Nintendo shows off Donkey Kong Bananza’s destructive gameplay

Switch 2 owners volition soon person different large Nintendo crippled to play. During its latest Direct presentation, the institution showed disconnected plentifulness much of Donkey Kong Bananza, a 3D platformer that launches arsenic a Switch 2 exclusive connected July 17th — and it’s looking similar a amazingly robust experience.

In the caller crippled DK teams up with a younger mentation of the vocalist Pauline — who seemingly has been hidden wrong of a stone for immoderate clip — and travels to an underground realm that seems benignant of similar Nintendo’s instrumentality connected Hollow Earth. Despite being beneath ground, the crippled takes spot successful a varied and divers world, with beaches, mountains, and icy locales. There are adjacent elephantine elder characters and Breath of the Wild-style past ruins with unsocial challenges.

The Direct was chiefly focused connected gameplay, which successful Bananza is built astir destruction. DK tin smash up the environment, teardrop of chunks of terrain to usage arsenic a weapon, and also, uh, crook into a fig of antithetic animals. The game’s “banana transformations” fto DK alteration into creatures similar an ostrich (so helium tin fly) oregon a zebra (so helium tin tally truthful accelerated helium tin adjacent sprint connected water). These powers utilize a substance called “bananergy.” There are besides different abilities that tin beryllium unlocked done a accomplishment tree. Maybe the astir important: you tin acquisition caller outfits for some DK and Pauline. So adjacent though it mostly plays similar a platformer, it appears that Bananza has important role-playing elements.

There’s a two-player co-op mode wherever 1 idiosyncratic controls Pauline, and the multiplayer supports GameShare, truthful you tin play connected 2 antithetic consoles utilizing lone 1 transcript of the game. Bananza besides has a bonus mode wherever you tin sculpt rocks utilizing the Switch 2’s caller rodent controls.

Bananza was archetypal revealed during Nintendo’s large Switch 2 unveiling successful April. It’s the 2nd large first-party merchandise for the console, pursuing Mario Kart World, which launched alongside the caller console. Bananza is the franchise’s archetypal 3D platformer since the Nintendo 64 era, and is the archetypal mainline introduction since Tropical Freeze much than a decennary ago.