I’ve a mixed history with Donkey Kong games. Donkey Kong 64 I loved, for a while, until it became clear it was a nightmare of repetition and collecting. Donkey Kong ’94, for the Game Boy, is one of my favourite platformers. I hated all the Super NES Donkey Kong Country games with their stupid pre-rendered graphics and terrible physics and collision detection. The evolution of those for the 3DS and Wii, Donkey Kong Country Returns was better, and I completed it, but it wasn’t amazing (aside from looking really nice on the 3DS). I passed on Tropical Freeze because it was more of the same (and, unlike Returns, wasn’t free). But now, mainly because of a dearth of Switch 2 specific games and a super cheap 50% off deal because I bought the Japanese version from Amazon, Donkey Kong Bananza is mine.
Well, it was mine for a few hours but then I had to lend it to my child for a few months because she needed it apparently. Eventually it came back.
My first impressions were not very good. The purple colour scheme just felt weird. The “digging” mechanic, where you can destroy almost all of the environment, didn’t make any sense in a Donkey Kong game, and there just seemed like there was too much to dig. After a couple of hours, I had started to warm to it and by the end, was totally taken by New Design Donkey Kong and the Canon Bursting Addition of Little Pauline. If you ignore everything that doesn’t make sense, then it’s a lot of fun.
Levels are varied, with many reminding me of bits of Mario 64. There’s loads to do, with each huge area (or layer, as the game calls them – you’re slowly digging down to the planet’s core) already full of missions, quests or jobs to do and then having a number of, mostly hidden, challenge doors that include tricky platforming, puzzles, and taking on enemies in a range of environments. You also gain skills, mainly in the form of animal transformations, which can let you reach previously inaccessible areas within levels you’ve already done, so it’s a bit Metroidvania-y in that way. Minor upgrades in the form of purchasable clothing are also available, to buff your attacks, elemental defences, and give you more time in your transformed states.
Controls were tricky at first, mainly because Nintendo have moved the jump button to A when B, or even Y is much more common. The reason is to that X, Y and B can be used to “dig” (or rather, punch) up, forward and down respectively. I did still keep pressing the wrong shoulder buttons even at the end of the game too, so never really got completely used to them.
The gameplay is great though. Punching through everything is actually pretty addictive, even if the rewards for doing so are minimal. You very quickly rack up more gold – the main currency in the game – than you can ever spend. Other things you find, like bananas and fossils are of more use but are rarer. Once you get the upgrade which lets you see where various treasures are buried, it lets you focus on the important stuff so you don’t randomly punch everywhere. Except, of course, I did anyway. Enemies are mostly dispatched by either punching them, or throwing stuff at them (you can rip up chunks of ground to do this) but some are unfazed by “softer” material or need a specific type of rock to expose their weak points first, so there’s sometimes some strategy to the combat rather than button mashing.
The animal transformations feel a bit under-utilised, partly as you rarely need them and partly because they could have just been extra abilities rather than a whole added on mechanism. They’re a bit fiddly to swap to as well, and your time as them is limited, so sometimes – where it was possible – I’d just do it the “hard” way as Normal Ape to save the hassle. It’s also a bit weird having an animal become an ape-snake or ape-zebra hybrid. Video games, eh?
So, not the best early-new-console release, but far better than I was expecting given my history with Donkey Kong games. My main take away from the game is, however, that it clearly wasn’t a Donkey Kong game when they had the idea and mechanics in place, and then needed to fit it to an existing Nintendo character. Nintendo do this a lot and, in this case, it seems to have paid off.
