Press Start's GOTY #6 - Donkey Kong Bananza

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It’s time for our annual countdown to award the very best games this year had to offer. Over the next ten days, we’ll count down our top ten games of 2025.

As always, the votes of each Press Start team member, weighted from #10 through to #1, were collated to compile our collective very best for the year that was. Games worthy of one’s top spot would be awarded a maximum of 10 points, and the values would descend to their tenth selection, which would receive a single point.

If you asked me at the start of the year whether we’d see a brand new, mainline Donkey Kong platformer serving as Nintendo’s big tentpole for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch, I’d have called you mad. In fact, I staked my entire Fantasy Critic year on the belief.

Little did I know that after completing work on Super Mario Odyssey, the team got to work on Donkey Kong Bananza, the great ape’s next big adventure. The game’s centrepiece environmental destruction is built around DK’s powerhouse strength, and it plays perfectly into the game’s layered level structure, which sees you pound deeper and deeper into the underground.

Our own Shannon was mystified by Donkey Kong’s cake ass and, for clear reasons, couldn’t get the game out of his mind.

Donkey Kong Bananza perfectly encapsulates pure Nintendo fun, as it takes one of its earliest founding characters and reinvents him for a new generation. Nintendo also managed to combine all of the things we’ve always loved him for: platforming, music, and ground-slapping silliness that made me, for a solid week, answer “Ooh, banana!” to just about everything.

Shannon Says

“Donkey Kong Bananza was my standout game of the year this year. It took one of my lifelong favourite characters and gave him the treatment that he deserves with an Odyssey-style game, and really showed off the power of the Nintendo Switch 2.

It was super fun to play, oozed personality, and it’s exactly what I want more of from Nintendo going forward.”

In our review, James scored Donkey Kong Bananza a 10 out of 10, stating:

“With Donkey Kong Bananza, DK is back in a big way. It blends new tech with old-school Nintendo charm for a destructive experience that is both intoxicating and addictive. While Pauline’s storyline is underdeveloped, this is easily Donkey Kong at his absolute best.

Regardless of some minor blemishes, Donkey Kong Bananza deserves a place in any self-respecting Switch 2 owner’s library and, much like Super Mario Odyssey before it, sets an incredibly high bar for all that will follow.”