I didn't realize at the time how blessed we were with the original Nintendo Switch launching with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Though it cross-launched on Nintendo Wii U, it still felt like the killer app that defined the console. I've been worried that Nintendo Switch 2, though a great bit of kit as we discuss in our Nintendo Switch 2 review, has been lacking in a game that would define its launch. But, no monkey business, Donkey Kong Bananza is thankfully that game.
It's great to finally have that defining game on Nintendo Switch 2 – Donkey Kong Bananza has stabilized me, having felt a bit wobbly in the first few weeks after the console's launch. While Mario Kart World was clearly the marketing-bullet-point system seller given the console bundle that came at launch, for me it struggled at the starting grid thanks to a focus on straightforward rallies compared to the series' long history of circuit play. Though Donkey Kong Bananza is just as experimental, it feels like a real evolution of Nintendo platformers in a way that also champions the power of the new hardware.
Ape escape
We still loved the launch racer in our Mario Kart World review, but no matter how you feel about it, there's one undeniable fact – Nintendo isn't known as a racing game developer, as good as it may be at party-style spin-offs. Even the best Mario Kart game would struggle to really define a system for me (except for Mario Kart: Double Dash!! of course).
We loved the game in our Donkey Kong Bananza review, where we called its destruction "one of the best inventions Nintendo has had in years"
No, as far as I'm concerned Nintendo games are all about the spirit of adventure – whether that's an epic quest like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or a huge summer getaway like Super Mario Sunshine. Importantly, they're about setting out for adventure as you, the player, championing expressive play such as the unique traversal mechanics of Super Mario Odyssey or leaving you to chart your own course as you explore Zelda's dense maps.
Donkey Kong Bananza really carries that forward, combining just about everything Nintendo have learned across their first-party 3D adventures together to create something that feels really unique – a form of freedom that only Donkey Kong, in his little tie and not much else, can represent. On a quest to liberate (and consume) glittering bananas, his Jules Verne-esque journey to the center of the planet is one that puts the power of the king of swing into my own simian-like paws.
Each new 'layer' of the world is a sizable chunk of world to explore, though not too large as to get lost. With child Pauline in tow (she helps him to transform into more destructive forms), just about every interesting looking bit of the environment rewards DK with goodies, from bananas themselves to collectible fossils. Each can be traded in for the likes of skills or costumes, but really just smashing them into DK's suspiciously absent pockets or, indeed, his stomach (yes, that's how it's presented in the UI) is rewarding in and of itself.
It's a similar rhythm to Super Mario Odyssey, which itself re-tooled the series' traditional star collecting into smaller, bite size bits of discovery – except here, as Donkey Kong, banana collection is much more immediate. Where Mario might ground pound a suspect bit of the earth, DK can simply dig his mitts in and tear the world apart, the 1:1 destruction helping you find your own paths to discovery without feeling too arbitrary either. Rather than an absence of guided design, it's more like Donkey Kong Bananza allows me to doodle connections between them. It's like finding your way through a tricky maze drawn in pencil, but allowing you to use an eraser on the walls.
These dense environments aren't just littered with collectibles themselves, but 'temples' too, ruins that take more than a peel from the fruit of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. These more strictly designed challenges – ranging from 2D jumping challenges to finding hidden balloons – still allow for creative approaches using Donkey Kong's muscled mind, but are more specific puzzle boxes. Transforming into an Ostrich to leap across moving platforms isn't dissimilar to having Link construct some kind of puzzle-breaking tool out of sticks, but with the added bonuses of hearing DK's ape grunts while he does it.
Donkey Kong Bananza is all about the joy of tearing things apart and sometimes smashing things together, both literally in the game and in terms of genre – forcing Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild to slot together like mismatched puzzle pieces, and with DK having the strength to wedge them together.
It helps that the smashy action that means Donkey Kong can deform every landscape before him and the game will remember the destruction for as long as you want – it feels like the kind of ambitious terrain development previous consoles couldn't pull off. Heck, even Donkey Kong Bananza occasionally struggles as I pull up the map that reflects it all – but I wouldn't have it any other way. Going ape on Nintendo Switch 2 shouldn't be easy, after all, we're witnessing history in the making.
Want more to play? Check out our best Nintendo Switch 2 games ranking!
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