Super Mario Odyssey is one of my favorite games of all time. Nintendo EPD 8 can do nothing wrong, and Odyssey felt like the ultimate culmination of everything they’ve been working on even since before they were reorg’ed into EPD 8. Surely they had something they were working on, obviously some kind of Mario thing, but no one had “3D DK” on their bingo sheets. Once announced, I wasn’t even sure I wanted a new 3D DK, DK64 wasn’t my jam, I just want more insanely high quality Mario games targeting new hardware. But I Trusted The System and holy crap this game rules.

Super Mario 64 represents the original template for effectively all 3D platformers (not just Mario ones), and it provides a reasonably steady drip feed of dopamine in finding stars. The team built on this template over time through Sunshine, Galaxies, 3D Worlds and Lands, and eventually with Odyssey they had refined it to the point that it felt like the tap had been opened as far as it would go, with the absolutely ludicrous amount of moons and coins and outfits and everything just all over the place. Donkey Kong Bananza is a goddamn firehose. There’s a completely unreasonable amount of collectibles in this game. Everywhere you turn there’s a banana or a fossil or an enormous cavern full of gold demanding to be strip-mined, or a bunch of dudes to explode or something – anything – begging you to slug it in the face as hard as you can. It moves at a pace that makes Mario 64 feel like a calculated turn based strategy game.

One way or another, nearly everything in this game is fully destructible. Rocks, Floor, Ceilings, Crystals, Enemies, Bananas, Ice Sculptures, everything. “You See That Mountain? You Can climb it REDUCE IT TO RUBBLE WITH YOUR FISTS.” The game does not care. It even rewards you for indiscriminate tunneling at random, by spawning chests in your path that can have maps to collectible fossils, or consumables, or even more gold or whatever.

Structurally Banaza is a very clear direct follow-up to Odyssey. You’re on a journey to the planet’s core and in doing so you visit various “Layers” (contrasting the typical “climbing” done in DK games), which are isolated themed zones. Solve puzzles, gain powers, ohh banana, fight bosses, rinse / repeat. Some bananas are just sitting out in the world, some are hidden in the world, some are literally entombed in the game’s geometry, some are rewards for bosses, and some are stuffed in challenge ruins akin to Odyssey’s sub-zones. Unlike Odyssey there’s an actual skill tree now, and that’s ostensibly what you’re collecting all those Bananas for, and it’s got some upgrades that are actually legitimately useful like a clap that sends out a sonar ping for hidden Bananas, Fossils and Chests. Also similar to Odyssey, there’s a mix of Major and Minor Layers. Major ones have a full suite of Major Powerup, 3 types of fossils, tons of bananas and a major power upgrade. Minor ones have one type of fossil, no power, no major boss, and a smaller selection of bananas. It’s a good mix, the minor layers provide a good breather between the bigger ones.

Apart from the overall technical achievement of being able to blow up effectively everything in the environment, the other major shock with this game to me was just how much of it there is. They simultaneously pulled off depth and breadth. Everything is so densely packed – often times literally – into these levels, and also the levels are IMMENSE. Think of the physically largest level in Odyssey – probably Luncheon Kingdom – nearly all levels are larger than that. Then add in that nearly all these levels have multiple Sub-layers stacked within them, and also you can plow a DK-sized tunnel through any of it at any time.

The only complaint I have about it is that most of the game is a little too breezy. It finally cranks up in difficulty in its final act, and when it does it feels sorta jarring. It’s fine, I just sorta wish it was a little more challenging. It cranks up again in the post-credits content, but I don’t think it ever reached a level akin to some of the truly absurd post-credits levels in Odyssey. There were certainly a whole mess of bananas I missed in my first run through the game – and even some challenge ruins I somehow missed – but there was nothing where I found it, tried it, and decided to park it for cleanup later due to it just being too hard. There were PLENTY of levels of that difficulty in Odyssey, like half the dark-side levels, and darker-side.

. . . But that’s absolutely the only complaint I have. Everything else is spectacular. I won’t get deep into describing the Major Power-Ups, the levels, or the unbelievably outstanding final act of the game, it’s all amazing. Odyssey was a perfect technical platformer, Bananza is its perfect counterpart in a bombastic anti-technical slug-fest. Unquestionably Highly Recommended. Easy GOTY material, plausibly Game-of-the-Decade material. Now go make a Mario Game so beautiful it makes me cry.