CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
I've always had a touchy relationship with Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, much like the rest of the fandom. Back in 2008 I was as floored as the rest of the fandom at the idea of a Banjo Kazooie game with cars. Anyway, long story short, I admit this colored my perception of the entire experience and I walked away quite early in the game with a sour taste in my mouth. However, it's been almost ten years. I'm older and I've accepted that Banjo Kazooie 4 probably isn't happening. So I thought "What the hell, why not give it another shot?"
What it does right:
The building vehicles aspect was ahead of it's time and is really damn fun. The amount of creativity you can put into your vehicle is amazing.
Look at some of the stuff people have come up with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9CzBi0HWyI
This, right here, is the main source of fun with this game. Admittedly, the beginning of the game feels a bit restrictive due to the lack of access to many of the parts in the opening hours. However, after a few hours, the whole experience just clicks. Spending hours just tinkering around with your vehicles to shave off those extra seconds for missions, or to try to approach missions from unconventional ways due to how you built your vehicle, to just messing around. By the end of the game you can have as many as 40 vehicles to take on any mission and a bunch of vehicles just for the hell of it. I would love for a game to take the ideas from Nuts and Bolts and expand on them.
Visually, for a game from 2008, it still looks amazing. On an HD TV, these textures just pop.
The music from Kirkhope and Beanland is fantastic. I mean, it's Kirkhope and Beanland. Both of them have added nice new melodies to the mix while utilizing former melodies as part of the soundtrack as well. Nutty Acres has part of Treasure Cove Trove and Witchyworld, Jiggoseum has the melody from Halfire Peaks, Terrarium of Terror has Mad Monster Mansion, LOGBOX has Gruntilda's Lair, and Banjoland has Click Clock Wood, Freezeezy Peak, Mad Monster Mansion, Gobi's Valley, Cloud Cuckooland, Mayahem Temple, and Rusty Bucket Bay. And as far as I can tell, let me know if I'm wrong, the entire soundtrack was done with live instrumentation. It sounds fantastic, has fun melodies, and is in line with the rest of the BK games..
However, there is one caveat: I really do miss the dynamic shifting of the soundtrack. I get that due to how often they'd have to change the track, it wouldn't work out, but it simply added so much atmosphere to the experience.
Showdown Town as a hub world is great. Unlike a majority of the levels, there's actually the feeling of progression. As you move through the worlds and acts, you unlock more parts for your vehicle to drive around town. As you unlock more parts, you unlock new areas to explore. As you explore more of the city, you unlock more parts for your vehicles in the worlds. In other words: It actually feels like a Banjo Kazooie world and it feels like it had a cohesive design behind it.
What isn't so great:
The worlds themselves are empty and far too large for their own good.
You see this picture? 90% of it isn't utilized for anything interesting. The inner colosium is mostly used for moving large objects, the stands aren't used at all, those two buildings in the background have nothing to do, you do nothing with the torches, and the scaffolding is just there to make the already shaky physics and turning controls even worse. It feels like the entire thing could have been replaced with literally anything else and 99% of the objectives in the level wouldn't have to change. Remember what I said about Showdown Town and how you feel like your are actually progressing and exploring the town bit by bit and it's fun? This level completely lacks that.
Also LOGBOX 720 in general is piss poor. I just DON'T like this level. AT ALL. The driving control/traction/etc are no where near tight enough for the narrow roads and at this point in the game you don't have the necessary parts to make it any easier. Making a helicopter-like vehicle makes travelling in this level easier, but you'll be constantly be hitting the catwalks from above due to the camera. And then there are parts where you have to go through the tubes of purple goo and it just isn't fun.
The physics of you vehicles ranges from "functional" to "Absolute shit"
The flying physics aren't too bad. As long as you don't make a front heavy vehicles and keep the weight of the plane evenly distributed, you'll fly just fine. It's not amazing, but it's certainly functional. The same goes for boats, submarines, and helicopters. It's the way the game handles speed and traction with the wheels that is an absolute shit show. Get used to hearing the sound effect of skidding wheels, because turning corners sucks and half the time the difficultly of the missions comes from the physics not working as you'd expect them to rather than any legit challenge. Because get this: despite being a game with quite a bit of racing in it, there are no drift mechanics. There are no mechanics to take sharp turns. There were so many times I had to tweak a vehicle because I just couldn't reliably get a feel for how the vehicle would handle around corners. And it gets so much worse the faster you make your vehicle. After a certain speed, I'd even call it nigh unplayable on the ground in hilly places like Nutty Acres or cluttered places like Terrarium of Terror.
The mission objectives themselves are repetitive as hell.
In Nutty Acres, the first area, you will be moving maybe one person at a time from arbitrary point A to arbitrary point B. In Terrorium of Terror, you'll be moving FOUR people from arbitrary point A to arbitrary point B. With the exact same vehicle sans some modification. With the exact same objective conditions. It's one thing to reuse missions, but as will be talked about later, there are about 10 character in this entire game. So you may very well be helping Jolly Roger move from one location in LOGBOX and helping him move yet again for basically the same reason three worlds later in the Terrarium. This is a game about creating creative vehicles to take on creative situations. Why are so many damn missions "Move this character from this area to the other area", "Move X amount of object A to location Y", or "knock over object X"? And the damn racing missions. Once you get wings and jets, 90% of the races are broken.
This makes the progression of missions very poor. The missions start to blend together with none of them really standing out on their own, with the really poor ones really sticking in my mind. I'm doing pretty much the same mission in World 1 that I am in World 5, and that's not a good thing. The situations are pretty much the same, the objectives are pretty much the same, and hell sometimes even the characters are the same. While you feel progression with the parts you obtain, the same can not be said for the missions you partake in.
And the Jinjo Tokens. They didn't even try with this. You:
A) Make a vehicle pass a set speed (basically, unlock the jet engines and hook them up)
B) Push the jinjo out of the ring (Make one heavy, powerful vehicle and these missions are seconds long)
C) Push the jinjo a set distance
D) Find the Jinjo's lost item
E) Race the Jinjo (So basically no different from a normal mission)
F) Take the Jinjo to a new place (So no different from a normal mission)
There are 72 of these missions. Have fun.
LOG missions
Here's an idea: Let's take the main selling point of the game, making vehicles with your own creativity, and take it out by giving you a prebuilt vehicle. Prebuilt vehicles that range from "Okay, but I could certaily make one much better" to "Oh my god, why the fuck did you build this".
I want to make and drive this:
Not this:
The feel of the worlds in general. They just don't feel like places that people actually inhabit. Part if it is caused by the reusing the same characters for numerous roles, and making a joke about the game's budget doesn't make it any more charming. Get used to seeing Mumbo, Humba, Captain Blubber, Klungo, Bottles, Boggy, Mr. Fit, Trophy Thomas, Jolly Roger, and a big pig. Ten characters for 5 worlds and 10+ hours of gameplay. At least with Banjo Kazooie, all of the enemies fit the theme of the world.
Clanker's Cavern had mutated crabs by the generator and slimy monsters in the walls. Rusty Bucket Bay had ship themed enemies, the goblin-like creatures were in sailor uniforms, and crates. In Banjo Tooie this was taken even further with all of the areas having enemies that matched. In Nuts and Bolts? You get GruntyBots in all levels.
As they said in the Rareware video on Banjo Tooie: They had around 150 characters across the worlds. For me, it just kinda takes something out of it when I'm talking to the same character for the 25th time, only now they have a funny suit on and might be putting on a half-hearted persona.
But the biggest issue is that these worlds just don't feel cohesive most of the time. Zoom out and the entire level of Nutty Acres consists of: An airstrip next to an active volcano; a Swamp next to a beach; a Farmhouse in the center; large cogs above everything and in the sea; and a large patch of trees next to a nut patch. I get the whole aesthetic is going after the "patched together" just like the vehicles are "patched together", but it feels like the designers had five different level ideas yet wanted to make a huge world, so just said "hell, put it all in". It doesn't feel like an actual "place" like the previous Banjo Worlds did. It's a hodgepodge of ideas haphazardly thrown about with a tiny cast of characters.
Banjo Kazooie worked so well because the designers came up with either a main theme or a couple core ideas for a world and then built upon it.
Freezeezy Peak's theme is Christmas/Winter so there is snow, icy water, ice cubes trying to attack you, Snowmen who throw snowballs at you, a Walrus in a cave, a giant Snowman you can climb, and a Christmas Tree.
Mad Monster Mansion's theme was Halloween so there were was a graveyard, a spooky cathedral, a hedgemaze, a creepy shack, and a big ol' haunted mansion with ghosts and skeletons.
Even Banjo Tooie also succeeded with this. Witchworld is an amusement park, so there's a Space themed ride, a strength bell, an inflated castle, a carny tent, a fortune teller, a haunted tunnel, and so on. The issue with the later worlds is that they are too big, but they rarely stray from this convention. Terrydactlland is all about Prehistory, cavemen, and dinosaurs. Halfire Peaks is all about the peak of a fiery mountain and an icy mountain. Glittergulch Mine in a, well, mine.
With Nuts & Bolts: Why is Terrarium of Terror given spooky music or even have "Terror" in the name? It's a Terrarium alright, but here aren't really any enemies to speak of, there's no mutated plants, no spooky elements, and the intro tries it's best to parody Lost in Space. Oh right, it's in Space. They don't do much with it, though. You get a reused space ride from Banjo Tooie and sometimes shove stuff out of the airlock. But what's terrorizing about any of this and why is it in space? It's an overgrown Terrarium!
Nutty Acres is called "Nutty Acres" but there is a swamp (that you don't do anything with) next to a beach (that you don't do anything with) which is then next to an airfield which is connected to a Volcano. Oh, and everything is artificial for some reason, hence all the gears, pipes, and stitching. But no one comments on it and none of the missions have anything to do with the artificial nature of the world. They all treat it like its real. But there's no punchline to this so... why? And why are there mechanical bulls in here and Jiggeousium? They can't hurt you (you can't die) and they don't add anything.
Banjoland is literally just an assortment of nostalgic imagery. I love it because it invokes memories of the other two games so well, but that's about it.
Jiggosseum get the theming correct, but doesn't do much with it. It's a sport arena. You push stuff and carry stuff all the same. It's just so empty and barren. It looks great, but it's empty.
LOGBOX 720 is the only one to really get it right, but unfortunately it's my least favorite world because of the layout of narrow roads.
Conclusion:
It's so close to being something really special. The core gameplay is absolutely fantastic with the creativity you can put into taking on missions and building your vehicles, but the handling of the vehicles and the repetitive nature of the missions themselves really lets the experience down. The worlds themselves also just make you long for a more traditional Banjo game since they are so empty and underutilized. It's definitely a game you should pick up if you skipped it because "It's not a real Banjo Kazooie game" and I'd highly recommend you give it a try even if you have no attachment to the franchise. It's certainly a unique game.
TL;DR
Pros:
-Fantastic core gameplay
-Still visually appealing
-Fantastic Soundtrack
-Great hubworld
Cons:
-Large and underutilized worlds
-Driving Physics
-Repetitive missions
-Jinjo Missions
-LOG missions
-The feel of the worlds
What it does right:
The building vehicles aspect was ahead of it's time and is really damn fun. The amount of creativity you can put into your vehicle is amazing.
Look at some of the stuff people have come up with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9CzBi0HWyI
This, right here, is the main source of fun with this game. Admittedly, the beginning of the game feels a bit restrictive due to the lack of access to many of the parts in the opening hours. However, after a few hours, the whole experience just clicks. Spending hours just tinkering around with your vehicles to shave off those extra seconds for missions, or to try to approach missions from unconventional ways due to how you built your vehicle, to just messing around. By the end of the game you can have as many as 40 vehicles to take on any mission and a bunch of vehicles just for the hell of it. I would love for a game to take the ideas from Nuts and Bolts and expand on them.
Visually, for a game from 2008, it still looks amazing. On an HD TV, these textures just pop.
The music from Kirkhope and Beanland is fantastic. I mean, it's Kirkhope and Beanland. Both of them have added nice new melodies to the mix while utilizing former melodies as part of the soundtrack as well. Nutty Acres has part of Treasure Cove Trove and Witchyworld, Jiggoseum has the melody from Halfire Peaks, Terrarium of Terror has Mad Monster Mansion, LOGBOX has Gruntilda's Lair, and Banjoland has Click Clock Wood, Freezeezy Peak, Mad Monster Mansion, Gobi's Valley, Cloud Cuckooland, Mayahem Temple, and Rusty Bucket Bay. And as far as I can tell, let me know if I'm wrong, the entire soundtrack was done with live instrumentation. It sounds fantastic, has fun melodies, and is in line with the rest of the BK games..
However, there is one caveat: I really do miss the dynamic shifting of the soundtrack. I get that due to how often they'd have to change the track, it wouldn't work out, but it simply added so much atmosphere to the experience.
Showdown Town as a hub world is great. Unlike a majority of the levels, there's actually the feeling of progression. As you move through the worlds and acts, you unlock more parts for your vehicle to drive around town. As you unlock more parts, you unlock new areas to explore. As you explore more of the city, you unlock more parts for your vehicles in the worlds. In other words: It actually feels like a Banjo Kazooie world and it feels like it had a cohesive design behind it.
What isn't so great:
The worlds themselves are empty and far too large for their own good.
You see this picture? 90% of it isn't utilized for anything interesting. The inner colosium is mostly used for moving large objects, the stands aren't used at all, those two buildings in the background have nothing to do, you do nothing with the torches, and the scaffolding is just there to make the already shaky physics and turning controls even worse. It feels like the entire thing could have been replaced with literally anything else and 99% of the objectives in the level wouldn't have to change. Remember what I said about Showdown Town and how you feel like your are actually progressing and exploring the town bit by bit and it's fun? This level completely lacks that.
Also LOGBOX 720 in general is piss poor. I just DON'T like this level. AT ALL. The driving control/traction/etc are no where near tight enough for the narrow roads and at this point in the game you don't have the necessary parts to make it any easier. Making a helicopter-like vehicle makes travelling in this level easier, but you'll be constantly be hitting the catwalks from above due to the camera. And then there are parts where you have to go through the tubes of purple goo and it just isn't fun.
The physics of you vehicles ranges from "functional" to "Absolute shit"
The flying physics aren't too bad. As long as you don't make a front heavy vehicles and keep the weight of the plane evenly distributed, you'll fly just fine. It's not amazing, but it's certainly functional. The same goes for boats, submarines, and helicopters. It's the way the game handles speed and traction with the wheels that is an absolute shit show. Get used to hearing the sound effect of skidding wheels, because turning corners sucks and half the time the difficultly of the missions comes from the physics not working as you'd expect them to rather than any legit challenge. Because get this: despite being a game with quite a bit of racing in it, there are no drift mechanics. There are no mechanics to take sharp turns. There were so many times I had to tweak a vehicle because I just couldn't reliably get a feel for how the vehicle would handle around corners. And it gets so much worse the faster you make your vehicle. After a certain speed, I'd even call it nigh unplayable on the ground in hilly places like Nutty Acres or cluttered places like Terrarium of Terror.
The mission objectives themselves are repetitive as hell.
In Nutty Acres, the first area, you will be moving maybe one person at a time from arbitrary point A to arbitrary point B. In Terrorium of Terror, you'll be moving FOUR people from arbitrary point A to arbitrary point B. With the exact same vehicle sans some modification. With the exact same objective conditions. It's one thing to reuse missions, but as will be talked about later, there are about 10 character in this entire game. So you may very well be helping Jolly Roger move from one location in LOGBOX and helping him move yet again for basically the same reason three worlds later in the Terrarium. This is a game about creating creative vehicles to take on creative situations. Why are so many damn missions "Move this character from this area to the other area", "Move X amount of object A to location Y", or "knock over object X"? And the damn racing missions. Once you get wings and jets, 90% of the races are broken.
This makes the progression of missions very poor. The missions start to blend together with none of them really standing out on their own, with the really poor ones really sticking in my mind. I'm doing pretty much the same mission in World 1 that I am in World 5, and that's not a good thing. The situations are pretty much the same, the objectives are pretty much the same, and hell sometimes even the characters are the same. While you feel progression with the parts you obtain, the same can not be said for the missions you partake in.
And the Jinjo Tokens. They didn't even try with this. You:
A) Make a vehicle pass a set speed (basically, unlock the jet engines and hook them up)
B) Push the jinjo out of the ring (Make one heavy, powerful vehicle and these missions are seconds long)
C) Push the jinjo a set distance
D) Find the Jinjo's lost item
E) Race the Jinjo (So basically no different from a normal mission)
F) Take the Jinjo to a new place (So no different from a normal mission)
There are 72 of these missions. Have fun.
LOG missions
Here's an idea: Let's take the main selling point of the game, making vehicles with your own creativity, and take it out by giving you a prebuilt vehicle. Prebuilt vehicles that range from "Okay, but I could certaily make one much better" to "Oh my god, why the fuck did you build this".
I want to make and drive this:
Not this:
The feel of the worlds in general. They just don't feel like places that people actually inhabit. Part if it is caused by the reusing the same characters for numerous roles, and making a joke about the game's budget doesn't make it any more charming. Get used to seeing Mumbo, Humba, Captain Blubber, Klungo, Bottles, Boggy, Mr. Fit, Trophy Thomas, Jolly Roger, and a big pig. Ten characters for 5 worlds and 10+ hours of gameplay. At least with Banjo Kazooie, all of the enemies fit the theme of the world.
Clanker's Cavern had mutated crabs by the generator and slimy monsters in the walls. Rusty Bucket Bay had ship themed enemies, the goblin-like creatures were in sailor uniforms, and crates. In Banjo Tooie this was taken even further with all of the areas having enemies that matched. In Nuts and Bolts? You get GruntyBots in all levels.
As they said in the Rareware video on Banjo Tooie: They had around 150 characters across the worlds. For me, it just kinda takes something out of it when I'm talking to the same character for the 25th time, only now they have a funny suit on and might be putting on a half-hearted persona.
But the biggest issue is that these worlds just don't feel cohesive most of the time. Zoom out and the entire level of Nutty Acres consists of: An airstrip next to an active volcano; a Swamp next to a beach; a Farmhouse in the center; large cogs above everything and in the sea; and a large patch of trees next to a nut patch. I get the whole aesthetic is going after the "patched together" just like the vehicles are "patched together", but it feels like the designers had five different level ideas yet wanted to make a huge world, so just said "hell, put it all in". It doesn't feel like an actual "place" like the previous Banjo Worlds did. It's a hodgepodge of ideas haphazardly thrown about with a tiny cast of characters.
Banjo Kazooie worked so well because the designers came up with either a main theme or a couple core ideas for a world and then built upon it.
Freezeezy Peak's theme is Christmas/Winter so there is snow, icy water, ice cubes trying to attack you, Snowmen who throw snowballs at you, a Walrus in a cave, a giant Snowman you can climb, and a Christmas Tree.
Mad Monster Mansion's theme was Halloween so there were was a graveyard, a spooky cathedral, a hedgemaze, a creepy shack, and a big ol' haunted mansion with ghosts and skeletons.
Even Banjo Tooie also succeeded with this. Witchworld is an amusement park, so there's a Space themed ride, a strength bell, an inflated castle, a carny tent, a fortune teller, a haunted tunnel, and so on. The issue with the later worlds is that they are too big, but they rarely stray from this convention. Terrydactlland is all about Prehistory, cavemen, and dinosaurs. Halfire Peaks is all about the peak of a fiery mountain and an icy mountain. Glittergulch Mine in a, well, mine.
With Nuts & Bolts: Why is Terrarium of Terror given spooky music or even have "Terror" in the name? It's a Terrarium alright, but here aren't really any enemies to speak of, there's no mutated plants, no spooky elements, and the intro tries it's best to parody Lost in Space. Oh right, it's in Space. They don't do much with it, though. You get a reused space ride from Banjo Tooie and sometimes shove stuff out of the airlock. But what's terrorizing about any of this and why is it in space? It's an overgrown Terrarium!
Nutty Acres is called "Nutty Acres" but there is a swamp (that you don't do anything with) next to a beach (that you don't do anything with) which is then next to an airfield which is connected to a Volcano. Oh, and everything is artificial for some reason, hence all the gears, pipes, and stitching. But no one comments on it and none of the missions have anything to do with the artificial nature of the world. They all treat it like its real. But there's no punchline to this so... why? And why are there mechanical bulls in here and Jiggeousium? They can't hurt you (you can't die) and they don't add anything.
Banjoland is literally just an assortment of nostalgic imagery. I love it because it invokes memories of the other two games so well, but that's about it.
Jiggosseum get the theming correct, but doesn't do much with it. It's a sport arena. You push stuff and carry stuff all the same. It's just so empty and barren. It looks great, but it's empty.
LOGBOX 720 is the only one to really get it right, but unfortunately it's my least favorite world because of the layout of narrow roads.
Conclusion:
It's so close to being something really special. The core gameplay is absolutely fantastic with the creativity you can put into taking on missions and building your vehicles, but the handling of the vehicles and the repetitive nature of the missions themselves really lets the experience down. The worlds themselves also just make you long for a more traditional Banjo game since they are so empty and underutilized. It's definitely a game you should pick up if you skipped it because "It's not a real Banjo Kazooie game" and I'd highly recommend you give it a try even if you have no attachment to the franchise. It's certainly a unique game.
TL;DR
Pros:
-Fantastic core gameplay
-Still visually appealing
-Fantastic Soundtrack
-Great hubworld
Cons:
-Large and underutilized worlds
-Driving Physics
-Repetitive missions
-Jinjo Missions
-LOG missions
-The feel of the worlds
