Well, I’m going just a bit less than a year back in the Xbox 360 library to talk about this game. I refused to play it for a long time because the trailers made it look like crap. But I finally rented it and gave it an honest chance. Did my opinion change? Well, this is a “Games that didn’t post” so obviously they didn’t change for the better.

Read on and see why this game is lame!

My expectations
Well, I’ll start this by mentioning one thing: I find that the Banjo-Kazooie games on the Nintendo 64 are almost the best games on the system (I put Star Fox 64 just a bit above them). The music was great (wacky and fun), the gameplay was just incredible in all aspects (great platforming, solid and easy to use controls), lots of moves to learn(and the great controls made them all easy to use), fun combat, being able to transform into different animals (and each controlled differently), tons of collectibles for the completists to find), hilarious dialogue, fun characters, it looked great(and frankly still does, the visual style is still quite good)… It was one of those games where I can frankly say “it did no wrong”(camera control was a bit of an issue, but what 3D game, other than FPS games, have it down perfectly even nowadays? not many, that’s for sure). And yes, it was even better than the awesome Super Mario 64.

So, when I saw the first trailer, I was ecstatic. “Holy shit, a new Banjo-Kazooie game, this is gonna be awesome”. Sure, I was put off by how they redesigned Banjo and Kazooie, but hey, I’d get used to it. And then they showed gameplay. And I didn’t think it was possible for my hype meter to go down THAT low. Why is everything vehicule-based? Why is Kazooie doing nothing anymore? Why is Grunty back(again)? WTF is going on? Add in Rare’s random immaturity when they depicted Banjo shooting a missile at Mario… What, are they claiming they’re doing better since they were sold to MS or something?

Well, let’s just say that, in one trailer, they managed to not only drop my hype, but they showed me that they also had no intention of making something good.

Why it didn’t
So after almost a year(and after getting a 360, of course), I decided to give it a rent and try it out, thinking “MAybe it’s not as bad as I’m expecting”. This is after I got over the fact that this wasn’t gonna be a Banjo-Kazooie game, but a lame vehicle contruction game with Banjo and Kazooie in the game just to get a few extra sales.

Well, the game starts by not only saying “oh, by the way, this will suck”, but mocking everything that made the first games fun(kazooie being useful and actually doing stuff, all the cool powers, the fun gameplay, etc.). Banjo and kazooie are fat, Grunty is back, but only her head. They are about to fight, but L.O.G (the lord of games) comes by, gives Grunty a robotic body and makes Banjo fit again. So what’s going on here? Well, the game is self-aware, and L.O.G is apparently responsible for making every game in existence, and he’s transporting Grunty and the BK combo into a game! The goal of the game they get transported into? Well, BK must try to get out of it, and Grunty is the vilain who has to prevent them from getting out. Oh boy, they KNEW the game would be bad… I mean, look at this lame story! Heck, the game is self aware, it KNOWS that it sucks. “Hey Banjo, your face is square, the fans will hate it!” Well, if you knew fans would hate it, why the hell did you do it like that?

So we know the premise is horrible, but how is the gameplay? Well, to put it bluntly, it sucks. They basically took away everything that made the previous Banjo-Kazooie games awesome, and replaced it with vehicle-based gameplay. Now gameplay elements include: Making vehicules, driving vehicules and moving things around with vehicules. Well, I can’t say much bad about the vehicle making, since it’s solid enough. What I CAN whine about is the crappy vehicle controls. Seriously, I’d think that the most important element for a game based around driving vehicles, at least the controls for said vehicles wouldn’t suck. Turning is horrible, the cars just randomly seem to jump around weirdly at the slightest bump in the road, and reversing is really bad. After some getting used to you should be able to at least move around properly, but it takes some practice and any minor screw ups and you’ll be crashing. It doesn’t help that the physics engine is bad. Things just randomly slide around, and when you hit something it just starts moving around randomly. In the first level, there’s those bull-like creatures… well, the physics engine sucks so badly that moving around is near impossible for them, as taking a step makes them fall on their side and start rolling down the hills.

Since the cars are in the game, you get no powers whatsoever. Just new pieces for your cars (or planes/helicopters). “Oh, there somewhere you couldn’t go? Welll here’s some new wheels!”. Why did they feel removing the powers was so mandatory? Even the normal attacks are limited to swinging the wrench around instead of having Banjo or Kazooie actually do an attack based on their skills. Why can’t Kazooie peck enemies anymore? Why can’t Banjo claw bad-guys to death anymore? Why are you stuck to equipping lame weapons on your vehicles instead of making Kazooie spit/shit eggs? This really lowers the value of the game.

So, to go through the game, you must find jiggies (jigsaw puzzle pieces…. are you surprised?). You get those jiggies for doing various tasks in various worlds. Those tasks vary from driving to places, driving to places while transporting stuff, driving to places to pick stuff up and bring them somewhere else, driving to places and talking to people… oh and there’s races… Yeah, there’s pretty much no variety in what you have to do. It’s pretty much just driving around and picking stuff up. There’s a few variations of that of course, some that require flying vehicles that have incredibly bad handling. And to ruin things even more, there’s no searching around for jiggies anymore, now it’s just looking on your mini-map and see where people needing help are… And ALL tasks are timed, giving you different rewards depending on how fast you finish them(at least THAT’S a fun idea…).

The one really annoying thing here is actually collecting stuff. Jiggies, boxes with vehicle parts. Instead of jut picking them up, you have to take them, carry them with you and transport them to different parts. Jiggies go in the vacuum in the middle, and the vehicle piece boxes go on the pink square next to Mumbo. It’s just really annoying that you have to bring everything to the middle of the hub to advance, instead of just picking them up and being done with it. And for the jiggies, you actually have to go to a jiggy dispenser after finishing tasks in the levels to get them out and then be able to actually collect them…. WTF!? Jinjo’s are also annoying, also asking for random driving-based tasks to collect them. That’s not including the Jinjos in the Hub, which, again, require you to pick them up and drive them somewhere. Even to open levels you have to take something and bring it somewhere else. Overall, collecting stuff, other than musc notes, is annoying. And I frankly have no idea why, it’s just bad game design.

So the reasons it didn’t? Well, bad controls, bad gameplay, stupid premise, making a mockery of the previous games and its fanbase…. If I played the game any longer I could probably find more things to whine about.

Does it do SOMETHING right?
I’d LOVE to say that no, that there is nothing done right, but that would be false. First, the graphics are quite nice.  Sure, I hate the character designs for Banjo, Kazooie, Grunty and L.O.G, but the environments look quite nice. The level design is a piece of shit, but the graphics themselves are quite well done, with cool effects and textures. Also, despite the collecting being badly done, there’s tons of stuff to collect. Each task has not only jiggies, but trophies to get if you’re fast enough to complete each tasks. There’s jinjos as well, music notes, parts for vehicles and of course jiggies. If you end up actually liking the game, there’s tons of play value to it. That element was probably the only thing in the game that was kept like in the original games(almost).

Oh, and they managed to NOT screw up the music… I don’t know how they managed that…. OH, RIGHT, THEY JUST RIPPED THE MUSIC RIGHT OUT OF BANJO-KAZOOIE! They re-use the same music with minor modifications. Way to be fun and original Rare! They should’ve done the same with the gameplay…

Overall
This game is a parody of Banjo-Kazooie(a parody? screw that, it’s an insult, plain and simple). I think that it’s WILLINGLY bad. They deliberately made a bad game to piss fans off. There’s  really no reason other than that for the game to be this bad. Heck, there’s no reason to even have made this game, other than saying “You want Banjo-Kazooie? THERE, take this piece of shit, there’s Banjo-Kazooie in the title, you should be happy with that”.

I frankly feel insulted that Rare thought BK fans would like this. Bad controls, bad gameplay, stupid gameplay elements, stupid story, screwed up character design, stupid concept… Why?

It’s a simple thing to make a fun Banjo-Kazooie game, they had no trouble with the first 2. Give us powers, fun platforming, varied gameplay, interesting boss battles, humor, interesting puzzles… You know, all things that WEREN’T in this game? Instead all we got was a vehicle-based game with crappy vehicle controls. Good job Rare… You managed to destroy the best N64 series with one game.

Also: http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=275

The Save Factor
Well, if you REALLY like the fully-customizable vehicle element… $10
Otherwise it’s not even worth thinking about.

Okay, just to be fair… Save Factor: $5

jobocan Console, Games, impressions, The Games That Didn't, xbox 360