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Donkey Kong Bananza (Nintendo Switch 2, £58.99)
Verdict: Kong is king
Donkey Kong has always played — ahem — second banana to Mario at Nintendo. In the very beginning, of course, this overgrown ape merely chucked barrels at our heroic Italian plumber.
Then, when he started getting his own games, they were often platformers in the vein of the Mario series. Just not quite as good.
Until now.
Donkey Kong Bananza is the second major Nintendo release for the Switch 2, after Mario Kart World — and the second all-timer masterpiece.
It’s a crazy and colourful 3D platformer in, I guess you could say, the vein of the great Super Mario Odyssey (2017)…except, this time, Donkey Kong has his own groundbreaking new powers. He’s his own monkey now.
Gorilla power: Gone are the days when Donkey Kong simply chucked barrels at Mario. Now he’s got groundbreaking new powers. And he knows how to use them.
And ‘groundbreaking’ really is the word. This Kong doesn’t just look big and strong; he IS big and strong. He can punch chunks out of the scenery, bash tunnels between different areas, and hurl rocks at distant enemies.
It makes every level an exercise in creative destruction. Nintendo’s designers are encouraging you to smash up their beautiful inventions. And ‘beautiful’ is the word, too.
Bananza has you — that is, Donkey Kong, with his sing-song-y, shoulder-bound companion Pauline — plunging down through layers of a planet to reach its core. There’s an icy layer, a dusty one, tropical, more. All look stunning on the powered-up Switch 2.
Tropical Kong: Pauline and her pal dive into another adventure in Bananza
The great ape: Donkey Kong (with a little help from Pauline) gets ready to do some damage
At times, there’s so much going on — with the gameplay, with the visuals — that it’s almost overwhelming.
Even the two-player mode — where one player takes control of Donkey Kong, the other Pauline — feels like an entirely different game. More! More! More!
But rather than see that as a problem, I came to see it as Nintendo’s collective imagination in overdrive.
They’ve served up an unbelievably sweet and delicious banana split here. If it gets too much? Pause. Settle yourself. Then dive back in for more.
Long live the Kong.
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