Banjo-Tooie

"if you didn't like BK, you won't be able to 'bear' this one *gets shot in head*"

Now This, THIS I was looking forward to even more than the first one, my expectations had been built up so high, that not really any game could reach them, and Banjo Tooie didn't. But then (and this sounds weird) I kind of expected it to not meet my expectations. But that's not to say it isn't a great game, because it is, but perhaps not the huge leap in gameplay some of us had hoped for.

Grunty's sisters (Brentilda nowhere to be seen, she must have such an outcast in her family) come to spiral mountain and revive old grunty the witch with a spell, but she as no body, so the witches tell her of a big machine that can suck the life out of anything and put it onto her. Before returning to the castle, Grunty sets about destroying Banjo's house and killing poor bottles (well at least it will eradicate those awfully unfunny arguments him and Kazooie used to have) You play Banjo and Kazooie and guess what you have to do? If you haven't figured it out, I'm guessing you've never played any platformers before.

In most ways the graphics are vastly improved over the original, amazing lighting effects even more hilarious character animation, and the biggest levels seen in a platform game EVER. But all this size means that things get very jerky at times, when theres a lot in view. just go to the waterfall in spiral mountain to see what i'm talking about. But overall this doesn't effect the game itself, but it would have been nice to have had it fixed. The levels are more beautiful than ever, cascading waterfalls, huge snow mountains, towering factories, MASSIVE lakes of fire and jaw-droppingly scenic underwater cities.

The sound is back with a vengaence, and love them or hate them, those comedy voices put in another appearance. In my opinion the tunes aren't nearly as catchy or fun as the ones in Banjo Kazooie, but this doesn't really matter at all, how many other people noticed a similarity between the Klungo music and the rusty Bucket Bay music?

The gameplay is much the same as before, except this time the range and amount of things you must collect is bordering on ridiculous, as is the frightening amount of moves you learn. One big difference in this game is that you can now split up, although this usually just means getting each character to a switch with their face on it, which is a shame, but the exceptions can be fun too making the concept a good one. There are mini-games a plenty here, I forget how many but a LOT, and they can all be replayed from the game select screen, also in multiplayer, which is very nice. The game is jam-packed with some amazing, hilarious, frustrating, and mostly immensely enjoyable, challenges. theres the fantastic saucer of Peril, the tense FPS sections and the gigantic bosses, all met with some sarcastic comments from Kazooie. and there's another endearing feature of the game, the humour, unlike in Banjo Kazooie, the jokes in this game are actually genuinely funny, and don't just cater for 5 year olds like the last one. But with the great fun and the good humour and charm, this game does have it's downsides. It is (In my opinion) unnecessarily large. Come level four there are just TOO many parts of the level, and usually each humongous section of a level is usually only used for one task, which can get annoying. Also you can wonder around getting lost and not knowing what to do, this is perhaps the most frustrating part of the game. Banjo Kazooie's levels were impressively big, while being small enough to always know what you're doing, and where your going, this was very satisfying. but now it's likely that you'll spend HOURS experimenting with everything, and this is wasted time, and thus the game seems disjointed in a way, somewhat lessening the enjoyment. But you'll get used to it.

One other thing I'd like to complain about, is the stupid length of some tasks, there are too many bits where you must run between four or five different locations, often clueless on what to do next, and the extensive range of moves and use of split up, is seemingly put in primarily to confuse people and wickedly double the game length, and this just isn't good enough coming from Rare, but luckily the game has enough fun bits and charm and is very long, so it always redeems itself, JUST.

Overall, there isn't much new here, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you are good at wandering around baron areas with little clue of what to do (i.e an RPG fan) and liked the previous Banjo game, then if you stick with this you'll find an absolutely brilliant set of challenges and characters, just waiting to win over your approval, and it will.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/13/01, Updated 05/13/01