns out the resemblance is more than surface deep, as Donkey Kong Bananza replicates the feeling, tone, aesthetic, and even the victory screens of Odyssey. While this impression is based on a vertical slice, it feels like a justified statement. Bananza objectively shares a lot in common with this game, wielding its primary mechanics and exploration-based gameplay for an entirely new experience that shines a spotlight on another of
If I’m being honest with myself, I’m not a Donkey Kong fan. In a recent review of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, I extrapolated on this shame. The core reason is I just don’t gel with the timing and precision-based nature of Donkey Kong‘s standard platforming. I dislike being boxed in, and I find obtuse collectibles frustrating more than rewarding.
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But all that said, I am delighted by Donkey Kong Bananza – and for the first time, I find myself willing to open my heart to Donkey Kong and all his greedy foibles. The gameplay, fun, and brightness of this adventure is just too much to ignore.
Lacking context, the demo for Bananza featured at the Switch 2 reveal event began in an open township of miners. Based on clues, Donkey Kong is looking for treasure in fabled crystal bananas, each of which can be cracked open with the whack of your palm. But these don’t come easy – you must dig and earn your reward, crashing through walls and ceilings, and mushing your way into the dirt, to come away with valuables. Like Mario before him, DK must devote time to exploring the unexplored, digging through mounds of detritus to find hidden gems, coins, and bananas.
It’s in the game’s digging mechanic that I found the most fun – because it’s absolute and total chaos in practice. Give me tools to dig, and I will dig, and keep digging. In Bananza, you can actually dig through the earth to find hidden secrets – and this quest led me metres down into a deep, dark pit I then had to climb out of, smashing and grabbing my way through dirt walls as I ascended.
And of course, when I got to the surface, I simply kept going, smashing the walls around me, carving out holes in the scenery, turning over every leaf for a chance to uncover a new crystal banana bunch. Not learning any lessons. The game feels fairly sandbox-y in this way. It had no trouble with me destroying every bit of scenery underfoot and moving onto the next world to do the same, free of consequences.
At some point in this tomfoolery, I mistakenly clicked a button and ended up grabbing a chunk of earth to form a spinning skateboard ridden by Donkey Kong. That was pretty cool, too. Then I was a roving rock of destruction, spinning around and blasting walls and chunks of ceiling wherever I pleased. It also made traversing this world much easier – and it was clear DK was having a great time, too.
Give a monkey a rock, and he’ll rule. That’s how the saying goes, right?
My time with Donkey Kong Bananza was defined by this sense of pure, playful joy. I still don’t know much about this game’s plot, or what’s really going on, or why Donkey Kong is going on his very own odyssey. But with its very weird vibes and its silly world of digging holes and discovering treasure, it should provide me a new avenue towards loving Donkey Kong.
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