Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

Title: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: November 11, 2008
Date Played: August 2011
Time Played: 40 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5


Opinion:
I am pretty new to the Banjo-Kazooie characters, I never owned an N64, therefore I have zero nostalgic factors going into Nuts and Bolts. I tried getting into this game when it was first released, but I simply could not. I dont know what it was, but it seemed boring. In August 2011 I decided to give it another try, and this time I took the time to read and watch all of the tutorials, and after grasping the basics and unlocking some building parts I was sucked right in.

From what I understand Nuts and Bolts (3rd game in the series) is completely different from the first two. It is in essence a 2008 version of Mario 64, set in Banjo's universe. You start in a hub world, from which you open doors to other worlds, and while in those worlds you collect Jiggies (basically Mario Stars), which open up new levels. Each level has a certain number of these Jiggies, which you acquire through doing fetch quests, races or whatever else the characters in the particular world want you to do. Sounds boring and repetitive so far?

That's because I didn't mention the best part yet. 99% of the game is vehicle based. Whaaaaat? Yep, and the best part is, you can build your own vehicles, and I am not talking about change out wheels, and choose a paint-job. I am talking about building one block by block, putting engines, fuel tanks, ammo tanks, guns everything on it. You can make absolutely anything that comes to your mind. Want a Batmobile that can fly, shoot homing missiles, and even turn into a boat when needed? No problem, in fact that was one of my go-to race cars that I built, and yep that's what it was called. Want a helicopter with jet engines and passenger seats? Go for it, plane? sure... basically this is what is fun about the game. Rare (developer) made a great design decision by allowing you to use your own vehicles for almost every mission (some require you to use pre-made vehicles), but it means that for the most part you can beat a mission because of your creativity and ingenuity, and not simply because you are quick on the controls.

Nuts and Bolts is a fairly long game, with many differently themed worlds and sub-worlds. Although I do feel that the first 3 or 4 worlds are the best of the bunch. Later worlds get pretty crazy and visually uninspired. Overall I spent upwards of 40 hours playing around, building my own vehicles and beating the game.

Speaking of beautiful, Nuts & Bolts has some really interesting and great looking levels. Rare even put in a whole world which is full of homages to the first two games.

One major issue with Nuts and Bolts is that it features no spoken dialog, but instead a ton of text and simlish style voices. Even StarFox 64 had full voice over option (from what I hear), there is no excuse for a 2008 game to forgo it. Especially if you are going to have so much dialogue. Toward the end of the game, I knew the basics of what each conversation is about, it is either take me to X spot, or get me something from X spot, or race me, or something along those lines, so by the end I would outright skip the dialogue, since reading it was becoming quite boring (although I must note that they tried and in spots even successfully to have funny dialogue).

I also feel that Rare should have given you more building materials quicker, as the game does not start to show its greatest parts until at least a few hours in, and it is easy to get discouraged and stop playing before then.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is a unique experience, and therefore should be experienced by everyone. It is a bit hard to get into at first, but once you grasp all of the mechanics the worlds and car building turn out to be a great deal of fun.