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Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

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I’ve a mixed history with Donkey Kong games. Donkey Kong 64 I loved, for a while, until it became clear it was a nightmare of repetition and collecting. Donkey Kong ’94, for the Game Boy, is one of my favourite platformers. I hated all the Super NES Donkey Kong Country games with their stupid pre-rendered graphics and terrible physics and collision detection. The evolution of those for the 3DS and Wii, Donkey Kong Country Returns was better, and I completed it, but it wasn’t amazing (aside from looking really nice on the 3DS). I passed on Tropical Freeze because it was more of the same (and, unlike Returns, wasn’t free). But now, mainly because of a dearth of Switch 2 specific games and a super cheap 50% off deal because I bought the Japanese version from Amazon, Donkey Kong Bananza is mine.

Well, it was mine for a few hours but then I had to lend it to my child for a few months because she needed it apparently. Eventually it came back.

My first impressions were not very good. The purple colour scheme just felt weird. The “digging” mechanic, where you can destroy almost all of the environment, didn’t make any sense in a Donkey Kong game, and there just seemed like there was too much to dig. After a couple of hours, I had started to warm to it and by the end, was totally taken by New Design Donkey Kong and the Canon Bursting Addition of Little Pauline. If you ignore everything that doesn’t make sense, then it’s a lot of fun.

Levels are varied, with many reminding me of bits of Mario 64. There’s loads to do, with each huge area (or layer, as the game calls them – you’re slowly digging down to the planet’s core) already full of missions, quests or jobs to do and then having a number of, mostly hidden, challenge doors that include tricky platforming, puzzles, and taking on enemies in a range of environments. You also gain skills, mainly in the form of animal transformations, which can let you reach previously inaccessible areas within levels you’ve already done, so it’s a bit Metroidvania-y in that way. Minor upgrades in the form of purchasable clothing are also available, to buff your attacks, elemental defences, and give you more time in your transformed states.

Controls were tricky at first, mainly because Nintendo have moved the jump button to A when B, or even Y is much more common. The reason is to that X, Y and B can be used to “dig” (or rather, punch) up, forward and down respectively. I did still keep pressing the wrong shoulder buttons even at the end of the game too, so never really got completely used to them.

The gameplay is great though. Punching through everything is actually pretty addictive, even if the rewards for doing so are minimal. You very quickly rack up more gold – the main currency in the game – than you can ever spend. Other things you find, like bananas and fossils are of more use but are rarer. Once you get the upgrade which lets you see where various treasures are buried, it lets you focus on the important stuff so you don’t randomly punch everywhere. Except, of course, I did anyway. Enemies are mostly dispatched by either punching them, or throwing stuff at them (you can rip up chunks of ground to do this) but some are unfazed by “softer” material or need a specific type of rock to expose their weak points first, so there’s sometimes some strategy to the combat rather than button mashing.

The animal transformations feel a bit under-utilised, partly as you rarely need them and partly because they could have just been extra abilities rather than a whole added on mechanism. They’re a bit fiddly to swap to as well, and your time as them is limited, so sometimes – where it was possible – I’d just do it the “hard” way as Normal Ape to save the hassle. It’s also a bit weird having an animal become an ape-snake or ape-zebra hybrid. Video games, eh?

So, not the best early-new-console release, but far better than I was expecting given my history with Donkey Kong games. My main take away from the game is, however, that it clearly wasn’t a Donkey Kong game when they had the idea and mechanics in place, and then needed to fit it to an existing Nintendo character. Nintendo do this a lot and, in this case, it seems to have paid off.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate: nintendogs in the way

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I am not good at Smash Bros. I can beat many people, but that is because they are less good, not because I am in any way competent. At Edward’s birthday party some of his friends were asking to play Smash Bros, and we put on a seven-player game, with everyone else on one team and me on the other. I lost, but only just.

It was more balanced when I had a couple of people on my team who had played Smash once before, all up to the point where a giant (ninten)dog jumped up to the screen just as I was starting to fall off the side – and so I couldn’t see where to boost to. Stupid dog.

Super Mario Odyssey: back to the sand

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I got Mario Odyssey shortly after it launched – there was some special deal at The Game Collection, I seem to recall – and I played it for a bit. However, at the time I was still deep into Breath of the Wild, and the more expansive and cohesive nature of Odyssey (compared to the more discrete levels of Mario 64, or Mario Galaxy, say) meant that it felt just a little too similar to a large story game for me to keep going at it. Of course, by the time I finished Breath of the Wild – many months later – Odyssey was buried deep at the bottom of the backlog pile. I’ve taken it to various places in the Switch case, but have never been tempted to put the cartridge back in.

Until yesterday, when I was travelling up to London, and realised that the Donkey Kong Bananza cartridge had helpfully been taken out of my Switch 2, replaced with Pokémon Sword. Edward seems to have multiple Pokémon games on the go at any one time, including multiple instances of the same game across different Switch consoles; he makes use of the fact that Pokémon is one of the few games that doesn’t work over the cloud synchronisation service on NSO, and plays on his Switch Lite, my old Switch, and my Switch 2.

Anyway, this is a very longwinded introduction to say that I was planning on playing a platformer, but I didn’t have the game I planned to play, so played Odyssey instead.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. I appeared in the desert, outside the Mexican-inspired village, and tried to work out what I should be doing; luckily the words “The Hole in the Desert” had been shown as the level loaded, and a big light shown from a hole under a large inverted pyramid. Did I make that thing float? I can’t remember.

Why does it have to be so slippery this far underground?

Anyway, after a lot of faffing around with bit and pieces in the level, including finding another moon in a crate which I had to steer a Bullet Bill to hit, as well as experimenting with the controls, I jumped down the hole and traversed the icy platforms underneath, until I reached a boss battle. It didn’t take me too long to work out what to do. The boss comprised a giant floating head and two floating hands, which attacked by trying to hit me, or clap with me in the middle. When one punched the floor, after jumping out the way, I threw my cap at it and possessed it, which then meant I could steer it around and punch the boss in his face with his own hand.

“Stop hitting yourself!”

Overall I added a few more moons to my total, taking me over the number I need to travel to the next area – and I also found a wibbly painting which allowed me to teleport to the metro area early (but only to a very small platform, with no way of getting anywhere else. The temptation is to stay, to find more moons that may be hidden away, but if I do that I know I’ll never progress. Next time I play – hopefully with less than an eight-year gap – I’ll move on.

Donkey Kong Bananza: breaking everything

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When I first heard of Bananza, I was concerned about the way in which DK could smash pretty much everything, I was worried that it would mean you could just brute force your way through the levels, that there would be little innovation throughout the game, relying only on the destruction mechanic.

I needn’t have worried, of course – it’s a Nintendo game, and in the hour I’ve played so far I’ve come across loads of game mechanics which substantially expand the moveset and ways that the levels work. You can’t just break everything and hope; there are different strengths of materials, there are bombs to break harder ones, there are enemies that provide you with stones to throw at others, there are floating islands that you don’t want to drop off the side of.

I purposefully didn’t read too much about the game before release, but my son Edward did – he’s watched countless videos and read articles and listened to podcasts – and he was incredibly hyped to see the giant monkey king thing and water raising a bridge and the little stone companion. I don’t get to play with him watching enough.

There have been some laugh-out-loud moments. Try and hit one of the other apes, and you’ll high-five them instead. You come across an ape who’s proud of the house he’s built, and then one hit of the walls means that the next time you talk to him he’s wistful he didn’t buy insurance against you. There is a joy to the destruction, and it’s rewarding as well, uncovering hidden banana chips and even hidden crystal bananas.

I’ve finished for the evening just after DK lost his stone companion and gained a different one. More on that some other time.

Mario Smash Football: a forgotten gem

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Recently added to the Switch Online service, Mario Smash Football is a five-a-side game with … adjusted … rules. You play in an arena with an electric barrier around, meaning the ball can’t go out. You can, and are encouraged to, barge your opponents out the way, or knock them over with powerful shots, or knock them out of action temporarily with Mario-Kart-type items. Your team consists of the main character (from a roster of nine) plus a crocodile in goal and three identical helpers (such as three toads, or three birdos), and while any of them can pass and shoot, if you are controlling the main character and hold the shoot button for long enough, you can do a special move which has more of a chance of going in.

I had this on the GameCube and enjoyed it; I had the followup on the Wii (Mario Strikers Charged Football) but never played that too much, probably due to the plethora of Wii and Xbox 360 games I acquired around that time. It still plays very well, if a little rough around the edges, and I’ve completed the first two cups (coming in first place, but not winning every game). I am much more likely to play this on the Switch (2) than on the GameCube, though, simply because it’ll always be available when I want it.