And I was right.
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge is a game that is supposed to be slotted into canon just after the original Banjo-Kazooie and before Banjo-Tooie, making this a sort of inter-equal between the two good games in the series. Of course, with time travel you have a bunch of potential wormholes that will crop up with Banjo and Kazooie meeting some characters that they won't until Banjo-Tooie and then not remembering them in those games. My answer to that? Shut the hell up, we have a good Banjo-Kazooie game.
The story picks up two months after the bear and bird rather epicly rescued Banjo's sister Tooty - not appearing in this game (or any of the others after the first, which probably bugs me more than it should) - with Banjo and Kazooie kicking it old school and Gruntilda the witch still trapped under a rock. However, Gruntilda decides that where magic has failed she can apply the cold hand of science to defeat the bear and bird. So she has her minion Klungo make a robotic chasis for her which she then puts her soul into, no doubt contributing to her body's skeletal state by the beginning of Banjo-Tooie.
Deciding to kill two birds with one stone (or rather, kidnap a bird with a robot body) Grunty kidnaps Kazooie on the logic that splitting up the pair will make them unable to stop her dastardly plans. To further complicate the issue, she travels twenty years into the past with the bird. Getting help from Mumbo Jumbo, Banjo gets a DeLorean spell cast on him and after speeding up to eighty-eight miles per hour is whisked back to Spiral Mountain in the past.
Grunty's castle is still being built and a mole by the name of Bozzeye is around to be the move teacher this time around, Banjo having forgotten all of the moves from the previous game thanks to plot amnesia. And so, the race is on to save Kazooie and then defeat Gruntilda for the third time...which is really the second time, but also the first time.
Confused? Don't be. Wibbley wobbley, timey wimey and all that.
The loop is closed at the end of the game by the defeat of Gruntilda and her return to her robot body, whereupon she orders Klungo to send a letter off to her sisters to come and save her, setting into motion the events of Banjo-Tooie. No doubt, also, the mucking around with time deleted Banjo's sister Tooty and allowed L.O.G. to claw its way into the Banjo-Kazooie universe. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The move sets had to be changed up a bit for the handheld, which I can get behind. Kazooie not being able to fly this time is at least excused by something other than "wanting to reach out to a new demographic". But pretty much everything else is what you'd expect had you played the two console N64 games. Various jumps, eggs Kazooie can use, various ways to smack against the ground and lay down some hurt on any enemies unfortunate enough to be underneath the bear and bird, and so on.
The graphics are also pretty good for the area, using a top down design to try and replicate the feel of the console versions...with mixed success for obvious reasons. And while it doesn't feel altogether cluttered, there are points where Banjo won't be able to go somewhere that it very obviously seems like he should be able to and force the player to do walk around until they can actually find the proper elevation that they're at.
This also makes the very, very rare fall several hundred feet down to one's death hilarious.
But those minor issues aside, the game is pretty solid overall. Definitely has that Rare magic and lets it flow, perhaps one of the last truly great efforts of that once proud developer. It's a bit short, even for a handheld but as the first game that Rare made after being purchased by Nintendo, it may very well be one of their last truly good games. A bit of an underwhelming note considering the heights they had achieved, but considering the depths to which they later sank...we could have seen a lot, lot worse...
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge is now available from Rareware and THQ for Game Boy Advance.
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