Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We’ll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you’re playing this weekend, and what theories it’s got you kicking around.
Imagine, if you will, a tunnel. It’s full of both wonders and dangers: Hostile creatures; shining, golden gems; mysteries untold. You travel through it, carving your own path; sometimes with guidance, and sometimes blindly flailing, as your vision is obscured by the mountains of detritus in your way. (Do you, on some level, wish the camera was a little better at navigating these interior spaces? Perhaps.) In some ways, the freedom of crashing your way through this cavern’s walls is invigorating; in others, a tad overwhelming. But as you strive forward—punching, always punching, and seeking a barely glimpsed exit—you know that someday you will surface again, treasures in hand. You will escape this twisting, winding, gem-encrusted labyrinth. You will escape Donkey Kong’s treasure-filled colon.
Because, seriously: Should the star of the brand new (and instantly vital) Nintendo Switch 2 title Donkey Kong Bananza be eating so many golden, gem-covered bananas? The game’s tool-tips assure us that Donkey Kong—revitalized here, and doing great for a guy who must have most of Fort Knox clogging up his large intestine—will eat any banana, as long as it’s not mushy and rotten. But the Golden Bananas that serve as The Minimum Gaming Units in Nintendo’s excellent new smash-em-up really, genuinely do not look like food. Which doesn’t stop the tie-clad ape from chowing down on every single one of them the second you discover it.
If this highly metallic diet is hurting the big lug in the short term, it’s not in any way you’d notice: Bananza—which I’d previously previewed at Nintendo’s Switch 2 preview event a few months back, and which arrives now to save the system from just being my house’s most convenient Balatro machine—has some of the smoothest movement I’ve seen in a platformer in a minute, as DK rolls, surfs, and, above all else, smashes his way across gorgeous underground landscapes. Nintendo has taken the basic framework of 3D platforming games that it pioneered with Super Mario 64 and gone full sandbox here, presenting massive expanses of destructible terrain for its primate protagonist to punch his way through. It’s a level of freedom that feels like it runs through the strides in open-world design the company explored to system-selling effect with The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and its follow-up, Tears Of The Kingdom: We’ve gone beyond “If you see it, you can climb it,” and reached “If you see it, you can probably smash it to pieces, pull several giant heaps of gold out, and then ride the debris back down.”
All of this freedom has been married to a design that’ll be very familiar to anyone who’s spent much time with the 3D Mario games, as Bananza uses the promise of ever-more esophagus-scraping metal fruit to get players to engage with individual chunks of challenge. (Including a long series of discrete combat rooms and challenge courses that focus the gameplay down even more.) The Golden Bananas aren’t just arbitrary progress markers, either: Every five you shove down Large Monkey’s shockingly accommodating gullet produces a skill point that can further expand his repertoire of punches, slams, and smashes. Artificial power curves like this can feel cheap or manipulative in games selling themselves on this amount of player freedom. But your set of moves in Bananza already starts out feeling so powerful that the game never falls into the trap of making players feel like they’ve been hobbled from the beginning so they’ll be grateful when they finally get to run; each upgrade ends up feeling exultant, instead. I may have some serious worries about what DK’s next colonoscopy is going to look like—can you be sued if the doctor scratches their camera on a giant diamond lodged in your duodenum?—but actually grabbing each of those Golden Bananas after a bite-sized bit of exploration, combat, or platforming feels incredible. (And that’s before we get into the game’s excellent sound design, including an extremely addictive “Oh, Ba-nana!” voice clip that plays every time you secure another piece of highly shiny faux-fruit.)
All of this gameplay energy is underscored and supported by the work that’s gone into showcasing Donkey Kong’s character. Not, blessedly, through dialogue, which is restrained to his sidekick and various passersby. But Nintendo’s artists have done an incredible job of making Mario’s sometimes-villain, sometimes-tennis-partner look lovable and chaotic for this go-round—and then built an entire video game meant to reinforce that perception. DK, in this conception, is really just a big kid, and Bananza has clearly been built, from its extremely destructible ground up, to be his playground. At present, I’m only a few hours into the game—long enough to unlock an even more chaotic super mode and defeat the first major boss—but I’m genuinely excited to get back to it as soon as I can. Here’s hoping Donkey Kong’s poor, metal-rich stomach can hold out for all the fun.