Coming into Donkey Kong Bananza, the eponymous ape had a lot of work to do to impress me. I'll admit I've never picked up any of DK's games, which means my main experience is him being my arch-nemesis in every Mario Kart game from DS to Mario Kart World (seriously, why is it always him?!). Not only that, Donkey Kong Banaza needed to pack some seriously impressive stuff to convince me that, given the sparse offering of Switch 2 games so far, this would be a worthy exclusive and a grand return to 3D platforming for Nintendo.
Thankfully, after my two-and-a-half-hour preview session, I think I've been persuaded. Donkey Kong Bananza cleverly builds on the foundations laid by Super Mario Odyssey, amping up the action with almighty Bananza powers and superb destruction mechanics. It's certainly a step up from Super Mario Odyssey in terms of complexity, and that can present some issues while playing, but the overall improvements only make me wonder why Nintendo didn't delay the Switch 2 just so that this game could bolster its launch library.
