Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
I’ve been having loads of fun with the latest Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I’m not the most feverish fan of platformers and partly I think they’ve gone the wrong way ever since the first Jak & Daxter.
After that, well, it seems platformers must include lot’s of guns and shooting stuff. Whereas the first Jak was one of the best platformers I’ve ever played, the second one with it’s guns etc. was one of the most frustrating ones. I think I even completed it to 94%, but after that I’d had enough.
Luckily, the new Banjo-Kazooie does things right. The challenges are nice and multilayered, Banjo can fall from god knows how high and still survive. Of course, there’s the open world, the tightropes, jumping and smashing things to pieces.
The coolest thing, though, is the vehicle workshop and the multitude of parts you can scavenge and earn throughout the open world. It’s like playing with Legos and using your creativity to solve the challenges the game throws at you.
User-created content
In Banjo, players can create multitude of different kinds of vehicles from the parts they have. They can consist of maximum of 200 parts (which is alot) and create anything that has wheels, propellers, wings, etc etc.
The game’s engine tracks how the vehicle is built, ie. engine power vs. mass, where the wheels are, can they turn, what’s the center of gravity and so on. It seems fairly complex, but for the player, it’s easy as pie.
I’m not a big fan of having a game which relies heavily on the specific few players to create experiences for the others. Give me a well designed levels from the actual developer over going through hundreds of user created submissions in hopes of finding that good one.
Jackpot!
Banjo does user created content right. It has some limits, but within the game they work well and it’s never really aggressively pushed onto the player. It also feeds the player’s imagination very silently and just makes it fun to construct your own vehicles.
Of course, with user-created vehicles, game balance flies right out the window. During the game, about half of the challenges are stuff where the player can choose his own vehicle or create one instead of grabbing the “default” one given by the computer. This creates some hilarious problem solving spots.
Need to grab and antenna and drive high up to get reception? Ditch the wheels, add a few propellers and fly instead!
Need to crash the opponent’s vehicle off the road and steal something he’s carrying? Add a big A.C.M.E fist in the front bumper and knock him senseless. Bonus points if you catch the cargo he’s carrying without it touching ground. I did it in three seconds btw :-)
Of course, if you’re ever in trouble in any of the challenges, you can check the leaderboards and hopefully spot a replay of some of the best scores in there along with blueprint specifications of the vehicles they were earned with! Of course, you can also view the user-created content in the game’s Showroom website.
Overall
You can get the game for a bargain prize, so there’s no reason to go and grab this gem. After all the recent punching, ground’n'pounding and submissions I’ve done in the latest UFC title, it’s a welcome breather and a very colorful one :)
Tags: platformer, user-created content, xbox 360
This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 12:18 am and is filed under Reviews, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.