Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
After success with a papier-mâché menagerie in Viva Piñata, the guys at Rare poke the cage of their bear ‘n’ bird duo last seen patrolling Nintendo consoles.
It’s stating the obvious, but although we can expect Banjo-Kazooie to look sexy on Xbox 360 what’s less certain is how well it’s going to play. Last time Rare rolled out a decent adventure game was at the height of its success on Nintendo 64 – seven years ago. In 2001 Rare could do no wrong. Post GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day and of course Banjo-Kazooie + Tooie on N64 (awesome), pre Grabbed by the Ghoulies on Xbox and Perfect Dark Zero for Xbox 360 (dire).
It took Viva Piñata in 2006 to prove Rare still had talent and, crucially, hadn’t lost its sense of fun. Gears of War stole its thunder over Christmas that year, but VP is a terrific game nonetheless and this year’s sequel looks all set to perform much better.
Rare evidently feels self-conscious of its trad-gaming history. Banjo-Kazooie was celebrated for being a pretty straightforward platform adventure in the vein of Mario 64. This was uproariously lampooned, alongside plenty more videogame brands, in ‘Conker’s…’ revived as Conker Live and Reloaded for original Xbox. There’s a fair bit of lampooning in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts too, but no filthy jokes – this is a kids’ game after all. But whereas Conker revelled in deriding the derivative while still taking part in predictable chores albeit with off-the-wall rewards, Rare’s aim for the new Banjo-Kazooie is to reinvent the gameplay wholesale. But don’t panic just yet.
Gamers with cherished memories of previous Banjo-Kazooie quests, even that bite-size effort on Game Boy Advance, please remain calm. You’ll still roam around lush fantasy landscapes collecting shiny tokens: musical notes as currency to spend on accessories, and jigsaw pieces (‘Jiggys’) to unlock new worlds. All the route finding, baddie-bouncing and boss confrontations remain secured by Nuts & Bolts. But altogether new are the Do-It-Yourself vehicles, which not only expand the single-player experience but make way for a cheeky range of multiplayer mini-games.
We rejoin Banjo bear and his side-kick Kazooie – a female Red Crested Breegull – living the good life, overweight and reminiscing through old times. An entity called L.O.G. (Lord of Games) appears literally from out of nowhere and offers them the chance to relive their past glory, alongside old arch enemy Gruntilda the Witch.
Long one short, L.O.G. creates a series of virtual worlds dubbed Banjo Land (ho-ho) to explore and exploit. But in place of Kazooie’s legendary super powers she’s handed a magical spanner, which admittedly disappoints but at the same time piques your curiosity. This spanner is used to manipulate all objects within Banjo Land – it picks things up, puts them down, and pieces things together.
In the single player game you receive quest information from townsfolk in and around Showdown Town. L.O.G. lives in a palace on a hill that overlooks Showdown Town, and demands that Banjo and Kazooie bring him magical orbs that will transport them, old school Mario 64 / Banjo-Kazooie magic-mirror style, to some fabulous otherworldly location. Meanwhile, in the centre of Showdown Town, there’s Mumbo the mechanic who demands that Banjo and Kazooie bring him any crates they find to salvage for spare parts. These can be used to create increasingly more fantastical vehicles. And somewhere between these two dominant characters you’ve got yourself an adventure.
Each time B-K arrives at a new location they’re given a specific task – for example to collect objects from beneath security cameras without being seen. There might also be water obstacles and sections that require leaping over smashing through. L.O.G. sometimes decides the vehicle required, and this could make the task more difficult. However when it’s the player’s choice you can build your own. And you really can build anything… provided you have the parts at Mumbo’s garage.
There’s no shortcut to building these vehicles, but you are eased into the process with simple designs to start off with and straightforward enhancements such as ‘grippy tires’ for traction and floats to, you know, float on water. Propellers and rockets can be used to fly or give propulsion. You might even use these defensively, to blast enemies. However weapons and ammo, silly stuff like egg cannons etc, are also required. The maximum number of parts in any vehicle is a mind-boggling 250 upon a grid of 19 x 19 squares. Some people have been building Tie-Fighters from Star Wars and all kinds of crazy things. We just about managed to make a flying thing that basically flew but was a beggar to steer on the ground.
Banjo Land being a “pre-fabricated pastiche” of videogames past and present, nothing is quite what it seems. The trees are in fact made of wire mesh, the ground looks like welded-together sheets of painted steel. None of this seems to have any bearing on the gameplay, at least not early on. Perhaps there could be occasions where a particular material requires e.g. melting or magnetising but we’re just wishful guessing here. Banjo-Kazooie in one-player is fun. But we expect the multiplayer mini-games will be the make or break.
Essentially Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a B-K theme Robot Wars with a bonus story mode attached. Vehicle creation takes on a whole new lease of life in the multi-player mini-games. You versus up to seven players across Xbox LIVE can compete in up to 28 separate events. These range from races that involve flying, drag strips and hurdles to crazier antics such as sumo, ski-jumping and domino toppling. Some put you in direct competition – e.g. football – while others are time-based or score challenges such as darts… sort of.
A couple of examples of how crazy this all gets: In the football game, in which giant footballs are nudged toward colour-coded targets, somebody had the bright idea of attaching a crane-’n’-cage contraption to their vehicle, trapping the ball and making it impossible to tackle and win. In response another guy brought a missile launcher to the party to blast that cage to smithereens. Who’s laughing now? The domino thing mentioned earlier is arranged as rows spreading from the centre of the circle. You only have one chance to topple them all. Hence somebody created a device that hovered into the centre using four rockets, then rotated the rockets to create a spinning thingummy that created a whirlwind effect. They nearly all blew down.
New mini-games and accessories for vehicles could be forthcoming as downloadable content via Xbox LIVE, according to Rare. However there is nothing decided as yet, the game itself isn’t even finished so first things first. However players can take virtual photos of any vehicle they encounter while playing online and save it off as a blueprint to use in their own game – again, provided they have all the parts. You’ve got to admit that’s very clever.
Quite honestly, we were kind of hoping for a Mario Galaxy style return to glory for Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox 360. This won’t be the case, because a pure platform adventure this certainly isn’t. However the trademark inventiveness of Rare at its best is more than in evidence. We just hope that, over time, it’s a game that becomes more than just a sum of its parts. For that, we’ll have to wait for our review copy.
