- Title: Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Developer: Rare
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Platforming
- Pros: Great graphics; excellent music; building vehicles is awesome; $40 price; very funny
- Cons: Character voices; framerate
Nuts & Bolts starts off with a fat and lazy Banjo and Kazooie hanging out at Banjo’s house at Spiral Mountain when the head of Gruntilda appears and challenges them to a race. In the eight years since they last defeated the evil witch Gruntilda, they really let themselves go and were in no shape to go on an adventure. At this point, a new character emerges: The Lord of Games. The LOG is the creator of every videogame ever, and challenges Banjo and Kazooie to conquer his six videogame themed worlds, and tasks Gruntilda with trying to stop them. The winner of this competition gets the deed to Spiral Mountain and the loser has to work in the LOG’s factory. You are whisked off to a town called Showdown Town, and the adventure begins.
Prior knowledge of the BK games isn’t necessary, but it will help you to understand a lot of the humor in Nuts & Bolts. This game is downright hilarious and pokes fun at previous BK games, Rare games in general, the Xbox 360, and pretty much everything else. This is one of the absolute funniest games of the year. Prior experience with the series will also help when you get to see how gorgeous Spiral Mountain is now, see old favorite characters in their new next-gen skins, as well as listen to all of the great music that remixes a lot of the classic themes from the other games.
Gameplay
The missions have you moving objects, racing through courses, fighting with weapons, and much, much more. The key to the game is that each mission requires a specific vehicle feature set, but everyone that plays the game will build their vehicle in a different way. That is the pure genius of Nuts & Bolts in that everyone will have a unique experience even though we’re all playing the same missions. Once you get past any lingering “This isn’t the Banjo I remember …” whining, you discover that Nuts & Bolts is a unique and wonderful game that is addictive and amazingly rewarding and satisfying.
One additional comment I have is that low level vehicles are pretty sucky compared to more advanced vehicles. You get better parts which make the vehicles handle much better later on, so don’t judge the gameplay by the sloppy handling of the first few vehicles you use.
Graphics & Sound
Graphically, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a gorgeous looking game. Everything is bright and colorful and cheery, and in a world where games consist mostly of grays and browns, Nuts & Bolts really stands out. It is also nice to see the next-gen versions of classic characters from the series. There are some framerate issues, unfortunately, that can cause the game to chug along during intense missions, but it doesn’t happen too often.The sound is mostly good. The music is a mix of new tunes and remixed tracks from previous games, and they all sound great. It is also very nice how the music dynamically changes based on what you are currently doing, which is a nice touch. I’m not crazy about the character “voices”, however. I know it is a trademark of the series that the characters all sort of mumble in their own unique sounds without actually saying anything, but I think it pushes the boundaries of cute and kiddy a bit too far. This is a game that has the gameplay to appeal to everyone, but the combination of the cutsey graphics and obnoxious character voices might turn some people away that would otherwise enjoy it. It is rather like Viva Piñata in this way in that Rare has created an amazing game that can appeal to anyone, but divides the potential audience for it with poor presentation choices.
Bottom Line
