Donkey Kong Bananza is a great game…probably. I can’t really say for myself yet. To be honest, I haven’t really done much in Nintendo’s latest open-world reimagining of its iconic ape’s adventures. It’s not because I don’t want to, but because I, like several others, have found Bananza difficult to get through. This isn’t because of a difficult boss fight or tough platforming challenge, but because this game feels like the most expensive fidget toy I’ve ever held in my hands. The coolest thing about Donkey Kong Bananza is also what makes it a pain in the ass: I’m talking about the destructible environment.
When I first booted up Bananza, I spent over an hour in the first room. No, not the first area, but the first room that Donkey Kong spawns into when you start a new playthrough. What was I doing in a mostly barren cave? I was beating the absolute shit out of the ceiling, floor, and walls in search of hidden packets of gold buried in the stone. And I’m not the only player who has been captivated (perhaps unwillingly) by the act of giving the environment the ol’ one-two.
Nintendo made a big deal about how Bananza’s cave structures could be pounded into submission, potentially revealing new areas or treasures waiting for you on the other side. In this game, DK is effectively a miner in search of golden bananas, and it’s genuinely impressive just how thoroughly he’s able to excavate the world. It’s incredibly satisfying to just be able to pull a Stanley Yelnats and plunge into the ground below you whenever you feel so compelled. I can rip a stone off a cave wall and start slapping enemies around with it. DK climbs up walls and can tunnel through the ceiling like it’s nothing. Caves are often meant to feel restrictive in video games, but Bananza makes Donkey Kong a walking drill capable of making tunnel systems at the press of a button. It’s a pretty impressive technical feat on top of being a satisfying design space to play around in. But the problem is, being able to tear up the ground underneath you and find a bunch of shiny shit scratches my brain a little too well.
I was diagnosed with OCD last year, and while it’s not the stereotypical clean freak shit you often see depicted in media, it did give me context for some of my odder neurodivergent tendencies. As far as my gaming habits go, however, this was somewhat surprising to me because I’m not usually the completionist type who has to do every little side quest or task, and I generally don’t like games that feel like they’re wasting my time. Bananza, however, has found a way past that mental block and tapped into a more easily activated tendency by giving me a small taste of destruction that inevitably turns into me devouring a meal of demolition.
Walking through the environment in Bananza is like bee-bopping around in a minefield until I find a stray nugget of gold poking out of a wall. I punch the shiny rock out of the wall, but the wall keeps caving in with every subsequent punch, and every few swings, another piece of gold comes tumbling out of the rubble. Sometimes an entire geyser of gold erupts from the stone, and I can’t simply leave to go to the next area when there could be another one of those waiting for me inside a stalagmite I have yet to pummel. Then, by the time I’ve really gotten into the rhythm of digging around, I realize that I’ve left a lot of destruction in my wake and have lost an hour or so of my day and accomplished nothing.
I have always considered myself firmly a “goal-oriented” player, and that means I tend to like linear games more than the open-world glut of a lot of modern AAA projects. I get agitated when I feel like I’m not doing something and making real progress, and that discomfort with idle time means I’m usually the type of person who will do a few side quests, but hold off on a lot of the extracurricular stuff until I’ve seen the main quest through. In most video games, these alternate activities are sequestered enough down different pathways that I can keep my mind on my primary goal and come back to them later. With Donkey Kong Bananza, however, the alternate path is underneath my feet with every step. Everything I do chips away at the walls of the cave system, and every inch I break through might lead me to treasure, or at least make a really satisfying crushing sound. I’ll see the end eventually, but y’all go ahead. I’ll catch up after I’ve left no stone unturned.