|
Thursday 12 Feb 2009
In any medium, be it TV, movies, print or even videogames, a little self-referential humour can go a long way. A lot of self-referential humour, however, can ruin the intended experience, and constant ‘breaking of the fourth wall’ is enough to sour and dilute any creative (or non-creative) endeavour.
So it is with Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on the Xbox 360, a game that starts out charming and humorous, but soon falls apart, as not only are the seams completely visible, but the patchwork nature of the game’s progress system makes each play session feel like a tedious slog from one disconnected world to another.
The premise of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is, at first, rather humorous – Gruntilda, the series’ antagonist, is back to irritate Banjo and Kazooie, the series’ protagonists. The Lord of Games soon makes an appearance (a Pong machine with a cloak, also abbreviated to L.O.D., a reference to Level of Detail in games) and provides Banjo and Kazooie (and Gruntilda) with a challenge, whisking them away to Showdown Town, which serves as the central hub for the duration of the adventure. Solid.
The set-up and dialogue in the opening cinematics, as well as the cutscenes that follow throughout the game are, in general, well written and witty, constantly making in-jokes either about the game industry as a whole, or referring back to prior releases in the series on the N64. The witty writing doesn’t change, still providing a guffaw or two later in the game, but it does wear thin overall rather soon, making you question if this game would even exist without Banjo and Kazooie’s previous adventures, as the jokes lean too much on making fun of the past, rather than dealing with fresh material. Tired.
Once in Showdown Town, players are presented with the task of entering a variety of other worlds by using teleporters (after navigating through a menu) and entering challenges, each world locked until you collect the required number of ‘Jiggies,’ this game’s particular progression currency. Collect the requisite number of Jiggies to enter one world, to collect more Jiggies to enter another world, to collect more Jiggies to unlock… and so it goes. Once in a world, you are able to find and enter challenges (after navigating through a menu) to earn yourself more Jiggies, at which time you hurry back to the hub world to see what new worlds you have unlocked. Only for some reason, you have to manually transfer all of your acquired Jiggies to a series of processing machines to unlock the new worlds. Why? It should just automatically happen. Tedious.
This progression system of using one hub world to gain access to a host of other, differently themed worlds, is a tried and tested method, – why, even the mighty classics such as Mario 64 through Mario Galaxy use this system. Those games, however, don’t make the process any more tedious than it needs to be – you get in, finish a challenge, and then get out. No extra work. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, however, makes you go through many different menus and processes, before you can even claim your Jiggies outright, in order to unlock extra worlds, which are annoyingly and consistently referred to as ‘games,’ as though you needed reminding after the Lord of Games is constantly telling you how you need to complete the challenges, ‘just like a videogame.’ Annoying.
Now, each challenge revolves around the use of vehicles, either on land, sea or air. Banjo can run, jump and attack things, but players will be required to either build their own vehicle to traverse the environments, or use one of several blueprints found throughout the game to build a pre-set vehicle. Creating your own vehicle is easy and pretty fun, as you are able to take your newly created monstrosity on a test run around a large testing centre in the garage to see how it runs (or doesn’t run). Depending on your creative tendencies, you will spend a large (or small) amount of time in the garage, tinkering and tweaking your masterpiece, fitting and removing parts to your heart’s desire. Fun.
The problem comes in when you are actually faced with using any vehicle in a challenge, as not only are the vehicle’s physical properties not correctly modelled in the game (think real-world properties like weight, acceleration and inertia, rather than appearance), making for a frustrating time navigating race courses and the environment in general, but the challenges themselves are down-right dreary. You’ll get to fetch items for an assortment of reasons or race against other inhabitants in the world. That’s it. You don’t get to use your vehicle for anything other than typical fetch quests and beating other racers around a specified race course. Boring.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as not only are you able to take your outrageous contraptions into challenges in the singleplayer, but you can also take them for a spin against real live opponents and race against players online - easily the most fun part of the game. Watching one player’s disgraceful invention race against another’s is hilarious, and things can turn competitive rather quickly as each player tries to create either the best racer for the course, or the funniest, wackiest design imaginable. This mode is by far the best part of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, providing both satisfaction and a bunch of laughs. Entertaining.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is one mixed-up bag of nuts and raisins (no play on words intended, really). On one hand, it wants to be a singleplayer game, but the missions are too heavily reliant on the hub world system of progression, enhancing and reinforcing the schizophrenic, patchwork nature of the disconnected and unrelated worlds – not a good thing. On the other hand, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts wants to be a vehicle-based racing game, which it fails to do due to the poor implementation of the racing aspect.
Rare, the developers of the game, would have been much better off creating either a full singleplayer experience with one main story quest, or creating a good, solid racing game, with the custom vehicle creation system implemented to allow players to get invested in the game in a way other racing games fail to do. Right now it is neither, and, as such, remains a tedious singleplayer slog with a cool, but undernourished, multiplayer component. Missed opportunity.
Pros: Great custom vehicle creation feature; ability to race your inventions online; graphically superb; great writing and humour; wonderful music and fitting sound effects
Cons: Disconnected series of challenges; poor story and setup; tedious nature of level progression; no voice work (stylised ‘blah blah blahs’ and reading instead); self-referential humour can get a bit much
| Rating: |
   |
| Contributor: |
Oliver |
|
