Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

"A departure that shouldn't be considered the same series, that is, however, fun."

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is, well, not a Banjo game at all. This game involves the creative use of parts to build vehicles in order to beat in game challenges from characters for Jiggies. The only thing that remains from the old Banjos is the concept of Jigsaws and a few characters. I was disappointed by this, but the gameplay soon won me over. Let's get detailed.

Gameplay- 8 out of 10.

The core gameplay of this game is flawed. You'll only notice this if you play the game in a way it was not intended, however. What I mean by this is that the game's controls are slippery. A car you build will be harder to control than an actual car, whereas it should be much easier. The controls are simple. Right trigger is go forward, left trigger is brake and go back. You steer with the control stick and use the other three buttons for gadgets on your vehicles. The same goes for planes, and, less often, boats. Your control feels very limited, though. Fast vehicles, even with the best gripped wheels, have lots of problems with turning, and you'll either hairpin out and start spinning or not turn fast enough. It's because of this, though, that the other side of the gameplay is present. You see, the other side is fun. This is the mechanic for making your own mission-specific vehicles. You must find part scattered throughout the entrance world and bring them to Mumbo Jumbo. With these parts, rather than using the vehicles the game provides for you (which is legitimate, but you won't have any fun doing it) , you can build vehicles that match whatever mission you're doing in speed, hauling power, weight, and mode of transportation. You can build a car, boat, plane, or any combination of the three. You won't build boats very often, and usually they'll just be for racing, but you'll develop many cars and planes for different purposes. The missions themselves aren't varied at all. About 60% of them are just races. Thirty of the remaining percents are fetch missions, and the rest are creative ideas. Once you run out of Jigsaw missions, there are plenty of Jinjos that will provide you with medals that you can trade in for prizes such as notes and parts.There's a lot of replay value, as each challenge has extra rewards for completing them faster or better. The game's mission mechanics are well thought out. The control, as I said, is extremely slippy, but you won't notice this if you make very closely attended mission specific vehicles.

Graphics- 10 out of 10

I think this is the best I've seen out of the Xbox 360 so far. The graphics in this game don't try to be edgy or kiddy or bloody. They're colorful, but not so colorful you'll want to gouge your eyes out. The graphics fit well with the game, and all fit a general motif of being thrown together last minute. There's patches holding courses together, and clouds rotating on a gear. The lighting is excellent, and even small patches of grass have visible shadows. No matter how far you zoom on textures, they always seem to be a perfect resolution. In Spiral Mountain, the only course not meant to fit the patchwork motif, you'll notice an amazing amount of detail and realism. It doesn't try to look good, it tries to look real, and it succeeds at that. Every once in a while, you'll leave your vehicle and just walk around on foot gawking at the levels. The only flaw is that the constant redrawing that allows this level of detail by subtracting and adding detail far off is VERY noticeable. Another problem is that the graphics all but lose their charm when viewed on anything less than 720p. I've played the game on a 4:3 480p television, and with the way it compromises widescreen, the only thing you'll be able to see is the things you absolutely HAVE to see. A lot of 360 games have this problem on standard definition sets, but I think they should take a cue from The Orange Box and support a 4:3 fullscreen mode. If the Wii developers can do it, so can the 360 developers, and it's a requirement to have both modes supported on the Wii. No detail whatsoever is seen on an old set. I recommend, however, if you don't have an HD set, you should get one if only for this game. I did that myself. I assure you you won't regret it.

Story- 8 out of 10

I'm not giving the story an 8 because it was good. Honestly, the story sucked. The Lord of Games decides to hold a competition between Banjo and Grunty to see who gets to keep Spiral Mountain. They warp off to Showdown Town, and the story is never mentioned again. I gave that an 8 because it did its job right. It gave a setting and characters for the game to take place. This game makes it very obvious that it's trying to represent the golden era of the Nintendo 64 and Playstation, and this largely absent story helps that along really well. You'll not even remember there is a story, but you'll have fun nonetheless. There's lots of funny dialog, but the characterization is bad compared to older Banjos. You really won't notice there even is a story.

Sound- 9 out of 10

The music in this game is great. It's all orchestrated, like most recent Rare games, but still manages to transition based on where you are and what you're doing, which not only being a feature of the 64 and PS games it's trying to imitate, it was also a feat which many developers called impossible with orchestrated music, and was the justification behind not orchestrating the music in recent Zelda games. The music fits the stages well, and it's never bland. A lot of the sound is new, but every once in a while, you'll hear one of your old favorite songs from the first two games (and once or twice, one from the Game Boy Advance installment) worked into the songs. The music is catchy, and you'll find yourself humming it often. After a while you'll get tired of some of the challenge music, but by the time you are, it will have changed to something different. Unless of course you get stuck doing the same challenge a few times, and maybe if this happens, you should play your own music until you beat it. The music in the challenges is not repetitive, but the same challenge will always yield the same song, and sometimes they can become associated with your frustration. The sound effects are mostly good, but some are repetitive and cartoony, such as the sound effect for the spring gadget. You will become tired of this sound. The engines sound realistic, though, and the weapons have a sound that pleases the ear with pulses that only slightly resemble the sound of a real gun. The characters are voiced in the same way as in the old game, which is a plus, as full voice acting would take away from some of the largely pun-based humor. The sounds they make are just as funny as the words they say, however, and you won't get tired of listening to them.

Buy or Rent?

You won't get the game's full experience if you rent it. Most of the parts will be absent and your vehicles won't get to be as varied. It wouldn't be fun if you rented it. I do recommend borrowing it from a friend for a while before buying it, though, because the gameplay's not for everyone.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/24/09

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