Nintendo has a foolish new tradition. Pre-release, it’s not really talking about who makes his games. This is part of a general Nintendo-wide strategy to concentrate on the experiences instead of the people. So although it may be exciting to hear that the studio is behind Super Mario Odyssey behind the last outing of Donkey Kong, we don’t really know if it is. But it’s certain looks Like it.
The biggest surprise for me when playing Donkey Kong Bananza for half an hour on the world’s first Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on is how Odyssey it is. The core engineer is the same – but structurally this is just like Mario’s Barn storming switch adventure.
Management of Cookie -Settings
This makes it one rare Nintendo Game – Puns unintentionally – because it is really very unusual to see Nintendo take a formula that has worked for one franchise and transplant it directly to another. However, a transplant has clearly taken place here – and the Simian patient is indeed healthy.
What I mean by being clear is that a larger shell objectives of 3D platformers are left aside for large open zones full of smaller objectives. These have taken on different forms and vary: I saw combat meetings, brain puzzles and direct platform challenges. Some of your goals are simply cleverly hidden. The moons of Odyssey are being replaced by glittering golden bananas; But this feels like Odyssey.
The core engineer has of course been replaced. Beyond Cappy is replaced by delicious destruction. For people of a certain advanced Age that remember the Xbox 360 Well, I can describe this game as a red faction Gorilla: It is all that distorting technology that we saw years ago, where you can probably break 90% of the flat geometry that you can see in dust. Dig on, dig down. Pummel through mountains. Rip Giant breaks out of the ground and then use Gyro controls to target where you want to throw a high-flying enemy out of the sky.
It fits well with DK, and there is a very Nintendo-like cadence on the destruction where it absolutely does not feel that DK stores things because he is angry. There are of course bad guys in his way, but DK has flattened these levels because it is that pleasure. He grins all the time.
The part of the game that we play is pretty stump, but it seemed like some menu hints and such DK will in fact work his way down, phase to phase, deeper and deeper in a mine. An indicator appears at least some ‘floor’ am. The destruction is the key to every floor, so you get a real hip 3D card that reminds me of those from the Metroid Prime games. You can tilt this 3D card, zoom in and orientate to see where you are in detail – which is ideal when you can get your way in the middle of a mountain and get a lot of confused about where you are exactly.
Nintendo actively encouraged us to play Banaza’s time limited demo more than once, and noted that it was a game with much to discover. It’s true. Just like Odyssey, you can just deduce in a stage and lose yourself. You may be able to see what is clearly a banana, then you let your head scratch how you can reach it. You can bash your head against that wall for a while, or just run away – because another discovery is inevitable just around the corner.
In a sense, the structural similarities with Odyssey Bananza make a strange known amount. Here we have the two large flagship games of Nintendo for the launch window of Switch 2, and here we have Mario Kart (who, open world or not, is still very Mario Kart), and a DK game that is very familiar in almost 25 years despite the first real 3D platformer.
But, just like the soft itle remembers of the Switch 2, the wheel may not have to be invented again. Mario Odyssey was great; The bite-sized structure made it an absolute slam-dunk with even the youngest children, because friends with splies of the right age have testified me. Perhaps this is a formula that needs to be transferred – and perhaps the inherent differences in the characters of Mario & DK, with their enormously different skills, will be sufficient to distinguish. It works.
And with all that there is another thing to say – there is a way in which this does not look completely like Odyssey. That is in a simple remark: the spirit of rare is in this. It is clear that this is almost certainly a DK title made in Japan. But whoever is behind this has a step back and looked holistically at what rare built in the 90s and Retro studios later expanded. There is something with the appearance of the game, Googly Eyes and All, that feels like a marriage of Rare’s DK and Nintendo EPD’s vision of modern 3D Mario.