MadCap's Game Reviews - "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts"

Well, this is it...the shoe-in for the worst game of 2015. I'm not even going to act like I'm going to sugar coat it. When we get to the Worst Games of 2015 List, expect this to be at the top of the list, if not in the number one slot. It has taken me seven years - seven freaking years - to get to a place where I could write down anything on this without wanting to go into a murderous rage and killing every living thing in a ten block radius. This represents the complete and utter corruption and ruination of my cherished childhood memories of playing the original two games in the series - both of which I've reviewed here on my blog, go now and avoid the rush.

Now, I remember the premiere teaser, coming out when Rare was bought out by Microsoft and we thought things were going to do so very well - and the game looked great! Sure, it was just a trailer, but it showed Banjo and Kazooie looking pretty much as we'd known them since the previous two games. A little blockier, sure, but they were definitely the bear and bird without a doubt. And, for the first time in eight years, they would be back!

I remember my exact feeling the first time I looked at the cover. "At last! I can't believe tha-why does Banjo have a wrench?

...this game is gonna suck, isn't it?"

"Gonna Fly Noooooooow!" ...if only we had our old moves.

And suck it did, so very much.  I assuaged my fears with the old adage of "never judge a book by it's cover"...I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I had taken this game and thrown it into a wood chipper, giggling all the while. But I didn't know, I thought that maybe, just maybe, something could would come out of it. After all, this wasn't some other production company that came in and screwed everything up like Capcom did with Devil May Cry 2. This was Rare! The company that made some of the best games for the Nintendo for years!

...and now don't. Because of Microsoft.  Thanks, assholes!

But I'm getting off topic and there's a lot of crap to get through, so let's get started.  It's been eight years since the Bear and Bird suited up in that blue backpack and those yellow shorts to take on the evil witch Gruntilda.  In this time, they've gotten fat to the point where when Banjo jumps up, he shakes the camera upon hitting the ground.  Grunty has dug her way back to Spiral Mountain at long last, still nothing more than the skeletal head she was reduced to at the end of Banjo-Tooie. It will finally be an epic battle of bird, bear, and witch...until a self-righteous man with a television for a head intercedes.

He/it introduces him/itself as the "Lord of Games" or "L.O.G.", no doubt symbolizing the smelly brown expulsion that this game is. Believe me when I tell you, if you're not a fan of the franchise, this character is all you're really going to remember about this game.  If you are a fan of the franchise, this character is the physical manifestation of everything you hate about this game. L.O.G. is smug, condescending, and dismissive of the previous games and characters - calling Banjo and Kazooie's moves from the previous games "outdated" and referring to them and Gruntilda as "has beens" - and he just casually breaks the fourth wall rather than the minute references and jokes that the previous games had.

If I win, do I get a game that doesn't suck?

Yes, Banjo and Kazooie and others in the games were aware they were in games - that was part of the charm. But they didn't take every opportunity to point that out, then wink and smile at the camera in a ridiculously melodramatic manner that's just begging for an audience laugh track to play behind it to complete the superbowl of mediocrity.

Oh, and his face is every loading screen. I mean, all of them. You will get sick and tired of being sick and tired of seeing him.

But L.O.G., in his/its infinite wisdom, creates two vehicles for the bear and bird and witch and brings them all into a world of his creation - Showdown Town. Here is actually where I have some praise for the game - I like the art style. Showdown Town and the various worlds do have interesting visual designs and, while they're not all perfect or pretty to look at, are very distinct and have their own flavor - much like the previous two games.

And sinking back firmly into hatred - L.O.G. gives Kazooie a magic wrench instead of the moveset from the previous two games that allows the player to pull their car to them, pull objects to them, and have a melee attack. Of course, Kazooie doesn't do the rational thing and shove the wrench right up the Lord to Blame's ass and, of course, you can't kill him in the overworld because, y'know...he's a "god".

From there, we learn more of the car mechanics (no pun intended). Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba, the magical experts who have aided Banjo and Kazooie through their adventures before with their might of spellcraft, are now the owner of a garage where Banjo can work on his cars and a vehicle parts and blueprints shop owner, respectively. Way to completely take out some of the whimsy and fun of the previous games, Microsoft. The magic transformations were a different way facing certain challenges without having to resort to throwing out everything about the game including the kitchen sink.

When we finally do get into the worlds - which, again, do look very distinct - I just have to ask a simple question: where is everything? For worlds that are split up into levels - yes, split up into acts when Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie needed only one world with no acts to put in all of its content, try to wrap your brain around that one - there is so much empty space. Vast empty strands of nothing.  I may sound like a broken record repeatedly saying "In the previous games" but...in the previous games...not an inch of the worlds were wasted. Everything that was there needed to be there and served some kind of purpose, even if it was just aesthetic.

Take the first world that opens, "Nutty Acres". If you bypass Klungo as you're instructed and just mosey your way on into the world on Banjo's motorized shopping trolley...there's nothing for you. You wander around through the island paradise and occasionally come across one of Grunty's clockwork minions to either run over or fight, but those are surprisingly few and far between. Why? Because that would mean you would have things to do as you explored the world and tried to enjoy the unique flavor and style of things.

And we can't very well have that, damn it! We've got cars to drive!

Next time, Mumbo not hit Mighty Mumbo Peace Pipe before signing contract...

The previous games rewarded exploration with finding secret areas and items, even something like a Jiggy that could have just been hiding out on a cliffside or a Jinjo under a dock.  It's part of what made the Banjo-Kazooie games. It wasn't some mad dash to collect a bunch of unnecessary objects, they were things that the duo needed in order to complete their quest. But here...you don't have that in any of the worlds. There's no reason to go exploring, you're just literally driving from point to point to point. Go here, talk to this NPC to get a quest, go complete the quest, come back to the NPC for your reward. Boom, end of act.  It's all formulaic and by the book and so not Banjo-Kazooie that it hurts.

There are moments -brief moments - where I still see some of that Rare magic. Banjo and Kazooie remain as engaging a duo as ever, Gruntilda has fallen back into her rhyming from the first game and remains as transparently evil as ever, and even most of the returning friendly NPCs still retain their hilarity and charm from the previous games. But it's bogged down by the almighty Lord of Things of Which Microsoft Should Be Ashame...d, the continued deprecation of the first two games, and the complete change in not only controls, but also the very feeling of the game. This is not a Banjo-Kazooie game. Hell, if it weren't for the slightly more than superficial trappings, I'd find it hard to call this a Rare game.  This makes no sense, it was nothing something that should have even been attempted.

Oh, go sit on an Atari joystick...

So, my question is...who in the Hell was this for? Fans of the previous games? No, you  alienated them from the jump with the Lord of Insurance Claim calling the characters a bunch of "has-beens" and all but talking smack about how much the first two games suck. Fans of car games? Then why not just make a car game? Microsoft certainly has no problem wasting whatever talent Rare has left in making things for the Kinect, they could have probably just made a generic racing game in no time at all.

If you didn't care, you shouldn't have attempted. If you did care, you should have found a way to do better than this.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is now available from Rare Ltd. and Microsoft for Xbox 360.

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