Review: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is a vehicle creation/platform game for the Xbox 360. It was developed by Rare. It is the third Banjo-Kazooie game; the last two were on the Nintendo 64.

Banjo and Kazooie piloting a basic vehicle in the first level.

Banjo, Kazooie, and their archenemy Gruntilda have been transported by the Lord of Games to Showdown Town. Tired of the lack of activity between the heroes and villain since their last game, L.O.G. has forced the three into a vehicle building competition. The winner gets ownership of their home, Spiral Mountain.

Nuts and Bolts is made up of six worlds connected by a hub world, Showdown Town. Each world has puzzle pieces called Jiggies to collect. To collect them, Banjo and Kazooie have to construct vehicles and use them to win competitions. Winning Jiggies unlocks newer worlds, new challenges in the same worlds, and new vehicle parts, until the game is completed and Gruntilda is defeated.

The building vehicles part of the game is a very impressive system. The vehicles are not realistic; the bodies of the vehicles are made of cubes, wedges, pipes, and panels. But the number of pieces the player is allocated, and the way they all can connect to each other, allows for a lot of creativity.

There are also several cool gadgets that the player can attach to their vehicles. All vehicles need at least some type of engine and fuel tank, but they can go anywhere and come in different sizes. Less vital but still important are different types of wheels, floaters to make aquatic vehicles, wings and propellers for planes and helicopters, and truck parts to transport things. And there are a ton of weapons and fun miscellaneous tools, like a self repairing tool, that can be attached as well.

There is nothing more enjoyable than spending ten minutes putting a car or a plane together, making sure it has all the parts and that it looks nice, and then testing it out and seeing that it works the way the player wanted it to. But it is difficult to not simply make a vehicle that looks like a real vehicle, for example simply building a regular car because cars are the standard. Also, there is nothing stopping the player from attaching a seat to four wheels and an engine and not do anything creative with it, except that might make the vehicle unbalanced.

The game does take into account the weight of vehicles. More powerful engines are needed to move bigger vehicles, and vehicles can be unbalanced if took much stuff is put in the front or the back. There is a problem with the vehicles having a hard time not sticking to the ground no matter how weight is put on it, which is a problem when most of the levels have uneven ground.

Unfortunately the rest of the game is not as fun as the vehicle creation section. The entire game is made up of time trials; races, transporting stuff under a time limit, pushing things under a time limit, destroying things under a time limit, all missions that need a vehicle in some way. It is occasionally fun to have to make an unusual vehicle to complete a creative objective, but most of the activities are mundane. And putting them under a time limit or in areas that are hard to navigate, with vehicles that do not hug the ground, just makes the completing the challenges frustrating. The only joy is in getting the Jiggies so cool new vehicle parts are unlocked.

Level design is weird. The levels are huge and gorgeous and allow plenty of space for races and whatnot. But they are largely empty. All there is to do is to go from one character hosting a challenge to the next. It brings up the question of why make the player go to each challenge. It would have been easier to have all the challengers in one place. There are musical notes that can be collected to unlock more vehicle parts and tokens that can be used to unlock more vehicle parts, but those are not fun to collect.

The story and characters are all aware that they are in a video game, and most of the game revolves around making fun of video game conventions, like the pointlessness of fetch quests, or the history of the video game industry, or Rare’s own history. It is funny, but at the same time it is depressing having it pointed out how far Rare has fallen since the 90s.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is a fun vehicle building simulator surrounded by a terribly tedious driving/flying/whatever simulator. And it is a letdown to fans of the Banjo-Kazooie series.