Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge

"When I bought this game I had no intention of beating it on the same day."

Banjo-Kazooie, and yes, even Banjo-Tooie have always been my favorite games of all time. I grew up addicted to Rareware, from Donkey Kong Country to Banjo-Kazooie, to Conker. When I heard about two years ago that they were planning on making a sequel (or prequel) to one of my favorite games of all time, I jumped for joy. After playing it, I don't feel like jumping anymore.

Story (3/10) - Gruntilda somehow sends her spirit out from under the giant rock she was trapped under and enters some strange mechanical suit made by Klungo resembling Grunty. (Mecha) Grunty steals Kazooie, and escapes to the past. Mumbo sends Banjo back to the past after her to stop history from changing. A pretty lame (and clichéd) plot, but Rareware did rush the game, and I suppose I couldn't think of anything much better. (Yeah, right.)

Gameplay/Originality (3/10) - Simple Banjo-Kazooie ''collect notes, learn moves, collect Jiggies, use Jiggies and moves to get to next level'' style. Fun, but gets boring pretty fast. Which is good, because this game is so fast it only starts to get boring around the end. (I beat it in 3 hours, 100%.) Anyway, only three types of mini-games in BK:GR; fishing, sliding, and driving around to collect the mini-game's featured item. These get very boring. Bosses in the game are very easy and short, and don't seem creative at all. And the levels all have very uncreative names and are all loosely based off of levels from the two N64 titles. I was hoping that they would make up for it by having some secrets or extras in the game. *Spoilers ahead*
The big secret in the game? You get coins during the credits that allow you to play the boring mini-games that you already beat. Whoopee. I think I've criticized gameplay enough, so let's move on.

Graphics (7/10) - Graphics are fine, I suppose. Animation is pretty smooth, but I think I've seen better graphics on the GBA before. Also, when people talk, the font that they talk in is different than on the N64. This bugged me throughout the game, because I was used to the original font. I don't have much else to say about graphics, so let's move on again.

Sound/Music (4/10) - Sound quality is good, especially with headphones. I'm not grading this on the sound quality, though, but the actual sounds in the game. Most sound effects are good, and I liked the fact that the egg, Jinjo, and Jiggy sounds from N64 were intact. What I didn't like were the character voices. Banjo's ''speaking'' voice was a bit higher, I think. I only liked a few voices in the game, mainly characters that were also in the N64 version. But new characters voices' were mainly 2 sounds over and over. Which gets very annoying. Music was very unoriginal and forgettable, but what caused me to give this section such a low score was the lack of the Banjo-Kazooie theme song. (http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Bunker/9369/stuff/banjo-kazooie.mid) How could they leave that out of a Banjo-Kazooie game?!? Rareware has betrayed me for the last time. Can't believe they moved to Microsoft...Err...back on topic. The only N64 music left in the game was the Spiral Mountain theme, which is good, but where's the BK theme?? Bah. Next topic.

Replay Value (1/10) - After beating this game, I have absolutely no urge to play it again. Which is why I just sold it. Oh, well. Maybe if the mini-games were more fun, or if the game had more plot or something. After playing the N64 games, I can play them again and again. This is different, though.

Well, there you have it. Good game to play through once, preferably with the sound on soft. If you're a Banjo-Kazooie fan, you'll probably just play it once. If you're not, you may even stop playing in the middle of the game. My final score for this game is a 4 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/03