Of course, the headline above is a bit cheeky, but I am running into a problem of sorts with Donkey Kong Bananza: every level in the game is so fun that I don't want to move forward. Let me explain:
Each level in Donkey Kong Bananza is a smorgasbord of activities. There is gold to mine, skill point-giving bananas to discover, and of course, story beats to achieve. Much of the world is covered in smashable material, and by punching down, the player can dig their own system of tunnels through the levels, creating shortcuts like an overgrown monkey-ant. Exploring underground, you'll find all sorts of hidden chambers, gold deposits, buried chests, and a bounty of other goodies that cause your dopamine needle to bury itself on the far right of the meter. Digging around is extraordinarily fun, and once started, difficult to stop.
As usual, Nintendo is on point with getting the player to where they need to be. The game smartly guides the player to the areas most littered with rewards with little visual cues, so if you see anything glittering a little, or sticking up out of the ground, it's a good idea to head that way and smash everything in sight. So far, so good, right?
My problem comes with the fact that there are limits to how deep you can go. Intrepid diggers will eventually run up against solid barriers that can't be breached, which means that every diggable area contains a finite amount of material that can be mined. The issue? I want to mine ALL OF IT. The fact that these barriers exist implies that it is theoretically possible to completely clear everything from within their boundaries. I literally want to stay in every level and smash every single smashable molecule of material, uncovering every secret the game has hidden from me.
Of course, that's no way to play a game. Being the design geniuses they are, I'm certain that Nintendo took into account the fact that psychos like me exist, and figured out ways that the levels can still be beaten after players have completely destroyed the very floor they were intended to walk on. But that doesn't mean it's the right way to play.
Finding the balance between "smash everything" and "advance the game" is much harder than I expected. My son and I finished the first real level last night after a significant amount of dorking around, and I looked at him and said "Ready to move on?" and he said "Nope." So in some cases, it seems, "smash everything" might win the day. Eventually I suppose we'll move onto the next level. Eventually.
Donkey Kong Bananza is now available in physical and digital editions on Nintendo Switch 2. Watch for my review next week, but for now, trust that it is every bit as good as everyone says it is.
