Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

November 19,2008 - Sometimes trying to figure out Rare's motives for re-inventing their classic titles is a challenge even our brains cannot comprehend. Rare was once at the top of the gaming spectrum back in the Nintendo 64 era, pushing out groundbreaking and stellar titles year after year. Rare seems devoted to adding "fresh" new takes on their classic series to give both nostalgic and new fans a taste of both worlds, but frankly none of their ideas to re-invent past titles ever received the praise Rare wanted (ex. Star Fox Adventures, Perfect Dark Zero). Adding new boring traits to an already classic title is a shame, because Nuts & Bolts on its own merits is a solid platform adventure, just be ready to pick your side before entering this mishap concoction of creativity.

The story in Nuts & Bolts is quite pleasing - possibly the only linear string that holds the entire bulk of the game together. An evil dude known only as the Lord of Games transports Banjo, Kazooie, and Gruntilda into a mysterious place called Showdown Town. It is here where you will compete in various tasks and challenges to earn jiggies, golden jigsaw pieces which are then used to create new worlds for you to explore. There are six districts for you to fully interact and explore, and despite some interesting level designs and creative tools abound in each one, the game's repetitive nature is too much to withstand.

What makes Nuts & Bolts so dull and lifeless is perhaps the necessity for you to become an auto mechanic and build your way to success. As stated before, this is where the lines are drawn and you must pick exactly which side you will choose to explore: the creative builder who will utilize over 100 different parts to successfully complete challenges or the simple gamer who only wants to play a pleasant adventure game without worrying about building new vehicles to advance. If you chose the second option then Nuts & Bolts is not for you. The game relies HEAVILY on building vehicles, and needless to say if you find that simple task boring then you will not enjoy scrambling around worlds looking for new blueprints any more fulfilling either.

Building vehicles in Nuts & Bolts requires you to spend hours fiddling with parts to create the most unique vehicle your mind can dream up. There are some methods to your creativity of course, as you can put together almost any concoction you can think of as long as the end result meets all requirements. But the vehicle customization is plagued by a somewhat faulty building screen which hampers you with boxes of long dialogue and a control scheme that never works right, often forcing you to choose items you never selected. To top it off, all future blueprints must physically be carried to Mumbo's shop in Showdown Town. Remember the good ol' days when you can pick up an item and simply deposit it at your own leisure? Yep, gone.

These vehicles do more than just serve as a means of transportation; you will use them in every world you visit for completing tasks. While the diverse vehicles might help you in completing tasks, all of the objectives in the game are repetitive to no extent. Every world has at least one racing objective, one "destroying a certain amount of a certain object" objective, and one objective that forces you to use your new vehicle to reach a previously unreachable part of the level. To top it off, all missions in the game are time-based, meaning if you usually have a hard time racing against the clock, then Nuts & Bolts will be annoyingly frustrating for you. The mission structure throughout Nuts & Bolts lack any sense of originality or creativity, which is a shame given the high-quality stigma the original game emitted in each and every level.

To top it off it is often sometimes impossible to even read what you must complete since the text on the screen is far too small and jumbled together to read coherently. The words move too fast for you to even glance at and since the game uses no actual spoken dialogue outside of the annoying tweaks and moans from the characters, figuring out what to do in most objectives relies on the principle of repetition and knowing what you did in past objectives to succeed.

The multiplayer is hardly any better from the single player as Nuts & Bolts gives you no options to change any default settings. Playing online is slightly entertaining if for the fact that you can view other people's crazy vehicle creations and battle each other for individual parts. However, the four player split-screen affair is a complete mess, with ugly visuals and slowdowns that hinder even the most joyous friendly gaming moments. Plus, you can only participate in the same objectives you played over and over again in single player, so if that bored you to tears the first time, expect no different reaction when playing online.

Visually, Nuts & Bolts looks well enough on its own, but the small and funky text coupled with the constant multiplayer slowdowns make it unreasonable ugly at times. To its merits, Nuts & Bolts does have a fabulous artistic design with impressive looking levels and character models, but that diversity can only amount to so much when the game throws repetitive missions at you. The sound, although delightful and charming at times, could use a makeover. It's nice to hear Banjo and all the characters spurt out weird androgynous tones and sounds when they speak, but after a while it just becomes unbearable to even muster.

Like their previous resurrected titles, Nuts & Bolts serves as nothing more than a failed attempt by Rare to blend something "fresh" into an already winning formula. With missions that are far too repetitive, a lack of available settings for multiplayer, and other nefarious nuisances that hinder the game, it is hard to recommend Nuts & Bolts to any fan who loved the original title. Sure, a $40 price tag is reasonable considering the game you will receive (it's almost as if Rare knew what they did and wanted to lessen the burden) but there are far too many things that don't sit right with this latest Rare incarnation. If you are in the mood for some classic Banjo- Kazooie, knock down a few points on the XBLA version instead, it's still better then Nuts & Bolts will ever be.

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