Donkey Kong Bananza unearths the franchise’s roots and rips them out

Several moments of my two-hour hands-on preview of Donkey Kong Bananza felt like I was playing the gritty 2009 action game Red Faction: Guerilla - except this time I was actually playing as a gorilla. For example, I had to level a multistory building during a timed minigame. Just like in Guerilla, I targeted the load-bearing columns with Donkey Kong's ripped arms to quickly bring it down. Reveling in the destruction made me feel equal parts satisfied and sinister, all while Donkey Kong struck a goofy pose.

Other times, I could sense a direct throughline from Super Mario Odyssey and other major Nintendo franchises. The way that Donkey Kong can roll into a jump (and roll at the top of a jump) feels like maneuvering with Odyssey's Cappy, while exploring the heights and depths of sublevels and experimenting with physics is reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. But through it all, the new Switch 2 game coming out on July 17th feels, above all else, like it's breaking new ground as its own thing.

Bananza is an open-world platforming RPG, complete with a skill tree that you can chip away at as you collect banandium gems. Finding five of them grants you one skill poi …

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