Donkey Kong Bananza Makes It Fun To Be A Completionist Freak

By Elijah Gonzalez | July 28, 2025 | 10:00am

Video Games Features donkey kong bananza

Donkey Kong Bananza Makes It Fun To Be A Completionist Freak

As one of those unfortunate souls with a bit of completionist streak, this era of big budget titles obsessed with open worlds can bring out my worst gaming tendencies. There’s no better way to kill a story’s pacing than feeling compelled to chase down eight billion little doohickies by completing objectives you’ve probably done too many times already.

The worst is when the game makes exploring relatively uninteresting compared to the main gameplay loop, but incentivizes you to do so anyway with upgrades (Doom Eternal), or ones that mostly deliver clunker sidequests before gifting a rare rewarding character moments, keeping you coming back for that 1/10 chance of something good (Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth).

For all these reasons, part of me was a bit worried to hear that Donkey Kong Bananza would share at least a bit of Donkey Kong 64’s collectible-palooza tendencies, scattering dozens of crystalline bananas in every crevice of its subterranean world.

But the thing is, as I’ve methodically platformed and punched my way through layer after layer in this journey to the center of the Earth, I haven’t once felt that increasing sense of tedium as you spend way too long searching under every rock to get the missing piece that will complete your collection.

Instead of feeling like a side distraction that I pursue due to funky brain chemistry that I wish I could change, finding every damn banana IS the objective to me, one that ties in perfectly with every element of the experience. While there are technically main story objectives in each area, it’s less that I track down some collectibles by happenstance on my way to perform these mandatory tasks, and more that I go to the next layer because I’ve already strip mined every square foot of the current level while feeding Donkey Kong’s insatiable hunger for Banandium Gems (that has certaintly filled his intestinal track with mineral deposits).

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The most straightforward reason why it’s such a delight to munch on these curiously shaped rocks is that it’s simply fun to move around in this world. Coming off one of the best controlling platformers of all time in Super Mario Odyssey, this same development team flexes their gamefeel magic once again: punches have crunchy hitstop, rolling gives a satisfying speed boost that you can seamlessly transition into a leap, and it does that Super Mario 64 thing where if you change directions and jump, you do a cartwheel (you know a 3D platformer is good when that happens).

Meanwhile, the evenly dispersed hidden bananas give the perfect reason to interact with the game’s destructible environments, and carving out tunnels with your primate fists never gets old. Moreover, finding Banandium Gems gives you skill points that you can spend to improve your abilities, making it even more satisfying to dig and smash until you find the next one, cracking it open with a couple of hits before the sound of “OH BANANA” fills your eardrums with the same bliss that DK gets out of munching on minerals.

However, beyond encouraging you to engage with the game’s core mechanics and providing a visual and progression-based incentive for excavating these gemstones, it’s the layered hint system that makes it fun to search for bananas from beginning to end.

First of all, Donkey Kong comes equipped with sonar capabilities, as apes can apparently detect banana-shaped objects by clapping their hands like they’re bringing together cymbals. In a game with so many buried secrets, this is a must-have that lets you quickly track down the hundreds of secrets hidden in the world. That said, even with your sonar fully equipped, these only highlight nearby collectibles.

The second tool you’ll use to satisfy DK’s dark, rock-shaped cravings is the map. The first time I opened it, I was confused about why the game’s frame rate suddenly plummeted to Switch 1-like choppiness. Isn’t this a brand new console I recently paid a whole bunch of money for, one that plays the open world Legend of Zeldas like a dream?

Well, the reason for that lag is that the map isn’t just giving you a vague 3D representation of each area. Instead, it appears to zoom the camera back to show the current state of the world from a distant isometric perspective. And considering the Kaiju-like trail of destruction our hero leaves in his wake, this overview is a great way to see where you’ve been searching for bananas and where you haven’t. You can rotate each zone, zooming in to view its layers and structures in detail.

However, the map’s true value comes from when it’s combined with the codex of Golden Bananas Donkey Kong has consumed so far. Each banana in the catalog has a number and a descriptive name, and you can view where each was located on the map before entering DK’s stomach. Bananas close to each other on the map tend to have numbers close to each other in the codex, meaning you can guess the location of soon-to-be-found treasures by searching the space in between the two. For instance, if I have both Banandium Gem #33 and #35, there’s a very good chance that #34 is near the two. The levels in this game can be pretty large, so the ability to deduce locations like this saves a lot of time and busy work.

Finally, there’s a last resort. If you’ve turned that place into a smoking crater and still haven’t found what you’re looking for, or just plain don’t feel like using your brain, you can use gold to solve your problems: shops sell treasure maps that mark the location of a random gem. While DK will probably end up hoarding as much wealth as Smaug or the billionaire class, these maps are still expensive enough that I imagine most players won’t buy them unless properly stuck. Because of this, you rarely feel the dark pull to look up answers online, which, at least for me, is the worst way for these searches to end.

All in all, there’s a lot to love about this game: how it makes smashing through walls and cronies viscerally enjoyable, its precise platforming, the deeply silly face Donkey Kong makes after scarfing down another Banandium Gem. But personally, perhaps the thing that sets it apart is how it takes something that has ground down my enjoyment of so many other games—the completionist urge to find all the stuff—and finds clever workarounds that make it a pleasure to complete this banana-themed checklist. DK really wants to eat those rocks, and I couldn’t be happier to help him do just that.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.