Banjo-Tooie - XBLA (Review)

I recall never liking Banjo-Tooie as much Banjo-Kazooie when they were on the N64 and after playing through Tooie's re-release on the X-Box Live Arcade, I can say that my feelings haven't changed. Banjo-Tooie attempts to go through the natural evolution of a game series by taking everything that made the first game great and super-sizing it. While I would like to say that this grandiose scheme is an improvement, this is only serves to make the game a giant chore. Gone are the relatively small, enclosed worlds of the first game. Instead, worlds are more like giant hubs for smaller areas and some of the worlds are even inter-connected with each other. Every level after the first three becomes an exercise in tedium rather than exploration. Some of the Jiggys can't be obtained learn moves from other levels, yet there is no indication of which Jiggys can't be collected and what moves are needed. I found myself exploring for hours, accomplishing little and getting tired.

In a rather welcome move, Banjo and Kazooie start the game with all the moves they learned in the first game and begin to add a lot more to their repertoire. This helps keep the original game's habit of throwing new gameplay concepts every other moment in tact. But while the first game did this flawlessly, Banjo-Tooie mucks this up a little bit. Some of the new moves are innovative and cool and have a multitude of uses like the new types of eggs, the drill beak attack, and the areas where you use Kazooie like a gun. A good bulk of the other moves are used once, but never again in the whole game. It’s great that Rare wanted to add so much innovation in Tooie, but sadly a lot of it just doesn’t work like the moves that result from the split-up ability, they just feel like unnecessary additions.

Banjo-Tooie is a sequel that suffers from the old cliche of bigger is better. The game that I loved is in here somewhere and when the design pulls itself together the game gets really good. Some Jiggies are a lot of fun to discover, some levels are interesting and unique, and the boss fights are a real treat. Having now played through all three major games in the series, I found that series has clearly gotten weaker as it goes along. Banjo-Kazooie is a true classic, Banjo-Tooie is a flawed but decent follow-up and Nuts & Bolts is just a middle of the road outing. It mentioned within the game that Rare at least has plans to do another Banjo game and I'm up for it so long as it captures some of the magic of the original.