Donkey Kong Bananza Looks Like The Mario Odyssey Successor No One Expected | Hands-On Impressions

This is the most ambitious DK has been in years.

Donkey Kong Bananza has so many wild aspects going for it–the terrain deformation, the Kong transformations, the tween Pauline sidekick–that it’s easy to overlook the basics. This is a new 3D platformer from the team behind Super Mario Odyssey, arguably one of the best of its genre. It’s hard to see how those disparate elements come together from a distance, but an extended hands-on showed me how all the pieces gel together to make a new experience that feels like a next step for the Odyssey team, and even reminiscent in some ways of 3D platforming’s earliest roots on the Nintendo 64.