In the golden years of the Nintendo 64, platformers seemed to be the fuel that kept me moving myself to the game shop in order to spend far too much of what little cash I had on cartridges. There were a lot of great ones, and while I could list off a few that grabbed my attention the most, one of the games that fell well under the radar for me was Banjo-Kazooie. I played it, I beat it, but that was about it. I borrowed it, went through it on a weekend, and never really stepped back into the series again. It’s not that the game was bad, but I was so burnt out on the formula at that point that the collect-fests started to wear thin on me. Without remembering much about the game, I still remember the charm of the whole thing. The characters were funny and unique, and had personalities (a rarity for most games even these days) and the whole plot and design was charming and very British. When the sequel was announced, Banjo-Tooie, I was intrigued enough to give it a try, but not enough to finish the whole thing. However, a fondness for the whole series still remained years later, a fact I only realized when Rare announced a proper sequel for the Xbox 360, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

Your introduction in the game is a montage of events past in the Banjo canon. Defeating the witch Gruntilda (antagonist of the series), enjoying some free time, rinse and repeat. You are then brought right into the modern landscape they’ve carved, with a familiar trip back to Spiral Mountain where the whole event started, and Gruntilda’s skull rising from a pile of rubble to start trouble. The lead characters, Banjo and Kazooie, are out of shape and overweight from their years of inaction, and when the battle between the large pair and the decrepit skull is about to start you are transported to a new world, fit and ready for a fight. The Lord of Games (L.O.G.) wants you to settle things once and for all in an arena he has designed, using a magic wrench to build contraptions for each challenge instead of relying on the skills of Kazooie to guide you. You collect Jiggies (a staple of the series) through the challenges to unlock more worlds for more challenges, and collect music notes as currency within that world. And that’s your first impression of the whole thing, simply being overwhelmed by the amount of things to collect and exploring the world you’ve been thrust into.

The big thing I noted right from the start is how much the game benefits from the shift outside the platforming paradigm it had always been, moving towards a gameplay style that makes offers some building blocks (literally) and basic rules and lets you design the solution. Gone are the clumsy jumps between ledges and the endless memorization of timing sequences, and your goal now is to simply build your inventory in order to build more fantastical devices to help you along the way. Airplanes, helicopters, boats, jets, race cars, tanks, carboatplanes, it’s all possible if you have the mind to design it and the parts in your garage to put it all together. The hard part of this mechanic is how limited your are from the very start, with only a few combination of pieces to put together from the first world, you’ll find the blueprints that the game offers up by default easier to use for far too long. By the time you begin to progress, however, it becomes obvious why Rare put this mechanic as the basis for the game: it’s a lot of fun to conjure up your own solutions for standard gaming problems and find ways to “cheat” the system. If your car isn’t fast enough, toss another engine on it, and if it still doesn’t work try making it into a plane instead and race above the ground. Maybe add a couple of weapons to your vehicle to cripple your opponent. Each play through is unique to the player sitting in front of the console. There’s no best way to do things, but rather a series of different approaches to the same problem.

Although they utilized the Viva Pinata engine, the graphics look a large step above what is available in that series. Perhaps the look and feel of the whole thing has the same child-like charm and whimsical fantasy aspect to it, but the world is persistent and you don’t see load times once you have stepped into each one. They are expansive, beautifully designed, and make the graphics in the game something to behold. That consistency of design stretches across each level, each character and all the parts that are put into your garage. The characters in the world still maintain their personality from previous series, and are easy to catch up with if you’ve never tried out the series. The game’s humour is self-deprecating and contains a lot of gaming in-jokes designed for people who follow the industry, and for people that have just played a lot games in their life. So, while the visual design may seem like it is aimed at a younger audience, it still has the voice of a gaming veteran and puzzles that are just as challenging for old school platformer fans as they would be for newcomers. The design tools are a bit cumbersome, but aren’t unintuitive enough to make designing simple and complex vehicles a project that takes only a few minutes.

The weaknesses in the gameplay do come out as the game continues, though, and mostly in the form of having a very repetitive set of quests and having to return to each level a number of times. After getting over the initial collection shock, the world does become smaller as your vehicle inventory becomes more expansive. When you do have to result to actual platforming in the game, you’ll probably note that the controls don’t translate all that well once you’re on your feet. Imprecise and awkward platforming components are not the best in the game, and are the only times I found myself truly frustrated. The characters don’t tire out, but there are there are some notable omissions for fans of the series, the lack of Kazooie’s biting sarcasm throughout most of the game being the one that disappointed me most. The writing is really great for the characters, so when you get into the later stages and notice less banter and a reduced amount of quips, it makes each one seem more like a chore than an experience.

As much as I can bemoan the fact that the game still feels like a collection fest in a world that may not be as receptive to the concept, it’s a game that has kept me coming back to it over the last two months on a consistent basis. Yes, I was playing it to review, but I will probably continue to play the game as the amount of challenges it offers, including besting my own times, collecting trophies for getting optimum times for each challenge, and just finding everything there is to find is legitimately rewarding in the game and gives you benefits as you continue through the world. The multiplayer components are also a lot of fun, giving you the ability to pit your custom designed monstrosities against the rest of the world, or just swapping designs and videos on how to complete certain challenges. While there is certainly more potential for integration of those community aspects into the main game, it still stands as a good addition to an already solid product. Rare have actually made a very good game from a relatively old series, and while many might not warm up to the fact it has betrayed its platforming roots, it’s evolved into something that transcends that in a big way. It’s a great game, certainly worth a try to get a feel for the freedom of designing your own way around an open world. A world where you can strap a jet to a helicopter with a grenade launcher and homing torpedos and still feel like your car just use one more adjustment to make it the perfect blend of speed and destruction.

So what I’m really trying to say is…
Banjo is a solid game, though the repetition can get lame. Vehicle building works exceptionally well and will keep you busy for a spell. Graphics are great and the writing’s a treat and Rare don’t mind stepping on their own feet. While the community aspects can often lack, the multiplayer portions will keep you coming back. Don’t let the whimsy keep you at bay, this is a game that you should certainly play. Go design whatever you can conjure and make the gameplay last even longer. Rare has served up another winner, and I’ll end on that before the rhyming gets thinner.

Banjo-Kazooie arrived courtesy of Microsoft, priced at $39.99 (CDN) for the Xbox 360. Game played for 20 hours, online and defeated the final boss. 100 Jiggies collected.