Donkey Kong Bananzadoes something for me, man. I’d like to think I’m a pretty fair critic who can recognize a game’s shortcomings while celebrating its strengths, but every time I play Bananza, all I can do is smash and smash and smash some more witha big goofy DK smile on my face. Suddenly, six hours have passed and all I have to show for it is a big gray box that used to be a sunny beach, smashed clean by yours truly.
There’s a part of my brain that needs to strip mine every sublayer until there’s nothing left. It’s probably the same part that made me want to spend my entire summer vacation after second grade digging a hole to China in my backyard (I failed, but I’m pretty sure I was close).
I’ve been clearing each layer as I go, leaving nothing behind before diving down to the next one, and last night I finally reached the Tempest Layer and unlocked Elephant Bananza - DK’s elephant transformation that lets him suck things up with his giant trunk. For a completionist sicko like me, Elephant Bananza is completely game changing. I was pretty satisfied with the supreme smashing power of Kong Bananza until I discovered Elephant Banaza’s superior sucking. Now I’m living my best life and sucking my days away.
Punching Is So Passé
Don’t get me wrong, Donkey Kong Bananza has one of gaming’s greatest punches. I think a lot about games that nail down one key mechanic that carries the entire experience. God of War’s ax-throwing and Spider-Man’s web-swinging are some of the best examples, but we have to include DK’s punch in the pantheon of perfect mechanics, too.
The weight, the impact, the sound – it’s all perfect. The hit-stop when you smack an enemy is amazing. The way different materials shatter or splinter when you punch them is amazing. The way DK eats the watermelon while you punch through it? Amazing. With three out of four face buttons dedicated to punching, as well as the right trigger grab, which is kind of like reverse punching, Nintendo knew it needed to perfect the punch, and it succeeded.
I would have been satisfied smashing my way to the end of Bananza were it not for the introduction of Elephant Bananza. In this form, DK can create a massive vortex in front of him to vacuum up everything in sight, making short work of things that, well, used to be a lot of work. Suddenly, smashing ain’t got that swing.
All the little intricacies you need to know to punch through layer after layer of rock as efficiently as possible go out the window as soon as you can simply aim and suck. Jobs that used to take an hour take minutes, and you can hoover up dangerous things like lava that you otherwise can’t touch. It’s like upgrading from a shovel to an excavator, which almost certainly would have gotten eight-year-old me all the way to China.
Feels Good To Suck
Nintendo could have made Elephant Bananza’s suck feel so much worse. It could have made it so you have a tank that fills up as you suck that you have to empty out by tossing boulders made out of the material you’ve collected (you do fill up an inventory of boulders as you suck, but it doesn’t matter if you use them). It could have added a lengthy cool down period after a long suck, forcing you to wait until it recharges before you can start sucking again.
Instead, it made the sucking nearly infinite. As long as you can refill your Bananza meter before it runs out (easy to do, considering how much gold you suck up) and you stop sucking for just a moment before DK runs out of energy, your ability to suck up everything around you effectively never ends. As Elephant DK you are a black hole consuming every cubic meter of matter in the universe. Is this what it’s like to be Galactus? I think I can see where he’s coming from now.
And with a few upgrades, like the one that increases distance and diameter of your suck zone (not an official term, but it should be), Elephant Bananza becomes an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to strip each level down to its foundation. Maybe that sounds absurd to you, but Elephant Bananza was made for those of us who get it.
