I’ve played a good amount of Donkey Kong Bananza on the Switch 2, and I’m stuck wondering why defunct studio Midway never developed a proper Rampage 3D platformer—the all-you-can-destroy formula simply works in this genre, and it works incredibly, ridiculously well.
But all these years later, Nintendo has finally beat Midway to it, and to be honest, DKB is probably my favorite game of 2025, hands-down. Granted, I haven’t played Garfield Kart 2 quite yet, so maybe my outlook will change. You never know.
Admittedly, when I first booted up Bananza, I was somewhat overwhelmed, which I didn’t at all expect. The neuronal saturation wasn’t just due to the notion that the ‘80s club music in the neon-drenched first area, Ingot Isle, sounded suspiciously like New Order’s Blue Monday (it totally does and I’m not complaining) but rather because the game was an immediate blast of relentless interactivity and aggressive visual stimulation.
A sort of technicolor arcade starring everyone’s favorite digital gorilla, if you will. Or a dopamine-riddled ode to pinball and amusement parks. Maybe it’s the video game equivalent of that fourth grade Halloween party you attended back in 1994 that served bat cupcakes and greasy pizza and had the Monster Mash playing on repeat, loudly. A sugar overdose. Mostly, it was Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island. Fun, but a lot to take in.
Every area in Bananza is largely and compulsively destructible, which is a nice nod to 2001’s Red Faction or, of course, the aforementioned arcade classic Rampage. The environments exist solely to be punched, slammed and crumbled, so my first general impression of this new first-party Switch 2 offering was: What the hell is going on here, where do I go, and what the hell is my objective?
Walls, floors and ceilings aren’t rigid, stubborn boundaries in Donkey Kong Bananza; they’re open invitations for seemingly endless exploration. The sheer freedom on offer called to mind a particular ‘90s commercial for Super Mario 64, wherein the radical narrator promised watchers you could ‘Go anywhere you wanna go, do anything you wanna do.’ And to an extent, this turned out to be true for the N64’s relatively quaint and classic launch game. Though in hindsight, Super Mario 64 provided nothing like what’s on display here in Bananza.
Donkey Kong Bananza feels a lot like a trip to Disneyland: Tons to see, tons to do and tons of interesting souvenirs to collect. The way the game leads you from one collectible to another is sheer addictive brilliance; never do you feel like you’re completely done with a particular area. There’s copious gold to gather, mini-quests to complete, bananas and fossils to find, upgrade trees to fill out and a fun but basic story to progress. There’s a touch of Ratchet & Clank in the mix too, I’d add.
I think the actress who voices Pauline in DKB has done a fantastic job, by the way, and it’s fun to hear her explore this character in the humorous pillow talk segments that play out when Donkey Kong rests inside the various getaways you can build across maps. I actually love the characters in Bananza in general, because the NPCs especially have a very Rare quality to them, and there’s even several beautiful nods to the Super Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Country that I won’t spoil for you here. They really made me smile, though, because DKC holds a special place in my heart.
The controls are beyond sublime in Donkey Kong Bananza, and they beg you to keep engaging. The feel of the game betrays the development team’s excellent Super Mario Odyssey pedigree. That said, I’ve even go so far as to say that Bananza plays a notable degree better than Odyssey, and I truly love Odyssey. The Odyssey DNA also shows up in all the outfits you can purchase for DK and Pauline, as well as Donkey Kong’s wild transformation abilities. Ostrich form for the win.
The only real complaints I have with Donkey Kong Bananza so far are the occasional framerate drop (mostly when using the great 3D map, the design of which I truly dig, plus when there’s a lot happening on-screen) and the inkling that the game is a tad too easy. Other than that, this is undoubtedly my game of the year. It’s a masterpiece that is a sheer joy to experience and I never want to stop exploring its colorful world.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more fossils and bananas to track down.
Disclosure: Nintendo provided a review code for coverage purposes.
