After a few weeks with just one big exclusive (“Mario Kart World”), the very young Switch 2 is enriching its catalog, this Thursday, July 17, with “Donkey Kong Bananza”, a three-dimensional platform game designed by the team behind “Super Mario Odyssee”, one of the flagship titles released on Nintendo Switch, the first of its name.
To be honest, the test code, provided by Nintendo, reached us during the night from Wednesday to Thursday. Here are our first impressions after a few hours of play.
It all begins on Lingot Island, which has the particularity of being a deposit of giant golden bananas, a totally fanciful commodity that Donkey Kong is crazy about. A cataclysm causes the entire game space to be buried underground, in multiple strata that the player will have to explore. The gorilla with a tie is particularly powerful, the game designers gave him the power to (almost) break everything, dig everything, smash everything. He will quickly find a partner, a young girl with a golden voice, named Pauline.
A first graphic shock
The first shock is graphic. “Bananza” is in this way very rich and very generous. We obviously took advantage of the increased computing power of Mario’s new machine to impress. This is especially evident when Donkey explodes everything around him. We can’t help but think, however, that the graphic charter chosen is a bit garish, even “gorillaque”, rather crude in its overload. Without thus achieving the balance or coherence of an “Odyssee” or an “Astro Bot” (a competitor on PS5 of which “Bananza” reminds us a lot). Tastes and colors, you will rightly say.
Where “Donkey Kong Bananza” does not miss out is on the essential, namely the gameplay. It is excellent regardless of the mode chosen (either exploring with or without a guide). The levels we’ve been able to explore so far have proven to be rich in inventive mechanics and surprises. The good-natured aspect specific to Nintendo productions responds to the call. We expected it without being disappointed. In any case, we admire the work.
At this stage, we have never been inconvenienced by falls of frame rate (i.e. number of images per second). If there were hiccups here and there, we didn’t notice it.
In summary, fans of (semi) open world adventure-action-exploration games will get their money’s worth. We note, without having had the opportunity to experience it, the presence of a cooperation mode which allows a guest player (online or not) to join in the epic. Otherwise, it’s solo.
