Banjo-Tooie

"Mumbo Jumbo once said "Banjo Tooie make Banjo Kazooie look like joke." It turns out Mumbo was right."

It's been a while since this game came out, but that says something. Banjo Tooie is 6 years old and yet I still gave it a 10. Infact, this is one of, if not the best game ever made. I've always dreamed of a game like this. My prayers were answered as it turns out.

"Banjo-Tooie? Sounds great! Is it any good?"
-Banjo
"Oh it is, Banjo. It is."
-Me

GAMEPLAY: 10/10
A well-deserved 10. Banjo Tooie is funnier, longer, harder, and more fun than Banjo Kazooie, and Banjo Kazooie is a really good game. First I should explain all the good things about the gameplay. I hope you have enough time. Banjo Tooie is supposed to be a really hard game. I didn't find it that hard though. Of course there's plenty of challenge, but the game as a whole was just an average difficulty level. It's pretty complicated though. The levels are so big, that you'll often find yourself writing down everything you need to do in each level. Even the early levels pose a challenge to the unexperienced gamer.

The way most of the items work has changed a lot from Banjo Kazooie. The most significant change is with the musical notes. Notes are found in nests in groups of 5 and they are incredibly easy to find. I got all 900 notes in the game with near no effort. The notes you collect are now saved as you move from level to level so they're even easier to get. Jamjars the mole, who replaces Bottles the mole will teach you a certain move only if you have at least a certain number of total collected notes throughout all the levels, but I usually had at least 100 more notes than the required amount every time I found him, since the notes are so easy to collect now.

Another change is with the eggs. Eggs are also found in nests and go a lot further than the standard blue eggs from Banjo Kazooie. You can now collect fire eggs, grenade eggs, ice eggs, and even eggs that reveal a tiny robotic bird that you can control for a limited time to explode wherever you want. There's also the ability to shoot eggs in first-person view as well as zooming in with the first-person view to snipe enemies. Sniping is pretty hard though, because the eggs travel relatively slow and the enemies are always moving around. You'll still find yourself using the first-person view a lot, because it really helps with shooting enemies and objects while swimming/flying.

The jinjo system has also changed. Instead of there being 5 jinjos in each level to collect, there are a certain amount of jinjos of a certain family to collect. You get one jiggy every time you find all the jinjos of a certain color. Also, there's new enemies called the minjos. Minjos look exactly like jinjos, but they attack you when you get close.

Banjo Tooie now has bosses. Banjo Kazooie sort of had bosses, but you could almost never tell whether or not you were fighting one and they were pretty much scattered across the game in unexpected ways. In Banjo Tooie, there's one boss in each level (with one exception) and you know when you're fighting one. The bosses are creative, but only a couple are hard.

Banjo Tooie has amazing mini-games. It makes you wish the Mario Party games could have mini-games this fun and creative. I actually go back and play them for fun. I almost never do that. Most of them require you to shoot a certain number of something to get a certain number of points within a certain time limit. However, the controls/areas range a lot with each game so they don't get repetitive. A lot of these mini-games are first-person shooting sequences. These sequences control exactly like Goldeneye 007 with a few small changes, so you can't expect much wrong from them.

There were a few things, however, that I didn't like about the gameplay, despite it getting a perfect 10.

The camera is definitely better than in Banjo Kazooie, because it tends to stay behind Banjo most of the time. In a game like this, that's usually where the camera always needs to be. I didn't find myself holding the R button as much as I did in Banjo Kazooie which is a good thing. The bad thing is that I've been using the C buttons left and right a lot. When I have to jump several narrow platforms, I'll move the camera to the left or right of Banjo to get a better view of where to jump and the camera slowly comes back behind Banjo. This and many other problems with the camera occurred during the game.

One last minor flaw with the gameplay was the level design got a little like this at points. You come to a fork. You can take either path A or path B. You take path A. You get so caught up in trying to get the jiggy/move/whatever in path A, that you completely forget about path B. This eventually comes back to haunt you, because you never got the jiggy/move/whatever in path B that you forgot about, because you were so distracted by path A. This happens a lot and kind of goes under the category of the overwhelming levels. Most entrances or areas look exactly the same (especially in the second level) and you'll spend forever trying to find path B again.

Obviously, the gameplay is so great that you'll often never notice the few flaws, thus explaining the 10.

STORY: 9/10
I don't think the story was quite as good as Banjo Kazooie's, but I gave Banjo Kazooie's story an 8 and this a 9. Why you ask? One reason.

Humor, lol. Banjo Kazooie has a few jokes every now and then, but Banjo Tooie is hilarious! There's something funny everywhere you look. Even the references to other games and movies scattered about are funny. Even the things that aren't funny are funny. There are several laugh-out-loud moments throughout the whole game. The characters have a lot more personality than in Banjo Kazooie. I said that Banjo Kazooie is all the joy of Saturday morning cartoons. Banjo Tooie is better.

GRAPHICS: 8/10
The graphics are amazing. They're even more amazing, knowing that Banjo Tooie doesn't even need the Expansion Pak for its outstanding graphics quality. The game takes on a much darker tone than Banjo Kazooie. Banjo looks a lot taller and skinnier. So much that when I went back to play Banjo Kazooie, I thought the screen got squashed, because Banjo looked so short. There's not much else to say about graphics, but one thing. The graphics are obviously better than in Banjo Kazooie, but the framerate is not. It can take a while for somebody who's played through the smoothly flowing Banjo Kazooie to get used to the atrocious framerate. It's choppy enough to start with and slows down a lot. You do get used to it though.

SOUND: 10/10
I gave Banjo Kazooie's sound a 9. Banjo Tooie has much better music. As well as a darker theme with graphics, there's also a darker theme with music. They're all really good. The background music for the boss of each level is a faster, more dramatic version of the background music for the area you fight them in. With dramatic songs, there's also happy songs and they're all really good. One small problem was that since Banjo is 2 years older, his high-pitched cries he makes when he jumps are now replaced by low-pitched cries. I liked the high-pitched cries better. They grow up so fast.

REPLAYABILITY: 9/10
You may not want to go back and play the game again, since once you get a jiggy once, there isn't much a need to get it again. However, there's a replay option that lets you replay bosses and mini-games. The bosses are really well-made and the mini-games are really addictive so of course you'll want to try them again. That's mainly where the replayability comes in.

DIFFICULTY: 7/10
There are parts that may take several tries to get through and the later levels definitely do pose a challenge, but overall the difficulty was easy to average. Banjo Tooie really isn't hard in a bad way, because you'll always want to come back to whatever you're stuck on, even when you have no idea what to do. Difficulty normally turns me off when there's too much of it, but Banjo Tooie is a game where you're glad it's hard.

MULTIPLAYER: 8/10
Usually a game that focuses so much on single player content doesn't have a very good multiplayer mode, but that is definitely not the case with Banjo Tooie. The mini-games are fun enough playing them yourself, but playing them against a friend is only more fun. The shootouts almost exactly match Goldeneye's level of first-person multiplayer. It's like Mario Party, only good.

PROS:
Much longer than Banjo Kazooie.
Gets pretty difficult at times.
The script is funny and well written.
Blends many types of gameplay together.
Addictive mini-games.
Creative bosses.
Impressive graphics and no Expansion Pak needed.
The music is varied and really good.
The replay option.
Great multiplayer.
A lot of references to other games.

CONS:
Levels get a little too complex.
Notes are too easy to collect.
Still not a very good camera.
Terrible framerate problems.
Banjo's high-pitched cries are absent.
Not quite as hard as I expected.

The cons are very minor, so I'd give Banjo Tooie a 9.9, but I think it deserves a 10.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06