Latest news with #3Dplatformer
Digital Trends
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
How long is Donkey Kong Bananza?
We only had to wait one month after the Nintendo Switch 2 launch to get our first shiny new 3D platformer. However, it isn't a new Mario game like you might've assumed, but DK taking center stage. Donkey Kong Bananza is all about smashing and digging your way with Pauline to the planet's core while facing off against a cast of villains. Being able to terraform the levels completely changes the pace of a normal platformer, but does it mean you can bypass everything and finish the game in a few hours? What if you are the type of person who wants to get every collectible there is? In either case, you might be surprised at how Donkey Kong Bananza actually is. After playing the game from start to finish, here's how long you can expect to spend playing Donkey Kong Bananza. How long to beat Donkey Kong Bananza? There are several ways you might choose to approach Donkey Kong Bananza that will determine how long it takes you to finish. If you wanted to basically speedrun the game and go straight from one main objective to the next, which I wouldn't recommend, you still have a long road ahead of you. I'd say playing the game, just doing the critical path, would still take around 15 hours. Recommended Videos If you played in a more natural way, doing a good amount of side challenges, letting yourself get distracted, and going off the main road to collect extra collectibles as you see them without becoming obsessed with getting everything, Donkey Kong Bananza will take you 20-30 hours. That range is to account for exactly how much you end up doing in each level. There are a lot more levels than you might expect, and hundreds of things to collect, so it really is up to you how long you want the game to last. Finally, completionists out there are in for a very, very long game. Donkey Kong Bananza has almost too many things to collect across its many levels. There can be over 30 bananas in a single level, plus double that in fossils. Part of that will require you to not only find all the hidden challenge stages, but also the secret bananas within each one. Some bananas also cost banana chips, which are found by digging. Speaking of digging, some are locked behind destroying a certain amount of different terrain types on each level, so you may have to grind a bit for those. Fossils will unlock and upgrade your outfits for DK and Pauline, and bananas can be spent upgrading your stats and abilities, so nothing you collect is worthless. I can only estimate here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took over 50 hours to 100% Donkey Kong Bananza.
The Independent
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Launching today, Donkey Kong Bananza might be this generation's Super Mario Odyssey
We didn't get a shiny new Mario platformer with the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, but having spent a few hours punching my way through rocks in Donkey Kong Bananza, I'm now convinced that Nintendo has given us something much better. The plumber is out. The big monkey is in. Bananza is the Switch 2's killer game. Only the second 3D platformer in the series – it's somehow been 26 years since Donkey Kong 64 – Donkey Kong Bananza sees the newly cartoonified ape wreaking merry havoc across a series of mostly destructible levels in search of golden bananas. It's part Minecraft, given your ability to burrow through the terrain at will, and part Super Mario Odyssey, with its puzzle-based objectives, special challenges, beautiful environments and hidden collectables. The game is an impressive technical spectacle. Almost every part of Donkey Kong Bananza can be smashed through, allowing you to carve your own path towards an objective or tunnel your way through mountains without restriction. The holes you leave in your wake remain etched in the environment until you leave the level, too. Performance stays smooth, and the Switch 2 doesn't sneakily undo your hard-earned destruction to free up memory as you go. Buy now at Nintendo Levels are densely packed with things to see and do. As you dig and explore, you'll unearth secret caves and hidden treasure, with maps that lead to collectable fossils of varying degrees of rarity. Collecting stuff in Donkey Kong Bananza feels like endlessly scratching a hard-to-reach itch. The game's main currency, gold banandium ore, pings in a deeply satisfying way as you pummel it out of the earth and hoover it up, delivering a constant trickle of sweet, sweet dopamine. Not only is it compulsive to collect, but all that gold can be used to buy new outfits for Donkey Kong and his shoulder-mounted assistant, Pauline. Revealed during the most recent Nintendo Direct, Pauline can sing to trigger voice-activated switches and uncover hidden items around the map. In the basic co-op mode, a second player can use the Joy-Con as a mouse to launch rock chunks as Pauline, a bit like the Cappy controls in Super Mario Odyssey. Music, and specifically vinyl records, is a big theme alongside all the excavation. Records appear as collectable items, often buried deep in the dirt. They can be added to Donkey Kong's ever-expanding music library at home, while at least one challenge has you lugging a car-sized vinyl across the level to pop on a giant deck. Challenge rooms are liberally dotted about the levels I've seen, whisking you away to classic side-scrolling sections that will be familiar to Donkey Kong fans, with barrel launchers and hidden rooms behind destructible walls. Other challenges have you clobbering enemies or destroying structures within a time limit. Then there's Donkey Kong's ability to temporarily transform into one of several different super-powerful animal forms once you've amassed enough bananas. I saw two: the first a mega-sized monkey capable of punching through steel, the other a distractingly buff ostrich that can glide and drop exploding eggs on enemies. It's chaotic, amping up the destruction and leaving parts of the level in tatters. Though you're free to obliterate large swathes of each level, crucially, they retain enough shape and character that Donkey Kong Bananza doesn't descend into simple, aimless destruction. The world is made up of materials of varying toughness – like sand, metal and concrete – that might require you to use explosive chunks of rock to break through. Later areas add impenetrable obstacles like poison lakes and thorny vines that offer a more guided and challenging platforming experience, while still giving you ways to improvise with the destructible environment. Donkey Kong Bananza seems to successfully walk this line between open-ended destruction and laser-focused world design, with the ability to quickly move between previous levels hinting that replayability will be a key part of the experience too. Even during our brief playtest, each level's map ended up littered with the icons of rare pick-ups buried deep in the dirt – and regardless of whether they're meaningful to collect, the simple joy of burrowing your way through the earth to find them is worth the time. The Switch 2 might not have had a Mario platformer at launch, but Donkey Kong Bananza is already shaping up to be this generation's Super Mario Odyssey. Stupidly silly fun, technically impressive and gorgeous to look at, it's destined to be the console's first must-have game. Donkey Kong Bananza launched today, 17 July, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch 2.
The Verge
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
For Nintendo, freedom means more than an open world
In past Donkey Kong games, like Tropical Freeze or DKC Returns, I would often find myself stuck against a particularly challenging platforming sequence. And there wasn't much I could do. If I wanted to progress, I had to nail those jumps or avoid those spikes to move on. Donkey Kong Bananza, on the other hand, offers a different tactic: smash some shit up. While the game is a 3D platformer, it also introduces destructive gameplay that lets you find new solutions or pathways just by smashing up the world around you. It perfectly suits the character, and also builds on a design trend Nintendo has steadily been pushing on for years now. In some way or another, all of its biggest franchises are opening up and becoming more exciting as a result. The most obvious example of this is Breath of the Wild. Before it, the Legend of Zelda adventures were comparatively linear, pushing players along a preordained path. But Breath of the Wild featured a true open world, letting you explore in any direction you chose. Its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, took things a step further with underground areas and gameplay built around combining objects to build something new, which players took in all sorts of creative directions. Even Echoes of Wisdom, which was a return to the top-down structure of classic Zelda games, introduced a mechanic that turned everyday objects into useful tools, creating all kinds of opportunities for creative problem solving. A similar ethos was infused into many of the Switch's biggest games. But instead of simply adding an open world, Nintendo opened these games up in a way that makes sense for each franchise. Animal Crossing: New Horizons let players both craft their own items and customize the island landscape around them, making their spaces feel more personal; Super Mario Odyssey may not have been open-world, but it introduced levels that were both bigger and denser than its predecessors, offering more opportunities for exploration and discovery. Now we're seeing the same thing play out with the first few tentpole releases for the Switch 2, starting with Mario Kart World at launch. Instead of simply adding more tracks than Mario Kart 8, which was already massive, World introduced a new structure, putting all of the courses on a single landmass that can also be explored outside of racing. The idea was to create a sense of a cohesive whole, so that there was a progression as you made your way from one end of the continent to the other. There's even a 'free roam' mode where you can simply explore, either solo or online with friends, driving around in search of fun details or extra challenges to complete. These ideas expand on the idea of Mario Kart without getting in the way of what the series is about. Donkey Kong Bananza does something similar. Like Super Mario Odyssey before it, Bananza is not an open-world game (the similarities shouldn't be too surprising given the games were developed by largely the same teams). But it does feature large, dense areas to explore, which are big enough that there's a musical tool that points you in the right direction if you get lost. More importantly, the game changes things up by giving you a new way to interact with the world around you. For me at least, being able to smash things required a new way of thinking, as I often had to remember to explore three-dimensionally, using DK's brute force to open up hidden pathways above and below me. Sometimes this helped me find a way forward, or avoid challenging obstacles. Other times I discovered some kind of secret. Plus, in those moments when I do get frustrated or stuck, it's a great way to let off steam. Sometimes you just gotta break stuff. Both World and Bananza started life on the original Switch, but were able to fully explore their ideas — in one case an open world, in the other a destructible one — by utilizing the added horsepower of the Switch 2. As producer Kenta Motokura said in a recent interview, the shift in platform 'increased the amount of things players could destroy, which amplified the exhilaration of being able to demolish anything and everything.' Which means that we're likely to see this trend continue as Nintendo brings more of its franchises to the new console, including announced titles like Splatoon Raiders and Kirby Air Riders. They may be familiar favorites, but the exciting part is seeing which way Nintendo decides to expand them.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Donkey Kong Bananza review - delirious destruction derby takes hammer to platforming conventions
A lot rests on Donkey Kong Bananza. As Nintendo's first major single-player Switch 2 game, it will set the quality bar for the console in the way Breath of the Wild did when the original Switch was released. But as the latest game from the team responsible for the exceptional 3D Mario series, it is already begrudged by some Nintendo fans as a distraction: what could possibly be so exciting about a tie-wearing gorilla to justify making Bananza ahead of another Super Mario Odyssey? Donkey Kong demolishes those concerns. He demolishes a lot in Bananza. It may resemble a Mario 64-style 3D platformer on the surface, with its themed worlds festooned with giant bananas to sniff out and collect, but DK's fists show total disregard for the playground as built. All terrain is destructible. Mash the buttons and his powerful arms thump tunnels through hills, pound pristine lawns into muddy craters and tear up wodges of stone to swing as sledgehammers for even speedier landscaping. He is less a platforming mascot than a potassium-powered level editor. On a primal level, that's almost enough to hold your attention. There's an easy, repeatable joy in throwing a punch this well programmed: the jolt of pause as knuckles collide with rock, the snarl of Joy-Con 2 rumble, the way surfaces splinter before another hit brings down the entire wall. I can see Bananza having a second life as an executive stress reliever; a virtual rage room where you heave exploding boulders at cliffs to reduce them to pockmarked swiss cheese. You can even invite a co-op pal along to shoot projectiles from DK's back and accelerate the chaos (or act as a devilish tag along to a player trying to avoid any carnage). There is motivation behind the mayhem. The existing Kong clan (getting some choice cameos that channel the comic spirit of Rare's Donkey Kong Country games) is expanded by villainous mining Kongs set on snagging a treasure at the planet's core. En route they kidnap Pauline, the young singer whom Donkey Kong originally snatched in his arcade debut. But Kong and Pauline are on better terms here: she coaxes animal superpowers by belting out powerful earworms straight into his skull. If my plot recollection seems hazy, it's only because it's been supplanted in my mind by her Latin pop ditty about the joy of being a zebra. This is a strange world but an even stranger platforming proposition. How do you design obstacles for a hero who can tunnel under laser fences or jackhammer doorways through barriers that would have stopped Mario in his tracks? Truthfully, it takes a beat to find the answers. There is an initial mushiness to worlds that can be excavated from any angle. Sometimes you blindly mine into rewards intended for challenges you have not yet uncovered or parsed, and the haphazardness of these unearned prizes has you wondering, for a second, if the game's freeform audacity rings as hollow as the caves you're punching into existence. But no. Later, rolling plains and jaunty lagoons make way for more dangerous landscapes, where solid ground protects you from poison swamps, icy lakes and lava. Down here, land is life, so your treatment of it becomes more deliberate, your strikes more surgical. When metal caterpillars gobble a wooden life raft or a pogoing menace punches through a platform you tenderised into a thin sliver, you suddenly appreciate the method in Nintendo's morphable madness. Boss fights make exceptional use of fragile terrain, keeping DK from walloping chunks from their giant bodies by rendering arenas more and more uneven as fights unfold. The only fumble in these later stages is the overpowered nature of the Bananzas themselves. These animal transformations imbue DK with speed, flight, strength and more, and when contained in the challenges or levels built for them they sing. You are reminded of Mario's Odyssey possessions and how perfectly realised each of those physical sensations was. But taken out of that context – when returning to earlier stages to mop up collectibles, for example – they become instant win buttons, dulling the ingenuity of Nintendo's platforming designs. I'm not sure Bananza has the same legs as Mario Odyssey. Where that game blossomed in a rich, post-credit endgame, DK lives more in the moment: moving ever forward, chewing through new ideas and never stopping to pulverise the roses. Come the game's epic climax, he has smashed through concrete, rubber, watermelon, ostrich eggs, entire Donkey Kong Country homages, glitter balls – even the NPCs he's trying to protect. If the weight of Switch 2 does lie on his shoulders, that's just one more tool to bash a hole in the universe. His appetite for destruction is infectious.
Digital Trends
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
3 PlayStation Plus games to play this weekend (July 11-13)
After last week hit us with an amazing lineup of PlayStation Plus Essential games, we have a small but agonizing wait to see what the next batch of Extra and Premium games will be for July. However, I know you haven't played every game in the catalogue yet, and I was able to hand-pick three games that seem like surefire hits for this weekend. One is an easy, major release that was just added this week as a surprise bonus game, but the other two are hidden gems that you might be craving right about now. Let's dive into the games so you have a good excuse to stay inside this weekend. A Hat in Time Unless you also have a Nintendo Switch 2, you may be craving a fresh 3D platformer since Donkey Kong Bananza is about to drop. While I wish I could recommend Astro Bot, it sadly hasn't come to PlayStation Plus yet. Instead, let's rewind a bit and look at the outstanding 3D platformer A Hat in Time. This indie passion project nails everything a platformer needs to — the controls are tight, the skill ceiling in movement options is high, and the levels are packed with personality and colorful characters. If you like collect-a-thons, this game gives Mario's best games a run for their money. Whether you're a fan of the classic N64-era of platformers or not, this game proves that the tried and true formula still works in 2025. Recommended Videos A Hat in Time is available now on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. Cyberpunk 2077 At the last moment, PlayStation dropped a huge new game into the service. As of right now, you can grab Cyberpunk 2077 as a special bonus game to continue the 15-year anniversary of PS Plus celebrations. And don't worry, this is the latest PS5 version that has squashed (almost) all the bugs and issues the game suffered at launch. The AI has been reworked, skills rebalanced and tweaked, and tons of quality of life features added to make this an immaculate open-world RPG. This world is dripping with personality and filled with incredibly well realized and acted characters, especially Keanu Reeves' Johnny Silverhand. You can also get the Phantom Liberty DLC for a discount this month, which might be even better than the main game. Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC. F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch Finally, I wanted to shine a light on a very special Metroidvania ahead of Shadow Labyrinth. Rather than suggest Hollow Knight again, F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch is the result of the China Hero Project, in which PlayStation funds independent games from around the world and publishes them. While this game didn't get a ton of attention when it launched, it was beloved by almost everyone who did check it out. You will instantly understand how this game flows if you've played Metroidvanias before, but the clever setting and progression system will keep you hooked for the entire duration. It is a simple story, but with solid combat and an understanding of what makes the genre work, F.I.S.T. is a perfect game to dive into over a slow weekend. F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC.
