Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

"Out Of Retirement And Into Vehicles. The Bear And Bird Are Back!"

At long last, the bear and bird return, but are they still as lovable as they were 10 years ago?

Setup
Normally this would be the story section, but in all fairness I cannot call this a story, it is merely a setup to get the game rolling.
Lord of Games (LOG) brings Banjo and Kazooie out of retirement in order to face off with Grunty again. Banjo and Kazooie have lost the ability to use all of their old moves in their retirement so LOG gives them a wrench and a trolley to compensate. LOG brings Banjo, Kazooie and Grunty to Showdown Town so that they can face off in various challenges and such. Oh, you're also collecting jiggies again.

That's really about it. Of course there's some classic BK witty dialogue tossed in the mix, Banjo is still as simple as ever and Kazooie is still a sarcastic jerk so the game definitely has a BK feel to it. Like in past games however, this dialogue is just a vehicle for setting up the challenges for jiggies.

Music and Graphics
There's one thing that I can say about this game with 100% certainty it's that it looks and sounds absolutely amazing.

The graphics are beautiful. Everything looks crisp and clean, the world is full of vibrant and varied colors and the style, while very different from past BK games, is a nice, upbeat, sort of cartoon-world one that suits the bear and bird quite nicely.

The music is a great mix of remixed BK songs and some new tracks. It all fits in with the scenery perfectly and just feels right. There's nothing else I can really say other than that it's simply perfect for a BK game.

Gameplay
Now here comes the meat of this review, the gameplay. The game is basically split into two parts, Showdown Town and the game worlds so I am going to give a blurb about each one of them.

Showdown Town
Showdown Town functions as your central hub, so it gives you access to all of the different worlds in the game. It also functions as sort of a vehicle hub. The biggest feature of this game is it's vehicle creation system and Showdown Town is your place for all things vehicle. First off you have Mumbo's Motors, which is where you actually create your vehicles, then you have Humba Wumba's shop, which is where you can buy premade blueprints and vehicle parts with the notes you collect throughout the levels, and last there are Mumbo crates scattered throughout the town, which hold tons of new parts. Showdown Town is the one place you get to do some actual platforming and the only reason you'll be running, climbing and jumping about is to collect the Mumbo Crates. The platforming isn't bad, it feels a little sticky and slow, but it's a refreshing, but brief, break from driving around.

Now for the vehicle creation. When you first pop into Mumbo's Motors it can be a little overwhelming, but as you progress through the game it becomes incredibly easy to whip any sort of vehicle up when you need it. The creator itself is basically a giant Legos set. You drag, drop and attach a bunch of small parts in order to create a big final product. It's a very simple system and it's very easy to use and the best part is you can really do whatever you want with it due to the sheer amount of parts you can find. If you want to make a hovercraft that launches torpedoes, can turn into a plane and uses a jet engine, you can do it. If you want to make a faithful recreation of an X-Wing from Star Wars, you can do it. This vehicle creator really is only limited by your imagination. The most enjoyable aspect of the creator is just how satisfying it is to see a crazy vehicle that you just came up with on a whim work and thankfully enough, this isn't an uncommon event. It's very easy to toss something crazy together and have it work so don't be afraid to let your imagination run wild. If you're not feeling so creative you can even use some of the blueprints that you unlock as you go along and use those as a starting point to build your own craft. You can test out all of your vehicles on a test track before you save them and you can also choose the colors for every individual block in the paint mode.

This is probably the best vehicle creators I've messed around with. As I said, it's simple, but very deep so it's great for kids who can't necessarily handle anything too complicated and it's also good for someone who enjoys some complexity.

The Game Worlds
In Showdown Town you get to make the vehicles and in the game worlds you get to really put them into action. There are six game worlds in all (Not counting Showdown Town) and each one is very unique. The levels are massive, not as massive as the levels in Banjo Tooie, but they are big enough. Sadly, exploration isn't a big focus in this game. When you get into a level your goal is to find jiggy challenges and there's not very much to that since the location of these challenges is marked very clearly on your map and there's always a big hologram of the challenge giver floating up over the area you are headed to.

Almost all of the jiggies you get in the game are from challenges. The basic run down is you find a character who gives you a challenge, they tell you about what's going on and then you participate in the challenge. Now there are two different types of challenges. First off there's the Player's Choice where you can use any vehicle you want and then there's the LOG's Choice where you are forced to use a premade vehicle specifically made for the challenge. Sadly most of the challenges can be lumped into three categories race/taxi, collect X or defend X. There are a few other types of challenges that break the monotony, but there aren't enough of them in my eyes, which is a disappointment. I really would have loved to see more destruction derby styled challenges, the game is practically asking for it, but sadly I haven't come across any yet.

Almost all of the challenges are time based and if you don't complete it in a certain amount of time you won't get your jiggy. Also if you complete the challenge extra fast you'll get a trophy and if you collect four trophies you'll get to add another jiggy to your collection. I'm not really a fan of this because it's a lazy way to increase the number of jiggies in the game and without doing all of the challenges perfectly there's no way to collect all 131 jiggies. One very nice feature of the challenges is that before starting a Player's Choice challenge you have the option to create a vehicle, so you can easily edit one of your vehicles or create a new one in order to face the specific challenge.

I think this is a good spot to talk about how well the vehicles control. In general vehicles control great. Sometimes it's tough to get a car that can make sharp turns, but with a few tweaks you'll have something that can make some fine hairpin turns. Generally the vehicles that you create will handle just fine because you'll probably test them and tweak them until you are comfortable, the real trouble is in the LOG's Choice challenges. A lot of the vehicles you are forced to use feel awkward to use. They tend to handle poorly and can lead to some incredibly frustrating challenges.

Another problem I've noticed is that the physics of land-based vehicles is somewhat off. First off sometimes when you hit another vehicle in a race you will stick to the other vehicle rather than bouncing off or sending the other car flying. This has lead to a lot of very frustrating and unenjoyable races, thankfully it's not game breaking and it's very easy to just plain avoid other racers when you're using your own perfected car. Also on land I've noticed that everything can be a little floaty at times, but not to a point where it's really a problem.

With all of that said both the air and sea based vehicles handle incredibly nicely and I must say that my favorite part of the game is creating and piloting planes, it's just a lot of fun.

The last thing I want to mention about game worlds and challenges is that there is a somewhat harsh and erratic difficulty curve. The game starts out incredibly easy and then just starts kicking you around after a little while and then goes back and forth between very easy and frustratingly difficult. It's a little annoying if you want to get all 131 jiggies, but if you don't care about that it's very easy to avoid the frustrating challenges.

Final Thoughts
I love this game. It's been a little frustrating and it's not exactly what I, as a Banjo Kazooie fan, wanted, but it's one of those games that's just pure fun. The vehicle creator is incredibly satisfying and the fact that you can easily smash your vehicle into oblivion while playing in a level just makes me happy.

So if you are looking for a TL;DR version of this review here it is. Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts is an amazing, beautiful and charming game that suffers from some repetitive challenges, some wonky physics and somewhat harsh difficulty curve. I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys building things, messing around with games or just wants something a little bit different. This game is also being sold for $40 right now, it's cheap and it's fun, what more could you want?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/08

Game Release: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (US, 11/12/08)