Donkey Kong Bananza review – great ape odyssey on Switch 2

Nintendo’s second big release for the Switch 2 puts Donkey Kong in the spotlight, as he rampages through the most destructive video game ever made.

There has been something slightly off about the Switch 2 ever since the full reveal earlier this year; from the slow realisation that Mario Kart World is the only launch game of note to the fact that the console is being released in June at all. Donkey Kong Bananza coming out a mere month after launch is also odd, as is Nintendo’s reticent to say who is making it and why there’s still no mention of a new Super Mario game.

They did finally admit that while the director is new it’s the same team that made Super Mario Odyssey, something which we’ve now been able to verify via the credits. But if they’ve been making this then who is making the new Mario game and when will it be out? Nintendo is, as ever, remaining silent but it’s clear that the first year of Switch 2 is not going to be quite the barnstormer that the Switch 1 was.

Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza are both great games, but that statement comes with more caveats than you’d expect of a top tier Nintendo title. But while the Switch 2 has still not had its first all-time classic, and Bananza has its issues, this is still a hugely entertaining and refreshingly original game.

Although Bananza will no doubt be described as a 3D platformer it only vaguely fits that description. There’s certainly a lot of Super Mario Odyssey DNA in the game, but Donkey Kong can’t jump or leap very far and you never have to be very precise with your platforming, as he can climb most surfaces, almost like a hirsute Spider-Man.

Rather than jumping, Donkey Kong’s primary skill is that he’s super strong and very good at punching things, to the point where he can level the entire game world, right down to its foundations. The level of destructibility puts pretenders like Battlefield to shame and while there’s no physics involved – so objects don’t fall if you knock their lower levels away – the ability to completely reconstruct a level with your bare hands is hugely impressive, from both a technical and gameplay perspective.

The story, such as it is, involves Donkey Kong starting out as a miner uncovering banandium gems, which he inexplicably eats. They’re also used as a power source by a new group of Kong bad guys, who collapse the whole mine into the ground, leaving you to journey to the centre of the planet, where legend suggests your every wish will be granted.

This means that the game features not one hollow Earth but many, with multiple themed worlds that are usually sub-divided into three layers. Technically, you’re just trying to get to the sinkhole that leads to the next world but one of the game’s great achievements is how seamlessly one side quest or act of exploration leads to another.

Smashing things up, tunnelling underground, and making Swiss cheese out of the landscape never gets old, especially as banandium gems are about as common as power moons in Super Mario Odyssey. However, in Bananza they serve a very practical purpose, in that they’re the currency needed to upgrade and unlock abilities in DK’s skill tree.

There’s not an awful lot of enemy variety but the combat is very enjoyable, with a great sense of heft to DK’s punches. Most bad guys are made of rock, with an animated golden skeleton inside, and so you’re able to wrench pieces off them and hit them with it. You can do that with most parts of the landscape too, ripping off a boulder to throw at someone or, weirdly, using it as a rotating surfboard to traverse dangerous surfaces.

DK’s natural abilities are augmented by a range of special animal transformations that are introduced over the course of the game. These allow him to turn into a gorilla with a super powerful punch, a zebra that can run fast enough to walk on crumbling surfaces, an ostrich that can glide and drop egg bombs, and more. They run on a timer, but it can be kept going by collecting gold (or by wearing special clothing, paid for by collected fossils) and you can even switch animals with the press of a button.

Although each layer has its own mini-open world, which you’re free to explore as you will, the game does a good job of signposting the optimal route through, if you just want to play the story. If a new animal form is introduced in that world, that’ll usually be the focus, but there’s often other gimmicks as well, such as acorns you can throw to make instant bridges or one layer that’s just a big circuit race on the back of Rambi the rhinoceros.

One of the best levels is an amazing tropical island world, that has a rainbow-like substance where if you pick it up, it launches you into the air like a jetpack. But you can also make bridges out of it if you punch the landsharks that it’s coming out of, so they shoot across the landscape.

Many of the surface textures have different properties, including explosive ones, mud, snow, and lava, and they can all be manipulated into serving a purpose. Softer material, like sand, can be used to construct bridges and ramps, which is very clever but sadly never seems to be required. It’s also fiddly to use unless you’re playing in co-op with someone else as Pauline.

Pauline is the heroine from the original arcade game (or maybe not, the game’s position in the Donkey Kong timeline is very unclear) and her singing ability is used to power the animal transformations and open sealed challenge mini-games – which are generally either combat encounters, puzzle or platform-orientated courses, or the occasional 2D platform section.

The co-op mode is similar to Super Mario Galaxy and Odyssey, in that it’s basically something simple for a younger or more inexperienced companion to do while you play, in this case using Pauline to shout out words that become physical objects of whatever material you select.

Bananza is a massive game and, in keeping with Nintendo’s best traditions, is filled with unexpected secrets and uses of your abilities. In gameplay terms our only real complaint is that it’s very easy. This actively spoils the boss battles, all of which are cleverly designed and all of which we beat on our first try, including the excellent finale. It’s not until after beating the game, when additional challenges unlock, that anything becomes remotely difficult.

The majority of the game’s problems are technical but not necessarily in the areas you might expect. Although it’s obvious the game was originally designed for the Switch 1, the graphics can be very impressive. Although they’re quite variable and Bananza still uses the horrible dithering effect from so many first party Switch 1 games, that is supposed to indicate transparency but is just distractingly low-tech and ugly.

As for Donkey Kong’s redesign, we consider his much more expressive facial animation to be a massive improvement over the old Rare design and won’t hear a word said against it. He doesn’t talk but while Pauline is fully voice-acted, and just the right side of obnoxiously twee, everyone else only communicates in gibberish voices, which as usual for Nintendo feels more like penny-pinching than an artistic decision.

We’re sure some people (you know the type) will be falling over themselves to point out the 60fps frame rate is not consistent, but this is only obvious in non-gameplay moments, such as the camera zooming out during a cut scene, and very rare during gameplay. Speaking of the map, it’s a very nice 3D one, that’s almost ruined by the game insisting on showing other layers above it, which is completely unnecessary and constantly gets in the way.

The main bugbear though is the strange way in which the camera has been calibrated. Since you can dig straight down into the ground at almost any moment, there were always going to be issues, but in theory that’s a compromise worth making, given the level of freedom you get in return. But for some reason the game frequently limits what you can see by drastically shortening the view distance, so it looks like you’re standing in a bubble with nothing but plain brown textures outside of it.

This works fine when you’re underground, but the brown background will frequently kick in when you’re in any enclosed space, even when it’s relatively large. For example, looking out of a fairly large cave (which the game made, not us) we found the view of the ocean and other islands beyond replaced with a flat brown backdrop for absolutely no reason. Even worse, it then flicked off, as if a curtain was suddenly raised, when we took a step forward.

This can happen suddenly and without warning anywhere in the game, to the point where we initially thought it was a glitch and had to ask Nintendo about it. It’s not a bug though, it’s just the game being overly cautious about the camera, whenever it clips through a wall or the floor. So much so that we’ve even seen it happen when out in the open, looking up at the sky but standing too close to a wall for the game’s liking.

The end result is what can only be described as the jankiest Nintendo game ever made. In theory it’s remarkably bug free, but the way the camera works doesn’t make it feel that way. Much like Mario Kart World’s insubstantial use of its open world, these are mistakes that you would not normally expect from Nintendo, even if they only negatively affect the overall experience by a very small degree.

You could regard both Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza as killer apps for the Switch 2, but neither are a cast iron classic on the scale of the Switch 1’s best. But that is the curse of Nintendo, where anything less than the best thing ever is seen as an unforgiveable failure. As it is, Bananza will just have to satisfy itself by being one of the most original, enjoyable, and technically adventurous platform games of the modern era.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2
Price: £66.99 (physical) or £58.99 (digital)
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EPD
Release Date: 17th July 2025
Age Rating: 7

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