Wombo Combo 2: The Return of the Kong
Switch 2 Pro-Controller and Donkey Kong Bananza Review
The Nintendo Switch 2 has finally, truly launched, 6 weeks after it hit shelves.
I loved Mario Kart World, as those who read my review know but there’s been no denying that Nintendo is drip feeding us the goods; crudely put? They have been careful not to blow their load early, building momentum month by month, sculpting a solid foundation for an all-time great library with highly anticipated games, ensuring that the shiny new console is never far from the headlines and that early adopters have ample to play and perhaps more importantly: to tell their friends about.
On the 17th of July it was finally time for Donkey Kong Bananza to enter the fray and bolster the Switch 2’s fledgeling library; I invested in the new Pro-Controller especially for the occasion and in today’s post, I will be reviewing both.
A Troubled Lineage
Nintendo’s history with gamepads has been… mixed to say the least.
Most people will be well-aware of the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con stick drift issues but before that we also had the Wii-U pad’s absolutely pitiful battery life, the limited utility of the Wiimote and Nunchuk when playing most non-Nintendo games and who could forget the horrors of the Gamecube D-pad and the Nintendo 64 controller’s… well, everything? It’d been a long time since Nintendo gave us a no-bullshit, feature complete, plain controller so the original Switch Pro pad was a welcome return to sanity after what had felt like a decade of gimmick.
This won’t be a comparison between the Switch Pro 1 and 2 gamepads but I wanted to make my opinion on the original known for the sake of you knowing where I’m coming from, that opinion being I liked the Switch Pro 1’s layout and form-factor but the rubbery grips and hollow-feeling gave it a distinct and unpleasant cheap, 3rd party feel to me, as if I’d bought a £40 8BitDo as opposed to something first party.
‘She Needs Premium, Dude!’
The moment I first picked up the Switch 2 Pro Controller, my complaints with the original had been rectified. The Pro 2 is light but not hollow, gone are the rubber grips, replaced with a uniform, smooth, almost soft feeling, matte plastic, the sticks are enhanced with extra grip but lack the rough, tyre-like texture of the Xbox analogue sticks, the face buttons are large and subtly rough to touch, the triggers and bumpers, although lacking pressure sensitivity, mirror that perfect Xbox shape and the D-pad, after using the abysmal one on the Joy-Cons is sheer bliss; I generally prefer a circular D-pad: like the kind on a Megadrive controller or a lot of modern fighting game pads but that is entirely up to taste so I won’t hold it as a negative point.
There’s no question about it: this is the most comfortable gamepad I’ve ever held.
Your mileage may vary: each of us has different genetics, hand shapes, finger lengths etc. but for my 5’7, manlet-statured, spade-shaped hands having self? This is the perfect size and shape. I’ve heard some people complain about the grips and how it flares or doesn’t flare their elbows but to be honest… I don’t have a clue what the issue is, I feel nothing wrong. Modern gaming really separates the people who’ve played on a PS2 Madcatz controller or used the RF output on a CRT to play Dreamcast from those who haven’t.
How I feel writing these sections.
In my original Wombo Combo review of the Switch 2 I mentioned how the improved HD Rumble felt basically the same in the Joy-Con 2’s, well, with this gamepad I now really feel it, the improvement is quite stark.
I made an effort to play a variety of games with this pad: to put it through its paces in a variety of situations. I replayed Crysis 2, had some matches of Mario Kart, a few Grands Prix in Fast Fusion, I had a quick few goes on Sonic Mania and of course, many hours of Donkey Kong Bananza and the Pro 2 excelled in all genres. With the death of Forza making analogue triggers a non-issue for me, this pad will now almost certainly become my PC controller too.
A really enjoyable theme of the Switch 2 hardware so far is resistance: the Joy-Con 2 analogue sticks have more resistance, the triggers have more resistance… and the sales numbers have been resisting clickbait and made-up controversy. The Pro-Controller 2 follows this theme and it just elevates the entire pad, giving the analogue sticks a ‘creamy’ feel to move and each button a real satisfying weight to mash, like running the back of your spoon across a bowl of Skyr or thumbing a button on a cotton shirt.
So, are there any flaws with the Pro 2 pad?
Every Nintendo controller has a fatal flaw… except this one, however I really dislike the layout of the menu buttons on this gamepad. The fact that capture and home are so close to the - and + buttons means that, despite them being more flush with the surface of the pad, I always hit them by accident or have to look down at the pad for a moment; on every other modern gamepad these would be out of the way or on their own big online home button, I see why now. I have to say too, I’ve had back-paddle buttons on a few gamepads now and my I don’t get what all the fuss is about, I’ve just never found a consistent use for them. For sure, it’s nice to have an extra pair of buttons to assign when my thumb gets tired of holding down A in Mario Kart and it’s useful when you don’t want to shift your thumb off the analogue stick for certain actions but I’m so used to controlling games in a certain way that by the time I remember I could assign one of the back pedals, I’ve already repositioned my hand to perform the action I want anyway. If I could get this controller for £10 less and not have GL and GR on the back then I would.
I’m somebody who opens up consoles and controllers quite often; I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you own retro consoles, you will inevitably become your own repair man, so it’s worth noting that unfortunately, the Switch 2 Pro-Controller is designed in such a way that opening it up for repairs and cleaning is a pretty arduous process and the use of adhesive on the face-plate means that you can’t really get it back to normal after a teardown without finding this adhesive yourself and reapplying it. iFixit recently made a video on this topic where they had a meltdown over the issue and claimed the whole controller was ‘piss-poor’ but truly? It’s not the biggest issue in the world, even if slightly disappointing and the well-known high durability of the Switch 1 Pro Controller seems to have rubbed off on its successor too.
So, should you get the Switch 2 Pro-Controller?
On my own scale of controller preference, I’d put the Switch 2 Pro-Controller on equal footing with the Series X’s gamepad: both of which are the best in the business but they are great in different ways.
The Series X gamepad lacks a good D-pad, has worse buttons and isn’t as comfortable as the Pro 2 but it makes up for it in adaptability, being more easily usable on PC and its triggers and bumpers are second to none, whereas the Pro 2 is more comfortable, has the better face buttons and D-pad but lacks some of these advanced features and isn’t yet as adaptable as the PC-ubiquitous Xbox pad. If you don’t already own a Switch Pro Controller then this gamepad is essential but admittedly? If you do already own the previous iteration, the just over £70 price tag is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow considering the new features amount to a built-in headphone jack, better game feel and 2 buttons you might never use.
Pros:
+ Most Comfortable Controller I’ve ever Held
+ Excellent Face Buttons
+ Perfect Analogue Sticks
+ 40 Hour Battery Life
+ Fantastic D-Pad
Cons:
- Expensive
- GL and GR increase the price but not the value
- Daunting for Amateurs to Repair or Deep Clean
- Unpleasant Menu Button Layout
The Kong Unmourned
Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Donkey Kong was in desperate need of a new game, let alone a full-on Triple-A platformer, so rather than being disappointed, I was thrilled to see the announcement of Bananza.
Everyone, myself included, was convinced we’d see a 3D Mario announced at the April Switch 2 Direct and long resigned to the fact that Donkey Kong was forever sealed in the 2D plane, destined to be wheeled out once a decade when a 2D Mario wasn’t ready or Nintendo decided David Wise needed to compose yet another contender for the greatest soundtrack ever but history took a different turn and the team behind Super Mario Odyssey saw fit to right a historical wrong and give us a 3D Donkey Kong to be proud of. Some were disappointed not to see the Red Plumber but not me.
And is Donkey Kong Bananza a project to be proud of? Well, let’s take a look.
New Funky Mode
A big point of contention for many prior to the release of the game was Donkey Kong’s redesign: and the reimagined look of the game as a whole.
Donkey Kong Country on the SNES (the best 2D platformer of all time, just saying) made heavy use of pre-rendered graphics, essentially creating and animating a 3D model before converting it into a flat, lower-weight 2D image to fit on a SNES cartridge, this gave the SNES-era Donkey Kong Country games a distinctly high-detail, naturalistic look despite the cartoony designs which later DKC titles on the Wii and Wii-U would stick quite close to. Donkey Kong Bananza goes for a new approach with its art-style and leans more into the industrial aesthetic of certain areas in Donkey Kong Country and also closer to the bright and colourful aesthetic of a 3D Mario title.
Of course, I had my reservations too but visually? Donkey Kong Bananza is a feast without abandoning the feel of those classic, Rare-developed Donkey Kong titles. Minecarts criss-cross around orange desert mountains with giraffe pattern grass and dusty savannah trees, snowy fields with ice-cream scoop houses clash with towering mechanical structures and machines, gold-plastered stone tunnels give way to scrap metal villages adorned with barrels and coloured spot lights; it’s all here, if you know and love the old aesthetic well, rest-assured its DNA has been preserved. Textures are a bit muddy due to the nature of having to make destructible terrain look good from virtually every angle but it’s really a non-issue, only giving the game a bit of a toy/plastic-like look ad the variety more than makes up for it; wood, melted chocolate, even giant melons (no, not like that) these are all materials you will punch through in Bananza and the wood and chocolate especially look fantastic.
Addressing the elephant in the room, I neither prefer or do not prefer the new Donkey Kong design: the old one was a perfect fit for its art-style and the new one is too.
As much as I love that iconic Rare design, DK’s facial animations in Bananza are expressive and humorous to the extent that I just can’t imagine his character in this game working well with that old version. The only bit of strangeness with the new model is that DK’s brown fur interacts a bit strangely with the game’s lighting, making him look orange in most areas; my Mum took a look at the game and remarked “Oh, he’s more of an Orangutan now?”
One area where the game doesn’t compare to the classics, however, is in its music.
Don’t get me wrong, the soundtrack for Donkey Kong Bananza is good: the Bananza themes are catchy, Freezer Layer and Forest Layer especially have some really sweet ambience and the call-backs to legacy songs are a great booster shot of nostalgia but this isn’t a soundtrack that I’ve been putting on while writing or doing other things like I still do with Super Mario Odyssey, it’s above average in a series of masterpieces.
The visuals of Donkey Kong Bananza excite me, not only because it’s another bright, beautiful, brash Nintendo game but because we’re not even close to hitting this console’s potential. It’s common knowledge by this point that Bananza was originally a Switch 1 game: it was conceptualised and designed in-part with the limitations of technology many times this console’s inferior, yet it still looks and sounds unreal.
Warning: Very Mild Current-Objective Spoiler Below
Wreck-It Kong
I’ve heard Donkey Kong Bananza being labelled a 3D platformer a lot and while technically true, it doesn’t feel wholly accurate to stick that label on it.
I think we all know how a 3D platformer looks and feels but if I were to define it? I’d say the cornerstones of the 3D platformer are collecting, somewhat linear progression and the jump being the player’s primary means of interacting with the world; in Super Mario Odyssey, you jump to collect moons, defeat enemies and break blocks: it is your primary means of interacting with the game world besides Cappy, who plays a tertiary role. Donkey Kong Bananza is not the same. While the game does centre around a girthy suite of collectables like Banandium Gems and the costume-unlocking Fossils, Donkey Kong’s primary tool with which to interact with the world is not his jump but his fists. As well as this, you don’t really do much platforming in Bananza at all, the obstacles you face in this game are rarely about jumping through a dangerous obstacle course or avoiding traps and much more about using the game’s hierarchy of material strength and Donkey Kong’s ability to climb anything to clamber and smash your way to the next objective.
So, where am I going with this? I mention this observation because I’m seeing lots of comparisons to Super Mario Odyssey at the moment. It makes sense on paper: both are made by the same team, are flagship Nintendo collectathon titles featuring a beloved mascot character but besides that and some structural similarities, they don’t really play anything alike, so I won’t be comparing the two in this review.
So, what do you do in Donkey Kong Bananza?
Bananza sees Donkey Kong and Pauline delve into a vast underground world populated by sentient rocks on their quest to retrieve the Kongs’ stolen hoard of Banandium Gems and stop the villainous Void Crew from reaching the planet’s core first, where it is rumoured the power to grant anyone’s wishes lays. It’s a simple plot that lacks a sense of urgency and threat; the Void Crew members appear every few hours and just admit defeat after Kong gives them a facial rearrangement but it more than makes up for this in charm and that intangible warm feeling that a lot of Nintendo games seem to nail so well. As you explore further and further beneath the ground, Pauline and Donkey Kong learn to trust each other more and their bond grows, it’s incredibly charming to witness despite Pauline’s voice being a little bit grating and old favourite characters pop-up in a manner similar to the Toad Brigade in the 3D Mario series. I like that these characters are portrayed with some agency: they’re not crying or cowering waiting for help, they are just trying to do their best, even if they can’t match Kong’s vigour.
Kong can climb, jump, rip chunks out of the walls and ground, punch up down and forward, throw objects, slap the ground to attract pick-ups and locate collectibles and he can also transform into different Bananza forms like the larger Kong Bananza or the fast-sprinting Zebra Bananza.
It cannot be overstated just how childishly, innocently fun the moment to moment gameplay of Bananza is. It’s a common sight online to see players mention how they didn’t leave the tutorial area for an hour, happily spending their first encounter with this game obliterating the mines and amassing a vast fortune of gold. Controlling Kong feels absolutely perfect: just move your analogue stick forward at a wall and Kong will begin to climb seamlessly, smashing the terrain feels powerful with heavy vibrations and moments of pause accenting heavy impact against enemies; DK’s movements, animations and the HD Rumble give him a heavier feel than Mario or Sonic but without compromising on the agility you expect from a solid platformer, or making the traditional roll jump feel weaker than it should.
A big surprise to me with Bananza was seeing Nintendo experiment with things like RNG-based loot and beat ‘em up style combat, as opposed to the tried and true jumping on an enemy’s head. Enemies in this game tend to have an outer shell of material that you have to punch your way through to get at their core for a finishing blow and while you rip apart the terrain, gold veins and chests randomly spawn, the latter of which has a chance of containing maps to Banandium Gems or Fossils, a chance you can increase by purchasing certain items of clothing, it’s a really nice system that ensures you won’t need to google a guide to 100% the game; following guides and lists is boring, so instead of that you can just wreck half the map to get enough gold to buy a Banandium Gem map or reveal a chest that gives one for free.
Of course, Bananza also has a skill point system. This made me nervous before launch as I tend to hate that kind of thing in games but DK earns skills by collecting Banandium Gems which is what the player will be doing anyway, so it never bugged me here.
The map screen: a wonderful 3D model of the entire layer, even includes an option to regenerate the entire level back to normal, I haven’t felt the need to use it yet but I appreciate its existence.
Much Ado About Nothing
A big point of concern before Bananza launched were the reported performance issues and framerate drops. A few days before release it even seemed like Nintendo were doing some pre-emptive damage control and showing everyone the original Switch prototype to prove that this was the best they could do, thankfully, this whole issue turned out to be very overblown. Bananza absolutely has some slow down but these moments occur under very specific circumstances and in my almost 20 hours of play so far, only once have I experienced a drop in frames for no reason; if you’re in a bonus stage frantically smashing up gold blocks and literally hundreds of pieces with their own physics are flying off and interacting then the game will chug a little bit.
The only issues I’ve had crop up consistently involve the camera and how it interacts with the game’s climbing or when the player is underground digging tunnels. Like the modern Zelda titles, you can climb virtually any surface in Bananza, this freedom means that sometimes, when you’re moving around a cylinder and have the camera in just the wrong spot, you can end up reversing your controls and going the opposite direction and while underground the camera can run into some issues with getting stuck up against objects or zooming in uncomfortably close, these moments are fleeting but worth a mention.
To be honest, I think the demanding nature of Donkey Kong Bananza and the Switch 2’s ability to handle it smoothly 99% of the time isn’t getting the praise it should be. The individual levels (or ‘layers’) in this game are huge: I’d say at least double the size of those found in Super Mario Odyssey with a much greater focus on verticality and swapping between surface and underground areas on the regular, to manage this, have it fully destructible, with infrequent load times and again: almost always smooth performance is quite the achievement. That’s not to mention how entire levels are covered in lush, dense vegetation too and Bananza still holds up.
No doubt, even as I type, somebody’s got a tripod with a slow-motion camera on it picking out imperceptible flaws in the game in handheld mode, or using God knows what to monitor the dock and the console’s internals while Bananza runs but I’ve got to be honest, I don’t care about a bunch of data, clock speeds and things my naked eye can’t pick up, if the game looks good, runs well and doesn’t sound like an Atari 2600 voice sample that’s all I need.
Fumbling the Barrel
So, what does Donkey Kong Bananza do wrong?
By now, if you browse the gaming internet a lot, you’ve probably picked up on a small but noticeable minority of players complaining about the game’s repetitive nature and unremarkable levels. This isn’t primarily an issue with Donkey Kong Bananza in my opinion but rather a symptom of a wider issue I think people are having with modern Nintendo games in general.
Since the launch of the Switch, Nintendo first party games have only gotten longer, more vast and more flush with content, this sounds fantastic on paper: more for your money! But a consistent issue I’m having is that the pacing tends to be glacial and the difficulty too low for too long, especially in the 3D platformers and if you’re going for a completionist run. I’m wiling to bet a lot of people are feeling this way but haven’t quite managed to stick a label on that feeling. This is a flaw Donkey Kong Bananza shares. It’s not that the game is brain-dead easy and the levels aren’t interesting: they absolutely do get more challenging and more interesting, it’s just that for those of us who want to collect it all and really take our time with the game, you’re not seeing these better stages potentially until your 15th or 20th hour.
That being said, the game never really strays beyond average difficulty which is a bit of an issue. Donkey Kong’s identity has always been that it’s the Nintendo platformer for experts; Kirby is easy, Mario is normal, Donkey Kong is hard. Part of that essence is lost here.
On a more minor note, does anyone else find the Bananza transformations in this game to be kind of lame? The music is catchy, the sight of an anthropomorphic ostrich with rippling muscles and a full set of teeth is hilarious and they do help with shearing away terrain to get more gold but as a gameplay gimmick? I find them underwhelming and actively avoid using them because they trivialise boss encounters and some Banana challenges.
The debate between Donkey Kong Bananza and Super Mario Odyssey is bound to rage for years to come. Donkey Kong Bananza, in my opinion, is more fun to play in its moment-to-moment gameplay, side-steps a lot of the tedium in 100%ing Odyssey and holds an obvious technological edge, though it does lack the sense of freshness, the soundtrack and a lot of the emotional weight that Odyssey delivered.
My review may feel incomplete to some: I haven’t finished this game yet and I’m trying to experience it modestly because between Metroid Prime 4’s nebulous release date, the months-long wait until Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment and my utter lack of shits to give about Pokémon Legends Z-A, it feels like aside from the upcoming Gradius Origins collection, this is going to be my Switch 2 game for the Summer and I’d like to not wolf it down so quickly… because it’s an absolute treat and a must play for any Nintendo fan.
Pros:
+ Vast, Varied and Destructible Levels with Increasingly Enjoyable Design
+ Beautiful Presentation with Smooth Performance and Varied Eye-Candy
+ Time-Appreciative Game Design Combined with the Timeless Structure of a Collectathon
+ DK Feels Wonderful to Control and His Moveset Never Loses its Novelty
+ Charming Dynamic Between our 2 Protagonists
Cons:
- Pauline’s Voice Gets Annoying
- Bananza Transformations are Underwhelming
- Unimpressive Soundtrack
- More-Interesting Levels Take a While to Appear
- Lukewarm Difficulty
Ok, I avoided the spoiler section since I want to play this game in the near future. But I confess that I laughed hard when I saw the MGS3 gif. XD
I'm really enjoying how you describe your experiences with the Switch 2. Your writing is conveying it pretty well and I enjoy how detailed your analysis are. Great stuff!
Great write up, I agree that the Pro Controller 2 is way better than the original. Worth it I’d say. Have to say though that I won’t buy a controller now unless it has back buttons, I’ve always hated the left and right stick click. It just feels weird and uncomfortable to me, usually it’s a sprint mode or to activate something in game, so I always map these to the back buttons now. Maybe the Steam Deck has spoiled me.
Just received Bananza, so looking forward to playing it. Enjoyed reading your experience with it. I’m at an age now where an easier difficulty curve just suits me fine. I’m more n the Kirby camp nowadays 😂