A Second Coming For All Ages

by Shadow Wave:

©2009 Ben Cadwallader

Banjo and Kazooie are back in Banjo Tooie, just months after the original game made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade. Rare once again have brought the Nintendo 64 classic sequel back into the limelight to perhaps give those younger gamers and fans a chance to have a taste at the Banjo-Kazooie franchise for the first time, while enabling us older gamers to experience that warm nostalgia feeling.

Does this sequel deliver? Or does it fall off its broomstick?

While Banjo Tooie improves over the original in most ways, I believe it took a few things too far, making a few parts of the game much more frustrating than they should be. However, even though there are some minor issues, Banjo-Tooie in the end represents one of the best value for money games currently on Xbox Live Arcade.

The game takes place almost straight after the original game ended. Without spoiling anything, somehow as luck would have it, Gruntilda the witch is back trying to stop Banjo and Kazooie at every turn once again as our heroes journey to brand new areas in search of stopping Gruntilda for a decade.

What makes Banjo Tooie feel fresh straight off the bat is that unlike most sequels, Banjo and Kazooie have ALL their moves and abilities that they learnt during the original game already usable. This makes it feel like you are continuing straight on from your original game.

It feels like you are continuing straight on from your original game.

But of course what would be an adventure game without new moves and abilities?  Banjo and Kazooie get to learn a whole new batch of great abilities over the course of the game.  But this is where I think Rare got a bit too greedy and introduced a few abilities which made my time with Banjo Tooie a little more frustrating

Perhaps the most annoying new ability would be the first person view/shooter mode. Once you learn this ability, when you press Y to go into first person view you will be given a crosshair / aiming point which you can move around the screen and use to fire eggs at exact targets.

The aimer is used also when you are flying, swimming and playing particular mini games.  In theory it’s a good idea, but the aimer is so sensitive and hard to control you will find that areas which should be extremely easy become insanely frustrating.

The aimer is too sensitive and hard to control.

On a happier note, Rare did introduce an actual mode which plays just like a FPS should,  and it’s great fun during single player and multiplayer.

Compared to the original, there is a lot more backtracking in this game that last time, and I found it a little more annoying than anything. The game encourages it as well by putting a train station in each world so that you can speed up your travels.

One thing I like much more in Banjo Tooie is the great main world; it’s much more dynamic, varied and much more fun to play through than trekking through Grunty‘s Lair in the original game.  The main world is much more social as well compared to the original game. Banjo and Kazooie will interact with many  friends on their way between new levels.

Having  lots of people to talk to outside of the main missions gave me a bigger desire to complete more of the game.

The humour is as strong as ever and it’s great to see a few very subtle mature jokes thrown in the mix as well.

The original game was let down by very annoying swimming controls, but thankfully the sequel’s swimming controls have been loosened up much more which makes swimming a lot easier to enjoy.

Graphically Banjo Tooie is fantastic: colours are bright, the graphics are crisp, the textures and frame rate have been given a nice boost. And once again I could not find one jagged edge in this game.  If you did not know this was a port of a Nintendo 64 game, you would just assume that the graphics here are a unique new art style.

I could not find one jagged edge in this game.

As long as you can live with “gargle gurg gargle goog” nonsense voices,  there is nothing wrong with Banjo Tooie’s sound,  although you might get sick of hearing the same theme song for a level after two hours of playing in it though.

There is a multiplayer portion to Banjo Tooie, which essentially consists of all the mini-games that you play during single player.  Probably the main mini-game that will get some use will be the First Person Shooter game where you get to shoot each other with eggs, death match style. Unfortunately these games aren’t enabled for online play, but siblings, families, and visiting mates will have fun with these.

Overall  Banjo Tooie is a fantastic game that in my opinion is not as good as the original Banjo Kazooie game, but gets pretty damn close. The game will last you around 20 hours and will keep you and your family entertained.  For its price of 1200 MS points, it’s definitely the best and cheapest way to experience this great title, as its Nintendo 64 counterpart has become quite a desired rare game now, selling for $50AUD or more!

“8.9/10

©2009 Ben Cadwallader

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