Banjo-Tooie: A Rare Sight

I love Banjo-Kazooie, there’s no denying it.  Gruntilda is one of my favourite villains ofall time, and the pairing of the honest, polite Banjo with the sharp-beaked, sarcastic Kazooie was, in my opinion, done better than most of the other pairings we’ve seen in video games to date.  Ratchet and Klank and Daxter and the guy he’s with just don’t quite do it for me.  The first Banjo-Kazooie game is great.  It’s challenging, at least after the first level, it’s funny, and it’s inventive.  I love it.

However, when I played through Banjo-Tooie back when it came out, I remember being rather disappointed with it.  At least, I didn’t get the same thrill out of it that I did from the first game.  I wrote it off as another sequel that just did O.K. and moved on.  Well, I’ve been playing through it again for the past few days and I feel the need to stand up and apologize to the entire game.  I’m sorry.  I misjudged you all those years ago.  You are a truly great game.  GameSpot actually gave Banjo-Tooie a near perfect score! (See the link on the side of the page) I think I would give it the same score so far.  I think it surpasses the original in almost every way, and that is a tough challenge to beat.

A game which doesn't take itself too seriously...

I won’t bother worrying you with plot spoilers, as the game freely admits many times that it’s all really just an excuse to give you a fantastic adventure to play through.  Banjo-Tooie sets you off across the Isle of Hags to enter various worlds and collect Jigsaw Pieces (or Jiggies, the Gold Stars of the game) by doing important things, like winning a kickball tournament, defeating an ancient Mayan totem god, swatting flies, gathering up lost children, or earning enough doubloons to buy one from the pawn shop.  It’s rarely that simple though, and one of the main things that makes Tooie trump Kazooie is the complexity of the challenges required to obtain the Jiggies in the game.  Mario games nowadays give you a hint and a path for every star.  Not so here.  You have to explore, talk to people, and work out what needs doing and how to do it.  Many of the Jiggies require you to travel between the levels directly through various tunnels, and it is impossible to get every Jiggie in a level the first time playing through it.  Where the first game just gave you difficult things to achieve, this game gives you a number of puzzles to solve, which is far more satisfying to complete and increases the play time significantly.

Rarrrr!

Tooie also beats Kazooie because in many ways it simply responded to everything we wanted to see in the first game but never happened.  You can control Mumbo Jumbo, who is very excited to be a main character at last, and go around casting impressive spells.  Humba Wumba, the new shape changer of the game, can actually turn you into decent things, and you get some FANTASTIC forms to turn into, such as a submarine, a tyrannosaurus, and a washing machine.  YAY!  Several of these forms call back to the first game, to little things that Mumbo said he could do or accidentally did.

There are a lot of jokes and references to the first game, with a lot of characters returning (logically this time, instead of just unabashedly ripped like Majora’s Mask’s characters were).  There’s a lot of continuity between them, and if you find a lot of the secrets you find places and objects that you always wanted to see in the first game but were mysteriously out of reach, such as the Ice Key.

Did I mention the FPS element and excellent multi-player games?

Essentially it is designed to be a game for people who have completed Banjo-Kazooie and now want something with a bit more meat on its bones.  It’s a darker game than the first, stepping closer to the Rare sense of humour that you see in Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but still just this side of family-friendly gaming.  It’s well balanced, with ingenuous controls (you start with ALL the techniques from the first game, and then expand from there, which is a nice touch), and is all in all a brilliantly designed game from start to finish.  Well done, Rare.  I wish you had stuck with Nintendo.

Day 22: A Game Sequel Which Disappointed You

I've put Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days here as an example of this, but I have a number of games in this category. The game sequels which always disappoint me the most are the sequels which are made on a different platform from the original.

Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts moved from Nintendo to Microsoft. Kingdom Hearts moved from the consoles to only the handheld devices like the DS and the PSP. I think even Baldur's Gate II: Dark Alliance moved from Nintendo to Sony if I remember correctly.

Whenever a game sequel moves to a different company or platform it frustrates me no end. How can I continue with the story? The trailer at the end of Kingdom Hearts II for the next game is AMAZING, and is one of the cooler game trailers I've seen, even if its very short and simple. Yet can I get the game? No. It's on the PSP. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I understand that its generally to do with the companies, not out of an attempt to crush my soul. But they succeed at that anyway. Grr.....

Day 17: Best Antagonist

Tempting though it was to say myself in any Neverwinter Nights or similar game where I played an evil character, I decided to go for the antagonist which made me glad to be playing the game, who I enjoyed beating, and who I could empathize with, at least a little.

Gruntilda, the ugly witch from Banjo-Kazooie, is distraught to discover that a young girl, your sister Tootie, is prettier than she is. Resolving to do something about this, she kidnaps her and places your sister in a machine to suck all the beauty out of her and give it to Gruntilda. Similar plots exist, but when you get a Game Over and it shows the machine working, you are forced to consider the fact that Gruntilda's new body looks pretty good, and you haven't really had much game time to connect with your sister (who is now hideous)... perhaps Gruntilda winning isn't such a bad thing after all? Where can I buy flowers...

Seriously though, she is remniscent of GlaDOS (who would have won if I had ever played Portal) mixed with a children's nursery rhyme. As you progress through her castle and collect puzzle pieces to open new worlds to explore, she constantly harasses you with disheartening messages. The fact that everything she ever says is in rhyming couplets doesn't quite make her any more terrifying, but it certainly makes you laugh.

She's vicious, but with a well-humoured side. The best example of this is that in order to get to the final battle, you have to cross a giant board which serves as a quiz about the game which she hosts. There are some nasty squares on that board and there's lava all around you, which reminds you that this rhyming, scheming witch has a slightly sadistic side. I doubt, after all, that she just has this lying around... she built it to taunt you. Banjo is renowned for being a little slow, so its only due to the intelligence of the player that you're actually able to cross. On his own, and even with Kazooie, Banjo would likely never make it across.

She's endearing, she's vicious, she's funny, and she rhymes. She also wears a purple scarf... presumably there's a draught in her castle? You've got to love her.

Banjo Kazooie itself, just to go into it briefly, is a standard-construct game from Rare, almost identical to Donkey Kong 64. The magic of Rare, and why they're a serious contender for my favourite gaming developer, is how they have taken two almost identical games (slightly slow brown character with assistance progresses through levels collecting special objects to open next level. The big green villain watches you progress in frustration. Each level you have assistance from friendly characters to overcome the challenges ahead) and made them both a blast to play. Sorry for the long sentence.

As an N64 game the controls were sometimes a little clumsy, but it had a good sense of humour, with Kazooie joining in with Gruntilda sometimes in taunting you. Kazooie, so we're all clear, is a large red bird who lives and operates from the backpack of you, a bear. Cue confusion, but that's the glory of the game. Everything is odd, but it works very smoothly. The levels are varied and fun to play around, the music is great fun and very catchy, and every character is fun to interact with, even if there's not much dialogue. Donkey Kong 64 is the better game in most respects - graphics, controls, playable characters - but Banjo-Kazooie blows those monkeys out of the water when it comes to sense of humour, interesting levels (haunted mansion beats ice cave by miles), and most significantly - villain.

K.Rool is very smiliar to Gruntilda in many ways, but his cutscenes are poorly done, his dialogue is atrocious, and he has no real influence on the game. Gruntilda is wise-cracking, intelligent, and harasses you the whole time. K.Rool detracts from the game, Gruntilda makes the game more enjoyable. Simple.