Donkey Kong Bananza has finally arrived, giving the Nintendo Switch 2 its first must-own game just a month after its launch. It’s the first of hopefully several game of the year contenders to come from Nintendo in 2025, and while everyone has been loving Donkey Kong Bananza, myself included, there is one aspect of the game that isn’t up to par with the rest of the experience. That is the camera, which ends up doing some real strange stuff when you go underground or deep into the terrain, and while the camera can be frustrating at moments, I think it’s the perfect camera for Donkey Kong Bananza.
Here’s why the Donkey Kong Bananza camera is bad
Too tight underground and hard to tell what’s going on
The Donkey Kong Bananza camera absolutely falls apart once you go underground, or any other place where you are completely surrounded by terrain. To be clear, when you aren’t in this position, the camera works flawlessly. I never experienced any issues when climbing up high or generally just platforming around the environment. However, there are reasons to dig deep throughout Donkey Kong Bananza that more or less require you to end up in a situation where the camera starts to fight you. The camera seems dedicated to maintaining the same distance no matter what, so the game makes up for that by allowing you to see Donkey Kong through walls, and making thick terrain invisible once you go lower. It becomes easy to not only get lost in these spaces, but also fully lose any sense of direction as you try and figure out where you are. It’s a frustration with Donkey Kong Bananza that I have, but considering what you get in exchange, I don’t want Nintendo to change it.
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I’d rather have a bad camera than limitations
Because the camera can’t handle going underground, the question becomes: is there a solution here? I don’t think so, at least not a solution that doesn’t wreck what made Donkey Kong Bananza so great in the first place. In Donkey Kong Bananza you can destroy and travel through the vast majority of the terrain in each level. There are some permeant structures and a bedrock bottom that can’t be destroyed, but if you want to clear out every bit of dirt and rock in a level, you absolutely can. That also means I can, and often do, dig straight down to search for hidden bananas and other collectibles, which often causes the camera to get wonky, but I love being able to dig straight down.
Limiting the camera would limit exploration
Exploration and camera controls go hand-in-hand in a game with this much destructibility
The way I see it, you cannot have the pure freedom in terms of exploration and destruction in Donkey Kong Banaza without having a mildly wonky camera. In most 3D platformers, you can design levels and parts of the environment in a way that you know the camera won’t get caught on in unless players are actively trying to cause issues. But since Donkey Kong Bananza is all about destroying terrain and changing how levels are set up, it’s not necessarily possible to make those decisions. Sure, you could limit the amount of underground exploration or make the default size of Donkey Kong’s punches slightly bigger to accommodate the camera, but ultimately, I think having a wonky camera is worth the trade-off of nearly complete destructability in Donkey Kong Bananza.
Perhaps I’m being too forgiving
I could be looking past the flaws of Donkey Kong Bananza because of how much fun I’m having
To self-reflect a bit, am I forgiving the issues with the camera because I love Donkey Kong Bananza? I think it’s a fair question, because I am having a great time playing. The levels are colorful and creative, the destruction is satisfying basically all the time, and the music is wonderful. Donkey Kong Bananza is also incredibly weird, with strange characters, a fully-voiced side-kick, and silly dance parties every time you unlock a new form. I like everything else about Donkey Kong Bananza so much that forgiving the bad camera is easy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right to do it.
My favorite video games of all time have rough edges
I’ll take a flawed game taking big swings over a competent one that plays it safe
When I think about the games I love the most, they are often ones that are flawed, but the aspects I love are so interesting and unique that I look past the rough edges. I think of games like Alan Wake 2 and Super Mario Sunshine that have some obvious flaws, but the unique aspects I like are incredibly special and unlike most other games. Donkey Kong Bananza has fewer rough edges than those games, but its main rough edge, the bad camera, makes the game better because of what it allows you to do. A Donkey Kong Bananza that limits your exploration and how you can move through the terrain is a worse game, even if it fixes the camera. I’ve still got plenty of levels and bananas ahead of me, but I think Donkey Kong Bananza is a game that is going to stick with me for a longtime, bad camera and all.
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