What parents need to know
Donkey Kong Bananza offers us to follow Nintendo’s famous gorilla in his brand new adventure (and his first three-dimensional adventure since Donkey Kong 64 released in 1999).
You play as Donkey Kong while working as a miner on Ingot Island while a vein of “banandium”, minerals that are actually edible bananas. Don’t try to understand too much.
Except that the evil company Void Co arrives with a ship, steals all the bananas and takes refuge underground. DK goes after them and against the young Pauline who has the power to counter Void Co’s misdeeds with her singing. The duo therefore leaves for the center of the planet, where legend has it that a wish will be granted to them. Pauline dreams of going home and Donkey dreams… bananas.
Donkey Kong Bananza was developed at Nintendo by the same team that made Super Mario Odyssey, and the filiation is obvious. We find the same visual style, and the same gameplay focused on platforming. On the other hand, where Mario Odyssey gave pride of place to the power to possess enemies and to long precise jumps, Donkey Kong Bananza offers a new mechanic. Thanks to its exceptional strength, the tie-wearing gorilla can punch almost any surface, dig underground, and even use the materials to create new platforms or reshape the contours of the levels.
Donkey Kong is still entitled to a few transformations during the adventure. By meeting the elders, he unlocks the ability to transform into a few animals, for example a zebra that allows him to run faster or an ostrich that allows him to glide.
Just like its spiritual predecessor, Mario Odyssey (we reassure you, you don’t need to have played it to fully grasp DK Bananza), Bananza is a platform game focused above all on exploration, and perhaps even more so now that you can literally dig into the levels.
Each of the levels, or “stratum”, is full of bananas (a few dozen per stratum, for a total of 777) to find, in addition to fossils that can be exchanged for new clothes that give us bonuses and obviously change our look. The gold you collect also unlocks new level sections, among other things.
In addition to all this platforming and exploration, Bananza also includes a mini-game, DK Artist, which offers us to sculpt in three dimensions using the mouse function of the Joy-Cons 2.
Details
Level of experience required
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Evaluation
Donkey Kong hits his enemies with his fists or with pieces of the ground, but the violence is cartoonish and funny.
Nothing to mention.
Some explanations are given in writing, so knowing how to read is an advantage, but the dialogues are almost entirely dubbed (the enemies speak in gibberish, but that’s all). You can get by very well with a very limited level of reading.
In the end, even if Donkey Kong is above all motivated by bananas, he takes a liking to Pauline. The duo always helps the world’s inhabitants, and an ecological message also underlies the script.
The more advanced levels can be a bigger challenge for more beginner players, but all in all, the level of difficulty is very accessible. The title also offers an Assistance mode for players who feel the need, where the game guides us more and enemies do less damage to us, among other things.
Donkey Kong Bananza does not offer any paid downloadable content per se, with the exception of Amiibos. Amiibos are small figures with a chip, and if you put the Donkey Kong figure on your controller, the game will offer you additional resources.
On the other hand, it is completely optional and superfluous.
We should also mention the high selling price of the title: $99.99.
Sure, Donkey Kong Bananza offers a great experience and the lifespan is considerable, but it’s still a $20 increase over similar games from the previous generation.
Local game modes
Donkey Kong’s adventure can be completed in solo or co-op in a mode where the second player takes on the role of Pauline, who can pulverize enemies with her voice.
We also have separate access to the DK Artist mode, which allows us to sculpt works with the mouse.
Online Game Modes
You can share your game (for free) with a second player, even if he or she doesn’t own Donkey Kong Bananza, to play in co-op mode.
Expansions/Add-ons (DLC)
None at this time.
Our opinion
Donkey Kong Bananza was eagerly awaited. Not only is this the first Donkey Kong original game since 2014, it’s the franchise’s first 3D platformer in over 25 years, and the first game in the franchise developed in-house by Nintendo since 2004!
But above all, this is Nintendo’s first big release on the Switch 2 since Mario Kart World which was launched with the console. The new owners were therefore expecting a stronger game to sink their teeth into, and expectations were high.
Luckily for players, not only does this new title live up to the high expectations of the community, but in our opinion, it exceeds them.
Let’s start with the basics, the game mechanics. Even the cover shows it; Everything in Donkey Kong Bananza revolves around the mascot’s ability to dig and destroy the environment. It was, as you can guess, a challenge. How do you make sure to keep a challenge, vary the fun, make the game fun and avoid repetition when the player can distort the levels?
The solution is a precise, thoughtful level design that borders on genius, let’s not be afraid of words. By placing a few indestructible walls here and there, but above all, by arranging the levels so that you will want to explore them without simply digging aimlessly, you ensure a perfect balance between exploration, destruction and challenge. And at worst, if you have damaged a stratum too much, a simple press of a button and it returns to its original state.
This concept is absolutely brilliant, adding a nice depth (pun intended) to the levels. The combat mechanics also push us to take full advantage of the possibilities of this system, even if the difficulty level is rather low.
We also want to highlight the reverence Nintendo has shown to its simian mascot. The relationship between Nintendo and Donkey Kong, seen from the outside, has always seemed complicated. The arcade game Donkey Kong, launched in 1981, allowed the Kyoto company to finally become successful, and it is largely to this title, which also introduced us to Mario, that we owe the company’s current success.
But Mario quickly replaced Donkey Kong as the star mascot, and it was the British developers Rare, now owned by Microsoft, who laid the foundations of the Donkey Kong we know today.
Nintendo fans have often had the impression that DK and his gang may have been unloved by Nintendo. After all, few titles in the franchise have been developed in-house by the company, and secondary characters designed by Rare appear more rarely in Nintendo’s titles.
If Donkey Kong Bananza proves one thing to us, it’s that our fears were unfounded. The title shows us all the respect and reverence that the Japanese firm has for the company’s eldest monkey. Bananza is full of nods to the different episodes of the series, from the 80s to today.
In fact, in the same way that Odyssey was a kind of tribute to the Mario franchise, it’s obvious that the developers wanted to offer the same type of tribute to Donkey Kong. Even though the game was designed, obviously, to be accessible to new players, veterans will find it a celebration of the franchise that is already quietly approaching its fiftieth anniversary (!!).
Music has always been one of the strong points of the franchise (we can thank the genius of British composers David Wise, Eveline Fischer and Grant Kirkhope for this indelible mark in the midrange), and if none of the new pieces is likely to impose themselves in the musical-playful pantheon alongside Stickerbrush Symphony or Aquatic Ambience, The fact remains that the track shines with its musical score and its sound atmosphere.
Visually, we don’t feel that the title pushes Nintendo’s new console to the maximum. The game was originally designed for the first Switch, and sometimes, you can feel it a little. On the other hand, the imposing calculations imposed by the destructible aspect of the environment mean that in some passages in particular, the title suffers from some slowdowns. It is therefore understandable that the developers wanted to be more sober in terms of the resolution of certain textures.
Anyway, it’s quickly forgotten when you take a look at the animations. With a redesign that is, in our opinion, very successful, Donkey Kong shines in this title, as does Pauline, his young sidekick. Their animations are detailed, funny and give a lot of personality to the two companions.
Moreover, if the screenplay of Donkey Kong will certainly not win any awards for its complexity, we must admit that we get very attached to Pauline and DK, and their relationship is most touching. Well, don’t ask us where this adventure is located on this timeline, we have no idea, but we still enjoyed the trip. We also want to avoid spoilers, but the title still has one or two plot twists that grabbed us.
In short, you will have understood, Donkey Kong Bananza charmed us with all its aspects. The concept of perfection remains to be discussed. Should we give a 20/20 to a game when it has no flaws, when we can’t think of the slightest improvement?
Or should we give a title a perfect rating when it pushes the boundaries of video games, when it stands out as a milestone of its time without any flaws to color the experience in a noticeable way?
We lean towards the second option, and that’s why we decided to give Donkey Kong Bananza a perfect score. Can’t wait for Donkey Kong’s next adventures!
Note: A code has been given to us by the publisher for critical purposes, but this does not influence our rating.
