Review: Banjo-Tooie (360)

While Banjo-Kazooie can be considered an alternative to Mario 64, Tooie can be called the epic sequel. Even the opening sequence (Gruntilda returning to wreak havoc) lasts longer than all the cut scenes in Banjo-Kazooie combined. And from you start to control Banjo you’re completely overwhelmed with the amount of freedom you’re given. Not helping matters is that at the end of the day you’re controlling a rather stumpy bear who moves like an asthmatic tortoise.

Rather than retread old ground you’re given new places to visit, which like Grunty’s Tower in the first game, acts as a hub for you to enter each world. The hub itself is quite enormous in itself. Luckily you’re given teleporting hatches which when jumped in transport you to each location. Once you access each world (done by collecting jigsaw pieces, or jiggys as they’re known) then the size really becomes a problem. To give you some idea of how large each area is, then each world has about four different teleportation points. The size also comes into play when you’re looking for the aforementioned jiggys, finding them being far harder than in Banjo-Kazooie. A good thing perhaps, but not when you’re given this massive piece of land to explore.

Adding to the insanity of it is the addition of Humba Wumba, who basically does the same job as Mumbo Jumbo did in the first game, transforming you into creatures or items. Not that Mumbo Jumbo has been ditched. No, you get to control him this time. By standing on points around the map you can perform magic spells that help your progress. This is where backtracking becomes a problem. Apparently having a quick select button to swap characters isn’t an option. Instead once you’re done with Mumbo Jumbo you need to return to his hut and sit on his chair before you get control back to Banjo. The same is said for Humba Wumba. Then you have a new move that allows you to separate from Kazooie. The same thing applies where you need to run back to the plate in order to swap characters or rejoin together. This results in more backtracking in the first two worlds than the entire first game.

Then you have the abundance of new moves and weapons, it’s no surprise that many people consider Rare the masters of the collect-em-up. Some moves are welcome (the ability to shoot eggs in first person) others not so. One moment in particular had us automatically enter first person mode using Kazooie as some sort of bayonet.. Adding to the collectibles are cheato’s pages (collect five to unlock something nice), fire eggs and grenades, amongst other things. Nothing has been ditched from the first game either, so you still have jiggys, notes, jinjos and honeycomb pieces to forage around for. If you want to look on the bright side, then there’s plenty for you to do!

For an N64 game the graphics are still fairly decent. The trademark N64 blur is gone, replaced with some nice HD visuals. Despite the, sometimes annoying, animal noises the music is also nice. Taking you back to a time before everything had to epic orchestral sounds.

Banjo-Tooie is far from being a bad platformer, though instead of taking what made Banjo-Kazooie great and improving on it, the Rare philosophy seems to be throw everything into the mixing pot and see what comes out. Giving you more to do doesn’t exactly make it any better than the original, instead it highlights the weakness in the level design and just accentuates the archaic nature of the genre. All of a sudden it makes you realise why they went in the direction they did with Nuts & Bolts.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Jason Julier