Donkey Kong

The last time Donkey Kong was the star of a 3D game was 1999. The last time Donkey Kong was the star of any game was 2014. Imagine my surprise when the first blockbuster title for the Nintendo Switch 2 is revealed to be Donkey Kong Bananza. Nintendo seems to have a monopoly on great 3D platformers, so I was thrilled to see what they would do with the Donkey Kong franchise. And it does have a unique twist: completely destructible environments.

The premise is simple; an evil corporation is pilfering the world’s supply of Banandium Gems to power their machinery. Their goal is to dig to the center of the planet and find the Banandium Root, a mythical object said to grant any wish. Donkey Kong teams up with a young Pauline, uncovering their hidden powers and collecting Banadium Gems to reach the planet’s core and find the Banandium Root for themselves.

Donkey Kong Bananza is not a typical 3D platformer; it leans more heavily into being a massive collectathon. There are 777 different Banandium Gems to collect spread across over a dozen humongous stages. Most of these areas have multiple sublayers, each one being the size of a level from Super Mario Odyssey. It cannot be overstated how ginormous this game is, especially if you want to collect everything possible.

The main draw of the game is its core gameplay: exploring, smashing, and collecting. The developers absolutely nailed how moment to moment gameplay flows. The levels are packed with Banandium Gems as well as other collectibles like fossils. As you explore, you can smack the ground to collect bits of gold. This ground-smacking doubles as a sonar, revealing nearby gems and fossils. This leads you to smash through the terrain around you to uncover your prize, being showered with gold. Then you smack the ground to collect the gold, which may reveal even more nearby collectibles. It’s an immensely addicting loop that tickles the brain. The satisfaction of smashing through terrain, hearing that sweet sound of gold, and collecting a Gem is so hard to step away from.

This loop is further enhanced by just how good it feels to play as Donkey Kong. Obviously, having a completely destructible environment is a blast to smash through. Donkey Kong is a huge, lumbering ape and Donkey Kong Bananza captures that feeling. At first, it feels a bit clumsy to control as Donkey Kong isn’t very fast, agile, and cannot jump particularly far or high. But as you master the game, you learn how to make use of your full moveset. You can rip out a piece of terrain, then surf off it or jump on it in midair. You’d be surprised how much distance you can cover combining these tricks with standard somersaults and jumps.

Donkey Kong Bananza is obviously inspired by Super Mario Odyssey in structure. The huge number of collectibles being one key factor, but another being the smaller challenges hidden within each level. There are tons of ruins to find which often act as straightforward platforming or combat challenges. I really enjoyed the more focused challenges. They also often highlight the game’s Bananza abilities, which are short but powerful transformations. They allow you to briefly transform into a different animal, gaining additional abilities such as gliding, sprinting, or high-jumping.

The developers were very clever with many of the challenges. While many are straightforward, some required creative thinking to reach the Banandium Gems. Making use of the destructible terrain to make funnels, walls, or other useful structures is not something that I expected from the game, but I certainly appreciated it. I was worried when the game was initially revealed that the destructible environments would get stale, but that fear was dispelled. The mix of platforming, exploration, combat arenas, and puzzle-like challenges provided a healthy amount of variety to this massive game.

Importantly, Donkey Kong Bananza has a very key difference from Super Mario Odyssey: the skill tree. In the Super Mario Odyssey, completing tasks and collecting Moons garners nothing but personal satisfaction. In Donkey Kong Bananza, each gem contributes to earning skill points which can be spent on new abilities. Some of these abilities are straightforward such as extra health, but others are major additions such as the ability to jump off of held chunks. The skill tree is extensive, meaning each gem is important if you want to fully unlock DK’s abilities. This additional extrinsic reward makes hunting down every gem even more enticing.

The Donkey Kong series has always been top dog when it comes to presentation. Both the visuals and music of the Donkey Kong Country games are absolutely iconic. The music of Donkey Kong Bananza is a bit more understated, but it does have the occasional energetic and catchy tune. I loved how all the different areas looked in the game. Everything is bright, colorful, vibrant, and cheerful. Each area has a little hub of characters with shops and other things to discover. It gives each area a homey feel, cementing the game’s coziness. My only gripe with the game’s presentation is that the camera can often feel clunky, especially when digging through the earth. It can get be a bit disorienting to try to smash your way through certain areas, trying to figure out which direction you are even moving in.

Unfortunately, I do think that Donkey Kong Bananza has a couple key issues, and these issues compound on each other. The first major problem is that the game is just too easy, especially at the start of the game. Donkey Kong has always been known for being the difficult Nintendo platformer franchise, but this iteration doesn’t show its teeth until the post-game. Many of the early areas in the game have barely any hazards, making it easy to just smash your way through entire areas. The game only introduces more dangerous obstacles about a third of the way through the game, which could be over a dozen hours of playtime. Even then, most of the challenges are pretty easy.

I’ve already mentioned how huge this game is. In some ways, having such a massive world to explore is great. In other ways, it’s a detriment. Some of the main layers are comprised of 3 or 4 sublayers, each being a massive level in their own right. I love collectathons, but at some point, spending hours upon hours in the same area gets dull. This is exacerbated by the game’s lack of difficulty; without any friction I often felt like I was just going through the motions collecting gems and fossils with little resistance. The game would have benefited from slimming down some of the larger areas and focusing on more difficult challenges.

Even though I wish the game was a bit more challenging, there’s no denying how much pure fun it is. Running around imaginative environments, smashing through anything in you way as you constantly collect goodies is reminiscent of the glory days of 3D collectathons. The developers nailed the lumbering movement of a hulking ape, but managed to sneak in some tricks to make movement an enjoyable learning curve. It is for these reasons that I give Donkey Kong Bananza a 9/10. It’s a triumphant return for not only Donkey Kong, but collectathons as a genre.

Great old school platformers can be tough to come by in modern gaming. While there are some retro gems out there like Celeste, Shovel Knight, Sonic Mania, and A Hat in Time, it feels like major studios have mostly abandoned the concept of a pure platformer. Sure, plenty of games have platforming aspects to them, but it is rarely the focal feature. When a game like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze comes along, anybody who is a fan of platformers should stop what they are doing and play it as soon as possible. It’s a fantastic game consisting of imaginative and fun visuals, superb difficulty, and tightly-crafted level design.

As far as Nintendo platformers go, Donkey Kong Country games have always been the most challenging of the bunch. That being said, I was impressed with how approachable Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was. The first zone of the game was fairly straightforward, and the difficulty of the game slowly ramped up as time progressed. There are tons of powerups that you can buy if you need an extra boost, and if you are really struggling there is a Funky Kong mode available on the Switch port that serves as an easy mode. But what’s more impressive is the numerous hidden aspects that can crank up the difficulty for experienced players looking for a challenge.

In each stage there are hidden puzzle pieces for completitionists to hunt down. While I ignored those for the most part, the more visible “K-O-N-G” letters were my main focus. The letters are easy to spot, but often require a more difficult or risky jump to collect. And if you collect all four letters in every level in a zone you unlock a secret stage. The secret stages are where the meat of the game’s challenge was for me. I found most of the regular levels to be tricky enough that I needed to play well, but not perfectly. The secret stages often required such precision and timing that I felt like I really needed to master them. And if you manage to conquer all the secret stages, you unlock a challenging hidden zone with three more devastatingly difficult levels. And if you succeed in that you unlock Hard Mode.

Of course, you can entirely ignore the puzzle pieces, letters, hidden exits, secret levels, the bonus zone, and Hard Mode entirely. But the fact that all of these things were included as extra little ways to incrementally tune up the difficulty was wonderful. Letting the player pick what is important to them is a great way to introduce some optional difficulty instead of just giving the player five different difficulty modes at the start. But the most impressive thing about Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was how the level design facilitated multiple styles of play.

A majority of the standard levels in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze are designed such that you can mostly take your time and think about what you are doing before you make the leap. While there some frantic and exciting sequences requiring you to move quickly, it’s a game that can be taken at whatever pace the player desires. But something interesting happens when you try to go as fast as possible through a level. You realize that everything lines up perfectly. As you bop from one enemy’s head to another to maintain your momentum, the platforms and enemies seem carefully placed to facilitate this level of speed. That’s because they are. While every level seems like a standard platforming stage at first glance, there is a deeper complexity behind the speed running curtain. I was extremely impressed by the level of thought and effort put into every single level in the game.

On top of the effort put into the gameplay and flow of each level, there was also a tremendous amount of care put into the visual experience. There are so many fun settings that make it feel like you are running and jumping through an animated movie. Not only is the background a spectacle, but the visuals tie into the gameplay. You can ride a rhino and dodge fireballs as a volcano erupts in the distance, or swing between decorative floats during a Lion King like celebration in the savannah, or jump between platforms as an avalanche sweeps away the platforms below you. There are tons of memorable stages that will go down as some of my favorite platforming levels of all time.

My only complaints with Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze are fairly minor. It could be frustrating to get to the end of a level, notice that there is a secret exit, and realize that you have the wrong power-up to access it. This meant that you would have to restart the entire stage with a certain Kong partner and make it all the way to the end without dying or taking more than 2 hits of damage. I say this is minor because these are completely optional stages, but still, I rarely enjoy having to redo a level through no fault of my own.

Furthermore, I was not a huge fan of the boss fights at the end of each world. They were often pretty long with no checkpoints. They usually had three phases, getting progressively more challenging every three times that you hit them. But I found that the first and second phases were simple, and the final phase was fairly difficult. It could take a few attempts to learn the final phase patterns, and having to go through the entire boring lead-up every time could be a bit boring.

Overall, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is an excellent platformer in a world deprived of the genre. It combines imagination, visual spectacle, and exciting gameplay to create a spectacular experience. The level of care put into the level design is astounding. Whether you are someone new to the genre or an experienced platformer player, you can definitely find what you are looking for in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.

stephensopinions

Donkey Kong Bananza (2025)

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (2014)