Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Sunday, January 4, 2009
It was ten years ago the bear and the red bird appeared in our old tube TV’s and now they are back and this time with vehicles as the main aspect of the game, are they as lovable as they were ten years ago? Read on and see …
Retired and a passion for vehicles
Since their old days as adventurers Banjo and Kazooie become fat and lazy sitting in front of the TV playing video games, a rather amusing introduction to the game especially for those nostalgic to see the main characters, the story of the game can hardly be defined as a “story”, where a “story” in this game is basically non-existent, but it’s not unusual for this genre though.
Anyway, our cuddly main characters meets The Lord Of The Games, which puts Banjo and Kazooie out of retirement to face off with the witch Grunty yet again. With this, we also get to know that all the cool moves they had learned in previous games, have now been lost and will never come back because they have been replaced with a wrench and a cart with wheels. Not really exciting but the wrench helps the player to assemble the vehicles later in the game and the cart will help the player to move around things that need to be moved. A lot of the original humor is still there, Simple-minded Banjo and Kazooie as the sarcastic joker, always saying something silly when a dialogue occurs.
Showdown town and the construction of vehicles
Like other games in the same genre Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts has a hub-world, one world that branches out into smaller worlds that the player can explore. This hubworld is called Showdown Town, and is clearly one of the better worlds of the different worlds you can visit.
Showdown Town is an incredibly cozy town which feels humongous at first and is fun to explore. The almost oversaturated colors and wierd-shaped people makes the game very attractive to young players. Showdown town is also the only part of the world where you actually get to do a bit of a platforming, in the other smaller worlds the vehicles rule since all the missions needs you to use vehicles.
Like the previous games you need to collect jiggies (golden puzzle pieces) in order to move forward in the game, the more jiggies you collect, the more doors to new worlds can you open to new worlds. In Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, the key-element is to build vehicles using that handy wrench you got in the beginning of the game, however you do not have to build vehicles if you do not want too, existing vehicle designs can be used as long as you have the right parts for the blueprints. But why wouldn’t you build your own vehicles? It is surely the greatest aspect of the game and much of the gaming experience would clearly be lost if you do not get into the great vehicle-editor.
At first the introduction of the garage is really overwhelming, there are many different vehicle parts and a lot to think about, but the learning curve is not that excessive after fifteen minutes you will be all game. The vehicle-editor itself is probably one of the most incredible building-mechanics I have encountered in a game, it’s really well done. When your vehicle has been built, you can take your new sweet ride into the smaller game worlds, not Showdown Town unfortunately. Around Showdown Town you’ll find many boxes containing vehicle-parts for the editor and it’s a joy to run around looking for these, since many of them contain really cool upgrades, you will always see a box in a almost unreachable place and really use some wacky tactics to get it.
Missions, missions, missions
In each smaller game world there exist different kinds of quests or missions you can do for the inhabitants of each world, the missions varies between different types of race, delivery, guard or and sometimes missions that requires you to attack something. This is where the real creativity comes in, and this is where it gets really fun. It’s up to the player himself to come up with a solution that will resolve the different problems you will happen upon in the missions. You’ll need to build a vehicle that will help you in your mission, and with this you get some crazy results such as a plane-cage-catcher, where the actual cage is three times the size of the plane, you can do some wacky stuff.
There will be some more tedious missions though, these missions is where the player is forced to use a pre-chosen vehicle. Most of the creativity and the fun of the game gets lost here. You know you could build something more awesome but the game won’t let you. It’s really annoying, expecially when most of the missions have a time-limit to them.
After each mission you usually get rewarded with a jiggy, or vehicleparts and if you’re really good you’ll get rewarded with a trophy. When you get back to Showdown Town you’ll have to pick up the jiggie and drop it off into a big container, a rather pointless job since you’ve actually.
Graphics, music and sound effects
The graphics in this game are spectacular, the game looks incredibly good, it’s cozy and has nice saturated colors mixed with nice cartoony-like textures on everything. You’ll become happy just looking at the game. The in-game water is really beautiful, better than other games in the same genre.
The music in this game is similar to previous Banjo games, cozy and atmospheric. The music varies from level to level with an atmospheric melody depending on the level. You’ll often find yourself humming the tune after you’ve been playing a while. The sound effects in the game is clearly in the same class as the music, but it is slightly irritating to listen to the chattering of each character, which has persisted since the previous games in the series.
Conclusion
After playing for a while the game can certainly appear quite repetitive and sometimes boring, it may be because of the story, you don’t even care about what will happen next, mainly because nothing really exciting ever happens, like a bossbattle or some kind of event that moves the story forward, in this game you will have to motivate yourself and hopefully you can enjoy the vehicle-building throughout the game. It was all fun and games in the beginning of the game, but nothing dramatically ever happens towards the middle that makes you want to play all the way to the end. It’s a cozy game but I feel like it lacks so much in the story-department that even the gameplay cannot make up for it. I believe that the developers should have stayed with the old formula and add the vehicle aspect of the game as an addition, and not the main mechanic.
I would recommend this game for a person who loves to build things, to look at the beautiful graphics or have something nice to play a few nights.
