Nintendo Is Playing with Power

For all the criticisms that can be leveled at Nintendo — from their chronic repackaging of games people already own to their confusing habit of shelving some of their best IP for decades at a time — it can rarely be said that the company plays it safe. The grandaddy of gaming has always zagged when everyone else zigs, with a knack for reinvention that’s kept their work feeling surprisingly timely even when, on paper, it should all seem stagnant.

And even though its newest console, Switch 2, is much more familiar than any piece of hardware Nintendo has released in previous generations, the publisher’s creative strengths are shining through in its software. And while most fans might’ve expected a fresh console cycle to kick off with a Mario game (hell, even a Zelda), Nintendo’s decision to pivot with Donkey Kong Bananza (out July 17) shows that their serpentine maneuvers are paying off once again.

Whereas Donkey Kong’s return could’ve been just a fun stopgap until their next truly big game, Bananza instead plays out as a showstopper worthy of ushering in Switch 2’s arrival. And while competitors like Sony have stepped up with their own stellar mascot platformers like last year’s Astro Bot, games like this make it clear that Nintendo’s not going down without a fight. In fact, they’re at the peak of their power.

Bringing the A game

From its opening moments, Bananza wants to show players that power. Starting in darkness, a button prompt asks players to punch repeatedly to burst through an unseen wall and reveal the game’s hero. Sporting a new look brought to life in high fidelity graphics, Donkey Kong appears powerful — majestic, even — but quickly sheds the veneer for a goofy smile and banana icons in his eyes.

The new DK is expressive, which is good for Nintendo’s brand of minimalist storytelling. His slapstick pantomimes convey just enough emotion to keep things rolling until his more verbally inclined sidekick, the child prodigy singer Pauline, joins the fray to be the game’s voice. The first hour or so of Bananza is heavy on controlled tutorial but does just enough narrative lifting to imbue the game with personality and a slightly deeper story setup than you’d expect from a Nintendo platformer.

There’re some bad guys looking to get to the center of the earth for a magical McGuffin that can grant any wish, and for mysterious reasons, Pauline’s the key. After some smashing and fetch-questing, the race is on.

Developed by Nintendo EPD, the team behind 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey, Bananza has spectacular pedigree behind it. While the Donkey Kong series has many great games in its lineage (the SNES-era Country titles and the 2010s’ reboots are best-in-class 2D side-scrollers), it’s been a long time since this level of investment has been leveraged for Nintendo’s great ape. The commitment to making a triple-A DK game bleeds through into every detail, from the well-made cinematic scenes that play out like a vibrant animated film to the heavy emphasis on music that blends old motifs and tunes with a surprisingly energetic dance hall vibe.

It’s a game intended to overload the senses, from its dense and colorful worlds that are all highly reactive to player actions to its innate sense of inertia. There’s always something to see, hear, and especially touch — mostly with your fists.

Playing with power

Regardless of how aesthetically charming or comedic a game like this is, the real appeal will always be the gameplay. In that regard, DK has a leg up on even his old rival Mario in terms of the sheer number of things he can do. Players can run, roll, jump (and air roll!) their way around each of the game’s levels with fluidity and speed. DK can also climb most surfaces with ease, rapidly ascending environments like another famous pop culture Kong, to reach dizzying heights. While Mario is known for his mobility, this iteration of DK is better, stronger, and faster than just about any Nintendo character before and feels extremely responsive and liberating to control.

Even though, by nature, the levels all have some invisible guardrails, there’s unbridled freedom in how areas can be traversed. DK’s ability to climb is reminiscent of recent Zelda titles, albeit without the stamina restrictions. If something is too slippery, slap some dirt on it. Too icy? Use a rock like a surfboard to glide on top. By picking up chunks of the environment, DK can play around with different combinations that can lead to progression or finding secrets (of which there are hundreds). But as much fun as finding things can be, destroying them is truly an act of glee.

By utilizing voxel technology, the developers designed a world where DK can punch, crunch, and explode his way through just about anything to carve his own path across the world. And while you’d think spamming the punch button (there’s actually three, all for different directions) would get tiring, it genuinely doesn’t.

Like a snake flickering its tongue or a curious shark taking a chomp, DK uses punches as a primarily means to explore and interact with the environment. Tearing into a mountainside creates its own kind of kinetics, tunneling players throughout the world like an automated power drill. Eventually, you’ll find yourself unable to stop punching, knocking out NPCs by reflex before asking them where to go next. It’s silly, and rarely has repercussions, but remains a lizard-brained delight to punch first and ask questions later.

On top of his base suite of abilities, DK can be powered up by Pauline’s singing to go in a Bananza mode frenzy. There are multiple transformations to take, each inspired by different animals like a zebra or ostrich. The first Bananza form is a stronger version of DK, amplifying his punches for doing extreme damage to rocks and enemies, while others increase his speed (letting him walk on water) or glide in the air for short spurts of time.

All the Bananza powers rely on a power meter that’s refilled by collecting gold, but it’s so plentiful that it can ultimately be chained forever. They can also be swapped on the fly mid-transformation, strung together in succession for more complex sections of platforming and combat. For the most part, the game rarely demands this level of juggling, but later stages require a deft touch on hot-swapping abilities — to the point where it can be a little overwhelming.

Too much is never enough

If there was one complaint to be leveled at Donkey Kong Bananza, it’d be that the game is often demanding so much of your attention. Between a world that’s constantly exploding and deteriorating around the player, enemies and hazards to dodge, and at least eight different kinds of collectibles to gather (or more, as some have variations), it’s all just a lot of shit to keep track of. When the punch-drunk frenzy takes over, players may find themselves tearing through levels with reckless abandon as geysers of gold and particle effects spew all around them, confusing their line of sight and leaving them disoriented.

For the most part, the level design has multiple points of ebb and flow where heavy action is halted for light collecting that serves as a breather, but with so many things to gather between Banandium gems, Banandium chips, gold, balloons, juices, and literal chunks of earth itself, it can be hard to focus on any one thing. With dozens of items to discover, all strategically placed to be spatially adjacent, it can be easy to just keep punching your way to the next thing, and the next.

Whereas in most 3D Mario games (or other platformers like Astro), there’s a mix of low-hanging fruit and complex puzzling to capture that one elusive star or sprite, the collectibles in Bananza are more of a quantity-over-quality ordeal. Just racing from point A to B through a stage can lend itself to collecting a metric ton of stuff almost by accident, but even going back to clean up the rest for completionism is more of a time-consuming task than a brainy one. Rarely will the path to any one gem require heavy thought or planning; the game’s more concerned about making sure the physical actions required to get to the destination feel more satisfying than any cerebral solutions.

That feeling is upended a bit in the game’s later stages — which we’ll keep spoiler-free to preserve the twists — where the challenges take a sharp difficulty spike. As endgame levels utilize hazards and platforming sequences that demand expert control over DK’s many Bananza forms, there’s a feeling that the majority of the journey hadn’t really prepared anyone for the feats. There’s always the ability to go back to previous stages to troll for gems and upgrade DK’s abilities, including more health and powered up moves, but it can be a surprising shift from what is mostly an aesthetically overwhelming cakewalk.

Of course, platformers should be tougher toward the end, and the game never approaches the controller-smashing frustration of expert levels in Astro or classic Mario titles, but there could’ve been a cleaner build up.

A new era for DK

That being said, Donkey Kong Bananza’s many strengths vastly outweigh the imbalance of its endgame pivot. By consciously choosing to emphasis the physicality and feel of player actions, it’s one of the most enjoyable platformers in recent history for its moment-to-moment gameplay alone.

What’s most admirable is how little the game relies on nostalgia. While Super Mario Odyssey was celebrated for keeping things weird with surreal levels like New Donk City that placed the pint-sized plumber alongside regular humans, there’re huge swaths of the game that aimed to celebrate Mario’s history. Bananza could’ve fallen into the same lane but instead opts to keep its legacy characters mostly confined to cameos and its deep cut references relegated to mini-game levels and musical motifs. Rest assured, there’s plenty here for longtime fans, but the game leans into its own identity, content to both look and play like no other DK game before it.

Nintendo could’ve easily scored a layup here with a nostalgia play, but instead chose a more audacious route with a game that’s confident in its new direction. By aiming to be more of an ambitious spiritual successor to Odyssey and previous Donkey Kong games than a basic update with some added twists, Bananza avoids iterative fatigue and embraces its own quirky, manic energy to be something genuinely fresh. Welcome to the dawn of the new DK.

Donkey Kong Bananza launches for Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17.