Review: 'Donkey Kong Bananza' takes a genre to new heights by digging deep

The Star

4 days ago

The best Nintendo games have extra magic to them. They capture a primal source of fun. With The Legend of Zelda , it's about the thrill of exploration and discovery. In the Super Mario Bros. titles, there's delight in overcoming the challenges of the whimsical platforming.
When playing Donkey Kong Bananza , the core joy comes from digging in the dirt. It's simple, and as a father of a 3-year-old, it's a familiar sandbox pastime. As Nintendo's star primate, players find themselves working on Ingot Isle, which is where officials have discovered golden bananas. The rush for the valuable resource draws a whole industry, and DK becomes part of it, working the mines.
While mining, Donkey Kong comes across a talking rock that turns out to be a 13-year-old girl named Pauline, who is mixed up with the villainous Void King.
That's where Nintendo introduces players to the essential concepts. Donkey Kong can punch his way through dirt and rocks, burrowing into the ground in his search for the precious fruit. The destructible environments add a new layer of problem-solving and exploration.
Reshaping the environment
Players have to retrain their brains and realise that the world is more malleable and the unspoken video game rules are bendable. Players can dig until they hit bedrock or other impassable obstacles. If they see a wall separating them from a goal, they don't have to go around a corridor to reach it. They can smash through it. If enemies are charging at DK, players can take cover by digging into the floor.
The protagonist has other unlockable abilities that players acquire by gathering golden bananas and earning skill points. He can rip a rock from the ground, spin it and ride it like a surfboard. He can also use those chunks as weapons to clobber hardened enemies up close or toss them from a distance. Because he's an ape, Donkey Kong climbs almost anywhere, easily scaling hills and walls before bashing through them.
As Nintendo's star primate, players find themselves working on Ingot Isle, which is where officials have discovered golden bananas.
While mining, he comes across a talking rock that turns out to be a 13-year-old girl named Pauline, who is mixed up with the villainous Void King. She's a singer and her voice carries a special ability that triggers five Donkey Kong animal transformations, each with their own skills. They include a super-sized ape with enormous punching power, a zebra with super speed, an ostrich that can fly, an elephant that sucks up obstacles and a snake with a powerful jump.
Players obtain these talents as they delve deeper beneath the surface. DK and Pauline are chasing Void Kong and his corporate minions, who have caught on to the value of the golden bananas and are racing to the Planet Core, which is said to hold the power to grant wishes.
Brilliant level design
The pursuit takes players to sublayers that have their own biomes and have become corrupted as Void Kong callously drills to the centre of the planet. The environments feature hazards such as lava and snow, which interact with each other. Other areas have poisoned water and bouncy blocks, which introduce their own problems. The biomes also introduce notable enemy types and new materials that factor into level design, allowing DK and Pauline to reach new heights.
Players can dig until they hit bedrock or other impassable obstacles. If they see a wall separating them from a goal, they don't have to go around a corridor to reach it.
Donkey Kong Bananza is remarkable because of how the developers, who also worked on Super Mario Odyssey , managed to build a cohesive world that naturally builds momentum. The worlds that DK explores are larger than any that the Nintendo team has done in the past, with each map packed with opportunities to grab the coveted golden bananas and power-up the main ape's abilities.
They're multilayered and take advantage of Donkey Kong's ability to dig, and it reward those who explore the depths by paying attention to clues. In addition, materials matter and players notice that softer substances such as dirt, leaves and snow mesh together. Crafty and patient gamers can create bridges and alter terrain for seemingly impossible problems.
Holding up that clever design is an equally smart structure for Donkey Kong Bananza's campaign. The protagonists travel to new layers by jumping into the hole and doing a sky-diving minigame. This transitional level not only lets players collect more gold, which is used for functional gear for Kong and Pauline, but it also hides the loading times for the larger levels while making the journey feel natural.
DK and Pauline are chasing Void Kong and his corporate minions, who have caught on to the value of the golden bananas and are racing to the Planet Core, which is said to hold the power to grant wishes.
Although players will be mostly headed down, it doesn't mean that the trip is a one-way ticket. Players can fast travel to different sublayers through eels that ferry DK and Pauline through the strata. It lets completionists go back to grab the bananas they may have missed. It also lets players come back to harder challenges with the benefit of more powers or perks. In general, though, the campaign's momentum takes players down, and the further they go, the more complex and exceptional the level design becomes.
Despite Donkey Kong Bananza having so many forward-thinking ideas that evolve the 3-D platforming genre, it does have one notable flaw. The camera system has trouble following the ape when he tunnels deep into the ground. It becomes disorienting because players can't see where DK is going and players can end up feeling trapped underground, trying to navigate the makeshift holes they dug up.
That's an irksome issue to a game that otherwise sets a new bar for 3-D platformers and has that element that makes Nintendo titles so special. – The Mercury News/Tribune News Service