The original Banjo Kazooie and I had somewhat of a tenuous relationship. To date it is the only game I ever forcibly removed from a console so I could throw it as hard as I could against a wall. Its mockuMario style and incredibly cheap AI (detached zombie hand in church, I’m looking at you) rubbed me the wrong way one too many times. Thankfully, I’m happy to report that my experience with the 3rd entry in the series was largely a pleasurable experience.
While the traditional platforming aspects haven’t been completely removed, they have definitely been pushed out of the forefront. In its place are new vehicle centric, missions based objectives for Banjo to eagerly complete with reckless engagement. The general outline works the same; a giant hub world gives way to several other thematic self contained worlds, each of which holds a variety of thing to collect and challenges to complete. The only difference is that you’ll now be completing most of these with a seemingly infinite number of vehicles.
Vehicle construction appears to be a largely involving portion of the gameplay. For example, you can probably get through some challenges with the bare minimum of car parts, but a more advanced assemblage, such as giant tires or a better launch spring can make actions like climbing hills or jumping over obstacles a much easier task to perfect. In the interest of time, the demo level had a dozen pre-made vehicles lying all over the place. Despite their differences, all were entire usable in almost any situation. For example, driving a car into water was no big deal because you could just as easily sink to the bottom and drive right out of the ocean floor.
The particular level we played was full of references to the other two Banjo Kazooie games, though, I guess that was sort of the point given that was the intended context. A reference to Freezy Peak was nice, but a sly wink at the long forgotten Stop and Swap rumor was phenomenal (bonus: the Rare rep informed me there would be some sort of connectively with Banjo Kazooie’s impending appearance on XBL) and subtle hints to gameplay mechanics (like note collection) all over the place.
The portions of vehicle specific missions I got to play/watch succeeded in lighting up eyes that had been subjected to tedious meetings for the previous seven hours. Bouncing around through rings and trying to perfect flips for Bottles was engaging, and watching Greg take on a bizarre mission involving using a hollow-out mattress as a vehicle for corralling inordinately massive soccer balls was massively adapt in extracting my appreciation. I imagine more complex vehicles will lead to more complex objectives, and these demo-friendly tasks provided a solid indication that the game is on the right course.
Accounting for the fact that some (patience-less) people might not want to spend hours upon hours fiddling with their vehicles; they’ve stated they’re going to include an option to trade blueprints via XBL. This way you do not have to worry about starting from scratch and can instead rely on perfecting an established design or adding your own unique flair to an already sound vehicle.
If nothing else, the game looks brilliant. Rare’s mastery of the 360 hardware is no secret, (Kameo was a launch game and it still holds up, not to mention Viva Piñata), but Banjo really shines. The environments are astonishing in from an aesthetic standpoint, and Rare’s trademark art design bleeds through every crevice.
