BLOATED
Uncommon opinion: NO bad worlds (not even the hub world). The soundtrack is all-time.
Very ambitious and has great ideas. Getting to where you need to be in huge levels takes forever due to banjo moving at the same speed as the first game.
Terrydactly land and Glittergulch mine are a slog to get through đź’€.
Terrydactly land and Glittergulch mine are a slog to get through đź’€.
wouldnt say its worse than banjo kazooie, but just a bit different. love it either way. music is obvs SOOOO good.
If this game wasn't INCREDIBLY racist it would still be my favorite game of all time. Just endless waterfalls of more and more one-off garbage to do, with wildly different locales, fun music, goofy gameplay and really silly writing. If I could go back in time I'd frankly kill whoever though Mumbo and Humba were good ideas and let the games be better forever.
A bloated sequel
It takes everything from the original game but tries to add more and more. Levels so large you need to fast travel between pads, an expanded moveset that starts to get confusing on what you can do and what context sensitive solution the game wants, and way more collectables. Put that all together in levels that have you constantly jump between just to set up more challenges and you are in for more of an annoyance than a fun time.
It takes everything from the original game but tries to add more and more. Levels so large you need to fast travel between pads, an expanded moveset that starts to get confusing on what you can do and what context sensitive solution the game wants, and way more collectables. Put that all together in levels that have you constantly jump between just to set up more challenges and you are in for more of an annoyance than a fun time.
traumatizing
I think this game's just as good as the original in almost every way. In many ways manages to improve upon it and stand on its own as a totally different experience that still captures the magic of the first game. Its much meatier structure and overall scope puts this game more on a "Maybe once every year or two" replay schedule, like a really good Zelda game. As opposed to the original that's perfect to just pick up and play in a couple hours whenever you get the itch, as a nice comfort game. And for that I see why many prefer the first, but what this game was able to accomplish on the N64 is actually insane.
Not content with simply getting the most out of what the N64 could do with BK, BT goes a step further and tries to get MORE than the N64 can do. In doing so it's perhaps a somewhat more flawed game, specifically in the pacing department. (And more obviously, in the framerate department) But I'm no less in love with it. Tons of fun new minigames, a great list of 12 boss fights (Compared to BK's grand total of 2), playable Mumbo, different world design, way more memorable NPC's, a higher stakes story with more cutscenes, and a soundtrack that's distinctly Banjo-yet in a style unmistakably from THIS banjo specifically...All come together to make this a worthy sequel that stands on its own.
The sense of a massive interconnected world is insane. Modern games WISH their worlds were as fully realized as this. The way every level is in some way connected to a different one is ambitious TODAY let alone on the n64. Pushing ice cube people off the island in the sky to the pool of hot water below in a different level to cool it off. Turning off the sludge in one level to make it stop spewing muck into some kid's swimming pool in a different level. Finding a secret way to smuggle food out of the carnival because they don't let you walk out the doors with your burger and fries. At one point you can't actually enter the front door of the level and have to find a way to take a train and enter the level through its basement railroad. Mumbo will sometimes be controlling a giant statue kicking doors down to make paths, or making the ocean breathable for Banjo. The transformations are a bit more unique this time around too. In BK gameplay-wise many of them were functionally the same, it was merely the level context that changed how they were used. Tooie keeps the best transformation, the bee, and adds on forms that are more meaningfully diverse. Like a snowball that gets bigger the more health you have, naturally making you gain health as you roll around in the snow. Or a dinosaur that changes size depending on whether you shrunk or grew Humba's wigwam with Mumbo.
Just like the first, an amazing one of a kind game. Manages to add a LOT to the formula without losing what made it fun to begin with. The Xbox360 version is great as it makes the game run perfectly, where it struggles in the original to not run in slow motion. Only flaw of that version is that the soundtrack for the cutscenes were composed with the N64's slowdown in mind, so it de-syncs the music written in time with events REALLY badly. (Gives a good perspective on just how much better the xbox version runs though.)
One of the best sequels ever made for one of the best games ever made.
Not content with simply getting the most out of what the N64 could do with BK, BT goes a step further and tries to get MORE than the N64 can do. In doing so it's perhaps a somewhat more flawed game, specifically in the pacing department. (And more obviously, in the framerate department) But I'm no less in love with it. Tons of fun new minigames, a great list of 12 boss fights (Compared to BK's grand total of 2), playable Mumbo, different world design, way more memorable NPC's, a higher stakes story with more cutscenes, and a soundtrack that's distinctly Banjo-yet in a style unmistakably from THIS banjo specifically...All come together to make this a worthy sequel that stands on its own.
The sense of a massive interconnected world is insane. Modern games WISH their worlds were as fully realized as this. The way every level is in some way connected to a different one is ambitious TODAY let alone on the n64. Pushing ice cube people off the island in the sky to the pool of hot water below in a different level to cool it off. Turning off the sludge in one level to make it stop spewing muck into some kid's swimming pool in a different level. Finding a secret way to smuggle food out of the carnival because they don't let you walk out the doors with your burger and fries. At one point you can't actually enter the front door of the level and have to find a way to take a train and enter the level through its basement railroad. Mumbo will sometimes be controlling a giant statue kicking doors down to make paths, or making the ocean breathable for Banjo. The transformations are a bit more unique this time around too. In BK gameplay-wise many of them were functionally the same, it was merely the level context that changed how they were used. Tooie keeps the best transformation, the bee, and adds on forms that are more meaningfully diverse. Like a snowball that gets bigger the more health you have, naturally making you gain health as you roll around in the snow. Or a dinosaur that changes size depending on whether you shrunk or grew Humba's wigwam with Mumbo.
Just like the first, an amazing one of a kind game. Manages to add a LOT to the formula without losing what made it fun to begin with. The Xbox360 version is great as it makes the game run perfectly, where it struggles in the original to not run in slow motion. Only flaw of that version is that the soundtrack for the cutscenes were composed with the N64's slowdown in mind, so it de-syncs the music written in time with events REALLY badly. (Gives a good perspective on just how much better the xbox version runs though.)
One of the best sequels ever made for one of the best games ever made.
I definitely think the original Banjo-Kazooie is a tighter video game than its sequel. Some of the level designs in Banjo-Tooie are not fun to play on. I constantly got lost trying to navigate Terrydactyland where every area of the level has the exact same textures, and I really didn't like whatever the hell was going on at Grunty Industries. By the time I hit the requirement to fight Gruntilda I felt incapable of doing any more Jiggies. Despite this, I can't bring myself to hate this game because the charm of Rare's classics is still here. The dialogue is as witty as ever and a proper boss lineup in this game is very much appreciated. Witchyworld might be my favorite Banjo world, though it might be a result of my favorite Kazooie level being a much closer race while Witchyworld is by far my favorite in Tooie.
Your eternal reminder Nuts & Bolts is Banjo-Threeie.
Your eternal reminder Nuts & Bolts is Banjo-Threeie.
This game improved a bunch on the original. But the maze-like levels and sheer length of this game totally destroyed the fun by the end. If this game was half as long it would probably go as high as 4 stars
I really wanted to like Banjo-Tooie more than I did. There are improvements to movement, variety through new abilities and fun egg types, a great cartoony art style, impressively large worlds, and a very funny, cynical sense of humour.
Unfortunately most of the gameplay is just no fun at all. There is so much of going back and forth for simple tasks and it's so tedious. I don't hate backtracking, but this fails to make it interesting.
Most levels are massive and complicated. That's not inherently bad, but it's a major problem here because there's no map. It leads to constantly running around looking for the 1 place you need to go; then repeated for so many of the longer Jiggies. Even a map that only shows areas in a level you've already been to would've been fine, considering the amount of backtracking. It would've also still encouraged exploration, which the game does sometimes achieve between the boring slogs.
There's a lot to love in Banjo-Tooie, but it doesn't work at some of the most important parts.
Unfortunately most of the gameplay is just no fun at all. There is so much of going back and forth for simple tasks and it's so tedious. I don't hate backtracking, but this fails to make it interesting.
Most levels are massive and complicated. That's not inherently bad, but it's a major problem here because there's no map. It leads to constantly running around looking for the 1 place you need to go; then repeated for so many of the longer Jiggies. Even a map that only shows areas in a level you've already been to would've been fine, considering the amount of backtracking. It would've also still encouraged exploration, which the game does sometimes achieve between the boring slogs.
There's a lot to love in Banjo-Tooie, but it doesn't work at some of the most important parts.
Guh-huh
The new structure just completely ruins the pacing. This should not have taken me almost double the time of the first game to beat.
I played this years ago when i first got an N64. Cant really remember much I will someday go back to complete it.
WHY DID THEY ADD BACKTRACKING TO EVERY LEVEL?!
Tooie is so frustrating! I want to love it and in some ways it does improve on the original, but oh my god thinking about completing the game again is exhausting.
The stakes are higher (the opening alone is just perfect rare dark humor) and the characters are still amazing and charming.
The backtracking sucks and breaks the pace completely. I had more fun, cheesing the game and trying to get around the backtracking requirements than I did getting some of the collectibles the intended way.
Music isn't as good as the first game, but it still has some really good songs (Jinjo village is a banger).
Play the 360 version over the original again since it runs better and the breegull bash is funny.
Tooie is so frustrating! I want to love it and in some ways it does improve on the original, but oh my god thinking about completing the game again is exhausting.
The stakes are higher (the opening alone is just perfect rare dark humor) and the characters are still amazing and charming.
The backtracking sucks and breaks the pace completely. I had more fun, cheesing the game and trying to get around the backtracking requirements than I did getting some of the collectibles the intended way.
Music isn't as good as the first game, but it still has some really good songs (Jinjo village is a banger).
Play the 360 version over the original again since it runs better and the breegull bash is funny.
I thought with the game's darker aesthetic compared to the original, along with its sort of weird pre-occupation with death (skeleton Grunty, zombie Jinjo), that it could be a fun thing to revisit around Halloween.
Jumping into a half-finished save file you haven't touched in over a year is ill-advised in a lot of games, this is maybe the worst example. The game is fucking huge, it is basically completely structureless, and there's actually fewer jiggies than in the first game. You will have no idea where you're going, let alone what objectives you've already completed.
A weird thing I don't know if other people have is like, when you're a kid, and your parents don't like a thing, or don't let you see a movie or something, and that makes you want to like it out of spite? When I rented this game as a kid, my parents thought the humor in this game was stupid and juvenile, and even at that young age I thought they were right.
I don't know whether this is worse than DK64, but I'm not playing it long enough to find out.
Jumping into a half-finished save file you haven't touched in over a year is ill-advised in a lot of games, this is maybe the worst example. The game is fucking huge, it is basically completely structureless, and there's actually fewer jiggies than in the first game. You will have no idea where you're going, let alone what objectives you've already completed.
A weird thing I don't know if other people have is like, when you're a kid, and your parents don't like a thing, or don't let you see a movie or something, and that makes you want to like it out of spite? When I rented this game as a kid, my parents thought the humor in this game was stupid and juvenile, and even at that young age I thought they were right.
I don't know whether this is worse than DK64, but I'm not playing it long enough to find out.
Bigger and grander than its predecessor in just about every way. Mumbo's claim at the end of the first game that Tooie would make Banjo-Kazooie "look like joke" Is apparent from the get-go, between its ambitious 20 minute(!) opening cutscene, the jaunt through ruined Spiral Mountain with the first game's moveset nearly intact, and that moment the player steps into the much, much larger Jinjo Village. I can't even begin to imagine the sheer amount of programming tricks required to pull off half of what Tooie's going for with stuff like rendering the ginormous worlds, handling the gameplay shift to its FPS segments, accommodating all the mini-games, the split characters, the cutscenes...
Banjo-Tooie is a very ambitious game. This has both upsides and downsides. The huge worlds lend themselves to a lot of experimentation, but the game sometimes runs into conveyance issues as a result. It's suuuuper easy to get turned around in places like Terrydactyland, and as cool as the inter-level connections are, that a Jiggy in one world can require a puzzle being solved in another (for example, clearing Stomponadon in Terrydactyland to get a Hailfire Peaks Jiggy) means that a player simply searching a given level for solutions can be left high and dry.
Grunty Industries is commonly pointed to as a world with this issue, but I have to side with my friends at Designing For here - Grunty Industries is brilliantly-executed. Having to sneak in, the slow opening of the factory floors, the building sense of scale, pay-off for B-K's WISHYWASHYBANJO, that moment towards the end when you finally unlock flight pads... so much to love there. I know this is the most likely thing to be overhauled in a theoretical remake, but I'd hope they wouldn't change too much.
There's also a sense of incompletion to Tooie that just wasn't present for Kazooie. Part of this was unavoidable - Tooie had to do SOMEthing to fulfill the promise B-K made with Stop 'n' Swop, and with Ninty quashing Rare's initial plan to literally yank out the N64 Game Pak, the team had to make some sort of compromise. But there's no dodging the feeling that a full world's missing, between that suspicious 900 Notes/90 Jiggies count and how nothing Cauldron Keep feels. B-K famously left a lot on the cutting room floor as well, but it had a far more complete illusion; Rare clearly just ran out of time and did their best to put a bow on the game. They did a great job, but there's no arguing with the numbers.
I think, if you only know the first two Banjo-Kazooie games by reputation, it's easy to lump them together as similar ideas. But both end up having very different identities. B-K is a pure expression of 3D platforming and exploration - perhaps less mechanically difficult than something like Super Mario 64, but still derivative of that general formula and its gameplay goals. B-T is less interested in posing mechanical challenges for the player and more interested in encouraging exploration through characters, skillsets, and world integration. Everything in Tooie feels less like "more Kazooie" and more like "commentary on Kazooie" (and other Rare trends, given the FPS segments). They're great complementary titles because they're so dissimilar, really; I'd rather have Tooie be like Sly 2 rather than Super Mario Galaxy 2. I prefer Kazooie all the same, but both are great times.
One last note - Banjo-Tooie would be the last title developed by Gregg Mayles' team during Rare and Nintendo's collaboration. This wouldn't be the team's last effort - Grabbed by the Ghoulies was only a couple years away - but Tooie feels like it carries a ton of weight as the terminus of this team's golden years. This is the same creative effort behind Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 as well as the first Banjo-Kazooie - all absolutely incredible, ground-breaking releases. I feel like of those four titles, Tooie had the least impact on the industry (modern throwback 3D platformers are more likely to do genre work broadly or Banjo-Kazooie specifically than Banjo-Tooie soecifically). But this shouldn't be confused for Tooie being unimportant. Far from it: Banjo-Tooie is the summation of lessons learned by some of the industry's greatest talents at the tops of their games.
Banjo-Tooie is a very ambitious game. This has both upsides and downsides. The huge worlds lend themselves to a lot of experimentation, but the game sometimes runs into conveyance issues as a result. It's suuuuper easy to get turned around in places like Terrydactyland, and as cool as the inter-level connections are, that a Jiggy in one world can require a puzzle being solved in another (for example, clearing Stomponadon in Terrydactyland to get a Hailfire Peaks Jiggy) means that a player simply searching a given level for solutions can be left high and dry.
Grunty Industries is commonly pointed to as a world with this issue, but I have to side with my friends at Designing For here - Grunty Industries is brilliantly-executed. Having to sneak in, the slow opening of the factory floors, the building sense of scale, pay-off for B-K's WISHYWASHYBANJO, that moment towards the end when you finally unlock flight pads... so much to love there. I know this is the most likely thing to be overhauled in a theoretical remake, but I'd hope they wouldn't change too much.
There's also a sense of incompletion to Tooie that just wasn't present for Kazooie. Part of this was unavoidable - Tooie had to do SOMEthing to fulfill the promise B-K made with Stop 'n' Swop, and with Ninty quashing Rare's initial plan to literally yank out the N64 Game Pak, the team had to make some sort of compromise. But there's no dodging the feeling that a full world's missing, between that suspicious 900 Notes/90 Jiggies count and how nothing Cauldron Keep feels. B-K famously left a lot on the cutting room floor as well, but it had a far more complete illusion; Rare clearly just ran out of time and did their best to put a bow on the game. They did a great job, but there's no arguing with the numbers.
I think, if you only know the first two Banjo-Kazooie games by reputation, it's easy to lump them together as similar ideas. But both end up having very different identities. B-K is a pure expression of 3D platforming and exploration - perhaps less mechanically difficult than something like Super Mario 64, but still derivative of that general formula and its gameplay goals. B-T is less interested in posing mechanical challenges for the player and more interested in encouraging exploration through characters, skillsets, and world integration. Everything in Tooie feels less like "more Kazooie" and more like "commentary on Kazooie" (and other Rare trends, given the FPS segments). They're great complementary titles because they're so dissimilar, really; I'd rather have Tooie be like Sly 2 rather than Super Mario Galaxy 2. I prefer Kazooie all the same, but both are great times.
One last note - Banjo-Tooie would be the last title developed by Gregg Mayles' team during Rare and Nintendo's collaboration. This wouldn't be the team's last effort - Grabbed by the Ghoulies was only a couple years away - but Tooie feels like it carries a ton of weight as the terminus of this team's golden years. This is the same creative effort behind Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 as well as the first Banjo-Kazooie - all absolutely incredible, ground-breaking releases. I feel like of those four titles, Tooie had the least impact on the industry (modern throwback 3D platformers are more likely to do genre work broadly or Banjo-Kazooie specifically than Banjo-Tooie soecifically). But this shouldn't be confused for Tooie being unimportant. Far from it: Banjo-Tooie is the summation of lessons learned by some of the industry's greatest talents at the tops of their games.
Banjo-Kazooie is an A++ absolutely stellar experience top to bottom start to finish. Tooie takes everything good about that game and throws it in the garbage. All the levels are way, way too big, and almost every task relies on some kind of bizarre point and click adventure game logic. Most of my time was spent running back and forth through large, empty wastelands trying to figure out why certain things could and could not unlock certain other things. Playing this was a chore.
A victim of its own scope. Banjo Kazooie was the perfect balance of size vs. things to do but Tooie is way too gigantic and a slog to get from point A to B.
I have complicated feelings about Banjo-Tooie. It's a game that I love and have 100%ed in spite of some sharp sticking points I have. Quantifying my feelings with a number doesn't exactly do it justice since I do truly enjoy it more than a 3.5/5 would indicate. I really like this game for its ambition, but I think there are some things that hold it back. In the strictest sense, a sequel that looks better, has more content, and expands upon the gameplay mechanics of the original would seem like an easy upgrade from it but sometimes bigger isn't always better.
I enjoy the music, the dialogue, the levels, and all the new moves and skills you can pull off with Banjo and Kazooie. The OST might be even better than the first and the character writing is top notch here, even over Banjo-Kazooie. Split-up is a perfect evolution for the series and I enjoy the puzzles around it and how you're eased into the mechanic starting with Witchyworld. The setpieces are nice, the transformations are much more fun and useful than the first game, and there's a lot more to collect.
However, while it makes for some cool moments, the interconnected world design feels a bit at odds with a 3D Platformer like this and, ironically, makes parts feel disjointed. It ends up feeling more like padding or bloat than a true sense of one large world.
My final grievance that I am shocked doesn't crop up more often is the INTENSE reliance on first person sections and aiming. Doing these on the N64 controller with its oblong notches, rickety analog stick, and uncomfortable plastic is a nightmare, especially with how the game expects pinpoint precision for the objectives that need it. Worst of all, is that the reticle snaps back to center when aiming, a truly baffling design decision that makes the control a practice in patience. I really wish I could ignore these sections but they're so incredibly prevalent that it knocks down my personal scoring for the game more than I wish it did.
In spite of that, I would recommend this game if you're a fan of large 3D Platformers. It doesn't have the same restraint and tight design of the first, and I can respect the ambition for this game. I only wish everything was integrated more smoothly and that, hopefully someday, we'll get a sequel that deftly implements all the wonderful ideas from this entry.
I've definitely not replayed it over and over as much as I have with the first game but I can easily see myself liking Banjo-Tooie more upon a "gut-check of my feelings" replay of the game sometime.
I enjoy the music, the dialogue, the levels, and all the new moves and skills you can pull off with Banjo and Kazooie. The OST might be even better than the first and the character writing is top notch here, even over Banjo-Kazooie. Split-up is a perfect evolution for the series and I enjoy the puzzles around it and how you're eased into the mechanic starting with Witchyworld. The setpieces are nice, the transformations are much more fun and useful than the first game, and there's a lot more to collect.
However, while it makes for some cool moments, the interconnected world design feels a bit at odds with a 3D Platformer like this and, ironically, makes parts feel disjointed. It ends up feeling more like padding or bloat than a true sense of one large world.
My final grievance that I am shocked doesn't crop up more often is the INTENSE reliance on first person sections and aiming. Doing these on the N64 controller with its oblong notches, rickety analog stick, and uncomfortable plastic is a nightmare, especially with how the game expects pinpoint precision for the objectives that need it. Worst of all, is that the reticle snaps back to center when aiming, a truly baffling design decision that makes the control a practice in patience. I really wish I could ignore these sections but they're so incredibly prevalent that it knocks down my personal scoring for the game more than I wish it did.
In spite of that, I would recommend this game if you're a fan of large 3D Platformers. It doesn't have the same restraint and tight design of the first, and I can respect the ambition for this game. I only wish everything was integrated more smoothly and that, hopefully someday, we'll get a sequel that deftly implements all the wonderful ideas from this entry.
I've definitely not replayed it over and over as much as I have with the first game but I can easily see myself liking Banjo-Tooie more upon a "gut-check of my feelings" replay of the game sometime.
Oh? You're approaching Banjo-Tooie? Instead of steering clear, you're actually considering playing this game? Even though its flaws, like a persistent itch, gnaw at your patience, making you question your gaming choices?
I can't endure the frustrations of this game without expressing my discontent.
Oh ho! Then collect as many Jiggies as you like.
I can't endure the frustrations of this game without expressing my discontent.
Oh ho! Then collect as many Jiggies as you like.
Too. Much. Backtracking.
Still loved it! just not to the level of the first game.
Still loved it! just not to the level of the first game.
This review contains spoilers
I like it
sure its not as good as the original but its still an amazing game
Consider me pleasantly surprised! Everything I'd heard about this game prior was that it was an iterative sequel with worse level design, and I guess that is true if you approach it exactly like you did with Banjo-Oneie. But these levels aren't meant to be compact, easily sight-read, or fully completed in a single sitting. Try to do so and you'll only end up frustrated, because Tooie is really closer to a 3D Zelda game than a collectathon. Worlds are laid out more like Kakariko Village than Treasure Trove Cove, with a few obvious points of interests in each that conceal lengthy, labyrinthine subareas. Oneie essentially guaranteed that any major task would reward you with a major collectible, while Tooie leaves it more up in the air. Being used to the first game, I assumed beating the timer challenge in Glitter Gulch Mine would earn me a jiggy, so I left it for when I ran out of anything else to do, but it actually unlocks a long series of rooms that significantly increases the scope of the level. Shifting this precedent means there's genuine anticipation as to what you're going to find whenever you make progress, and once you realize the game's designed around masking secrets and hidden areas with occasionally difficult to internalize architecture, a lot of baffling-at-first decisions make complete sense. Why do you need a certain number of notes to learn new moves this time? Well, it's not about actually making players earn upgrades, considering I was always well beyond each respective note threshold, but rather creating an association between notes and Jamjars. The first thing you want to do whenever entering a new world is find its new moves, because they're never gated behind moves from later levels, and are theoretically more valuable than any item. Tooie takes this mindset and uses it to give players a guided preliminary tour of the location, strategically placing Jamjars's bunkers in major areas that might not have been apparent at first. There's less notes in every level because they're generally only used to signify Jamjars's presence- whenever you see some, he's probably nearby. The first trip to every world consists of finding new moves by way of finding notes, which has the intended side effect of giving the player enough information to begin to sketch a mental map. Of course, you can only complete a fraction of every level on your first go-round, so you'll probably poke around just a bit and grab a few Jinjos before calling it quits and returning to a previous world to flesh out one of your earlier pieces of Jamjars-assisted layout knowledge. And these revisits, layered several times for every area throughout the game, are where Tooie's unique blend of collectathoning and progression gates separates itself most from other adventure game subgenres. In a search-action game, you have to evaluate whether or not you have enough upgrades to make it to an out of reach area. In a point-and-click, you have to think about what kind of contextual event will allow you to get where you want to go. In a Zelda game, you have to consider both, but Link's lack of mobility doesn't obfuscate the seams between these two factors as much as it would if he was in, say, a platformer. That's not to imply that the puzzles in here are ever particularly great on their own merits, but it's still fun to feel out what exactly you can and can't do before eventually putting everything together. Though, it seems that's where Tooie loses a lot of people. My favorite parts of Zelda games are when you're wandering around without any idea of how to progress, so maybe I just have an immunity to it, but is the backtracking really that bad? I'd assumed early on that the in-level teleporters were a QoL change added in the Xbox version, because fast travel in this game feels... pretty generous! That being said, I didn't come close to 100%ing this game, and I probably would've liked it less if I did. While Oneie's worlds felt appropriately shallow so as to not detract from the joy of fully completing them, Tooie's come chock-full of surprises, and, as a result, it's more fun to skirt by with just as many jiggies as you need to unlock the next level. In my eyes, Oneie fills its niche as an easygoing collectathon better than Tooie fills its niche as a 3D adventure game, but I'd still argue that it's a great sequel. And even when it falters, and, boy does it falter- I haven't mentioned the over reliance on minigames, or the mostly pointless transformations, or the entirely pointless parts where you play as Mumbo- there's enough raw fifth-gen ambition to keep things interesting throughout.
soy game 2
This review contains spoilers
Banjo-Tooie is a perfect sequel to the innovative, influential 3D platformer Banjo-Kazooie…in theory. On paper, Banjo-Tooie completes more than the necessary criteria for an exemplary sequel. The factors I’ve always attributed to when it comes to crafting a substantial followup to a celebrated title is expanding upon its world and characters along with using the element of hindsight to oil the hinges that perhaps started squeaking once the game was released, much to the embarrassment of the developers. If you’ll notice the cheeky instance of play-on-words in the title, Banjo-Tooie is a game that revels in its inherent role as a sequel. The game was always in a comfortable position, after all, succeeding its predecessor after only two years and on the same, familiar hardware. Banjo-Kazooie constructed the concrete architecture of the Banjo mansion, and all Banjo-Tooie was tasked with was sprucing up the glorious estate with some voguish furniture or state-of-the-art HDTV complete with surround sound speakers. The question still remains: does Rare’s magnum opus really need these additional luxuries? Banjo-Kazooie made such a monumental splash for the prevailing 3D platformer trend that it stole the proverbial torch away from Mario to guide every subsequent release in the genre with its light. Any game that usurps the throne from Nintendo’s golden boy ain't no slouch, so one can infer the extent of Banjo-Kazooie’s quality merely through this fact alone. Because of Banjo-Kazooie’s high mark of 3D platforming excellence, Banjo-Tooie is another example of a sequel needing to prove the rationale of its existence. In some aspects, Banjo-Tooie knew which of Banjo-Kazooie’s loose bolts to tighten up, but there are some screws that it never should’ve tinkered with.
Even though Banjo-Tooie is screaming its sequel status from the stormy peak of Gruntilda’s Lair, it’ll be damned to be content with being eclipsed in the shadow of Banjo-Kazooie’s glory. Since Gruntilda fell from her tower upon her defeat and was entombed under the crushing weight of a massive boulder, the moral characters from the first game can now relax and play a rousing game of poker at Banjo’s house. During their relatively carefree evening of playing cards, Gruntilda’s two equally unsightly sisters of contrasting body proportions align with her old scientific servant Klungo to tunnel to Gruntilda’s resting place with a military-grade drill. Somehow, Gruntilda defies the laws of biology and still remains alive and well despite her stationary status beneath the earth for who knows how long. The glaring effect being buried has had on Gruntilda is the total removal of her sickly-green skin, reducing her to a skeleton with the same witch garb and squawking voice (personally, I think the new look is an improvement). Before Gruntilda begins her major quest to procure a new epidermis, she can’t help but act on a petty impulse to blast Banjo’s house with a comically-enhanced laser cannon. Bottles the mole is the sole victim of Gruntilda’s vengeance, leaving his wispy soul to roam around Banjo’s front yard until the end of times. That’s right: the game begins with Bottles fucking dying. As the unceremonious onslaught signals a new adventure, the events of the previous night leave the old stomping grounds of Spiral Mountain in ruin, with the overhead entrance of Gruntilda’s lair blocked off by the wreckage. The first cutscene and its aftermath convey a message that the comfort of nostalgia that comes with a sequel has been blown to smithereens, even if the game is still strictly confined to familiarity as a direct sequel developed on the same console.
That cynical attitude seems to persist throughout Banjo-Tooie. Banjo-Tooie behaves the same way as a displeased, ill-natured child does being dragged along on a chore by a parent, committing minor acts of obnoxious debauchery to both alleviate their boredom and spite their parental figure. Banjo-Tooie does its damndest to dump on its predecessor at every waking moment possible. Namely, corrupting Banjo-Kazooie’s guileless presentation and tone as fervently as it can while admittedly being tethered down by the same aesthetic. More cases of murder pop up after Bottles is dispatched among the various NPCs, and the fact that Tooty is missing once again (with a credible search ad on a milk carton to boot) but no one seems to care disturbs me a smidge. Really, the trick that Banjo-Tooie pulls out of its hat in an attempt to ruin its predecessor’s legacy is constantly breaking the fourth wall. Seemingly every line of dialogue references Banjo-Kazooie in some capacity, noting some familiar characters, events, and other nostalgic nuggets to further hammer in its sequel status. The emotional impact of Bottles being fried to a crisp is tainted by Kazooie’s offhand comment that “he wasn’t the most popular character in the last game.” In fact, the snarky bird spits so much verbal venom at the NPCs in Banjo-Tooie that I’m almost offended on their behalf. On top of referencing the previous title, the game features posters with characters from Jet Force Gemini and a jiggie quest involving unfreezing a Rare relic named Sabreman. The second title is too soon to start being meta, guys! The game gives off the impression that a sequel to Banjo-Kazooie was greenlit, but Rare shared the same weary sentiment about sequels that I tend to express. I’m not sure if this flippant direction is an attempt to sabotage the player’s immersion or if Rare genuinely thought it made the game more discernible from Banjo-Kazooie. Still, it indicates that something was stirring at the Rare offices during this game’s development.
However, just because Banjo-Tooie makes a fuss out of having to exist, it doesn’t mean that the game didn’t ultimately make an effort. As I stated before, the quality of life enhancements that usually come with a sequel is certainly apparent. For example, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Banjo’s combat moves. Here, Banjo’s roll maneuver to mow down enemies is far less stilted, as he can now shift the direction slightly. When in an idle position, Banjo has thankfully stopped trying to attack with his pitiful arm slaps and the game leaves the short-range offense entirely to Kazooie. One glaring issue found in Banjo-Kazooie that encompassed most players' gripes and grievances was the traversal of the hub world. Having to make the trek all the way up Gruntilda’s Lair in the later portions of the game from its entrance at the bottom was a tedious excursion unfitting for the accessible feeling of a hub world, and the teleportation cauldrons were too sparsely placed to amend this issue. Banjo-Tooie’s hub and its levels are divided into distinct districts that all come with a teleportation mechanism. Simply place Banjo into the dome fit for a mole and a menu will appear to select where to arrive at, provided Banjo has already visited that area already. The levels also feature something similar in the vein of a warp pad which transports Banjo across the map, but I’ll touch on that in further detail later on. The developers have corrected every last one of Banjo-Kazooie's minor sniggles and while the amount of these is marginal, at least the developers paid attention and acted accordingly for the little effort required.
Isle O’ Hags is the name of the new nucleus between all of Banjo-Tooie’s levels. Technically, it encompasses the entire eclectic island nation that Banjo, his friends, and the Gruntilda sisters who are apparently a native species. Every area from Banjo-Kazooie also shares the same dominion but for now, let’s focus on the district revealed behind the dirt wall of Spiral Mountain. Isle O’ Hags essentially copies the same design philosophy as Gruntilda’s Lair; a steep ascent where the peak of the climb is the climactic point of the game, with frequent inhibitors in the shape of arbitrarily-assigned jiggy quantities to implore the player to visit the levels and to stretch out the pacing to elevate the scope of the journey. While both hubs share the same overall design and collectathon direction, they differ in the atmosphere. Ironically, for a place named after the pejorative term for Gruntilda, the looming presence of Gruntilda and her sisters is practically absent, never throwing her voice from her chamber to cackle discouraging limericks in Banjo’s ears. That, and the oppressiveness that Gruntilda’s Lair exuded was contributed by the enclosed cavern setting, something that winding seaside cliffs of the isle certainly don’t. Still, I actually prefer Isle O’ Hags as a hub world, and not only because the fast travel domes make climbing it much breezier. The developers have also streamlined the level-unlocking process. Once Banjo collects a certain amount of jiggies, he’ll revisit a jiggy spiritual temple near the base of the hub where solving a jigsaw puzzle will reward him with the monk-like Master Jiggywiggy beaming a ray of light that rivals Gruntilda’s laser beam to the unlocked area. I thought exploring to look for the painting with the missing jigsaw pieces made for an unnecessary additional venture, so I’m content with returning to the same sacred jiggy domain once in a while to further the game.
Banjo-Tooie’s branching areas were an especially exciting prospect because the previous game exhausted all of the typical level tropes seen across 3D platformers of the same ilk. This doesn’t inherently mean that the developers have hit a wall with nowhere to run; rather, scratching off all the boxes on the 3D platformer cheat sheet forces the developers to amplify their creative juices. Overall, the level tropes on display in Banjo-Tooie are a little less conventional. Mayahem Temple’s core inspiration stems from the ancient civilizations from Central America, while the humid, terraform dinosaur biome Terrydactyland takes Banjo further back in time far before the dawn of human civilization. Jolly Roger’s Lagoon separates the sea creatures from the land lubbers when Banjo dives into the basin of the port town and discovers an immaculate underwater world beneath the surface. Hailfire Peaks presents the most classic of contrasts with a fire and ice world coexisting on opposite sides of one another. Glitter Gulch Mine reminds me of one of those hokey prospector attractions where families get their pictures taken at, complete with a train station and shiny piles of counterfeit gold. Speaking of attractions, my favorite area in Banjo-Tooie from a conceptual standpoint is the amusement park of Witchyworld run by Gruntilda, a despondent carnival that makes every Six Flags location look safe and professional by comparison. In fact, the churlish atmosphere found in Witchyworld sort of extends to every other level to some extent as well. None of these levels capture that cheery, captivating vibe that oozed from levels like Freezeezy Peak or Click Clock Wood and instead borrow the same filthy dirge found in an area like Clanker's Cavern. Grunty Industries certainly exemplifies a glum, morale-free factory and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think Hailfire was a censored misprint of the damned afterlife of a certain religious denomination because of all of its scorching fire and brimstone. Still, the variety on display rivals the level selection of the previous game marvelously.
In lieu of Bottles pushing up daisies, who will teach Banjo and the bird new techniques to survive these harsher worlds? Bottles' brother, the army drill sergeant Jamjars, will pop out of his various underground hatches to whip Banjo and Kazooie into shape, promising them that they’ll learn some military-grade shit after Bottles simply taught them the basics. He doesn’t teach Banjo how to sneak up behind a man and snap his neck like Solid Snake, but I’m sure some of these moves are still illegal in at least seven different countries. The developers found a better use of the golden musical notes in Banjo-Tooie as they can be used as an accumulated currency to unlock a new move from Jamjars. Some of these new feats of dexterity come in the form of quality-of-life enhancements, with ledge grabbing and the Breegull Blast seeming like necessary afterthoughts after the first game was released. Kazooie gains a smattering of other egg types alongside the standard ones, including fire, ice, grenades, and birthing a walking cuckoo bomb with a timed or manual detonator. The Beak Bomb is now enhanced with the Bill Drill to crack open large boulders and unscrew bolts. Temporary power-ups that involve the Talon Trot add some moon shoes to bounce high and shoes that can climb up inclines with footprints on them. The most interesting of these new moves are the ones the pair learn for their individual merit. “Split pads” with both characters' faces on them separate both of them until they regroup on the same spot, proving that Kazooie isn’t fused to Banjo like an abominable conjoined twin. Banjo’s individual moves involve his backpack in some capacity, whether it be hopping inside it to mitigate damage or carrying someone else in it for a change like a taxi service. Kazooie mostly performs enhanced versions of her innate abilities without Banjo’s weight to contend with, on top of hatching other creatures' eggs for them. Banjo-Tooie doubles the number of learnable techniques while keeping the old ones intact, and playing as the dynamic duo separately doesn’t feel too much like a handicap.
Beloved character Mumbo Jumbo was present at the card game and did not perish at the scaly hand of Grundtilda, so he doesn’t have an excuse to sit this adventure out like Bottles. Fortunately, Banjo-Tooie had big plans for the pygmy shaman. Visiting Mumbo in his now two-story skull house with the new and easily obtained Glowbo collectible will grant the player the ability to play as Mumbo on the field. His range of movement is fairly limited, and the taser staff he brings to defend himself is more humorous to use than practical. Bringing Mumbo to pads with his face on them triggers him to use supernatural magic to levitate colossally-sized objects, perform a rain dance to create a rainbow bridge, resurrect the dead, etc. A new magical companion Banjo-Tooie introduces is the beautiful native girl Wumba, whose character is probably a more overtly racist depiction than Mumbo. She fulfills the transformation mechanic introduced in Banjo Kazooie, changing Banjo’s shape into an animal or object when he enters her wigwam and takes a dip in the pink, Glowbo-powered pool in its center. Some of the new transformations include a dynamite plunger, a submarine, and even a full-sized fucking T-Rex that bulldozes all in its path. Even the washing machine easter egg from the last game actually becomes a useful mechanic in Grunty Industries. As much as playing as Mumbo and the returning transformations serve as nice additional layers to the gameplay, what interests me more is the strained relationship between Mumbo and Wumba. Considering their feuding attitudes toward each other, these two obviously have some intimate history together, right?
Judging by all of Banjo-Tooie’s exciting new features that are all fun and fluid, it would seem like it’s a sequel that renders Banjo-Kazooie obsolete. However, the way in which Banjo-Tooie utilizes all of these new features in the quasi-open world environment is the source of its downfall. If Banjo-Kazooie's single-world summation of its design is conspicuous, then Banjo-Tooie’s is circuitous. In Banjo-Tooie, exploration is still required to progress the game, but it is rarely rewarded. Oftentimes, excavating the area and finding a jiggy comes with several unnecessary extra steps. As much as I enjoy the lark of being able to play as Mumbo, retrieving him from his perch just to trigger a cutscene in a specific place and then trailing back to his skull house grated on my nerves one too many times. Grunty Industries, the area that exemplifies the worst of Banjo-Tooie’s bloated design, is a languid climb up the five floors of the industrial cesspit with finding the stairs for each following floor as the central progression gimmick. At the apex point of the factory lies a jiggy on a wooden crate, which should’ve been the reward for making it this far. However, this point is still littered with unnecessary obstacles to pad out the levels. Banjo-Kazooie was consistently more engaging because the quicker satisfaction of simply finding a jiggy tickled the player’s sense of accomplishment more frequently. It can take longer to find half of the jiggies in Banjo-Tooie than all of them in any of the Banjo-Kazooie areas. It seems like the new features like the split pads and the alternate characters only enable this circuity even more, as they are often implemented as the extra and not-so-obvious steps to obtaining a jiggy. This level of augmented length also extends to the other collectibles, as the jingos in plain sight will most likely be their evil, bizarro counterparts the minjos who will dupe Banjo and harm him. Most of the jiggies in the game feel as if they’re annoyingly out of reach as if the game is dangling them over the player as a cruel tease. Coupling this with the swollen breadth of each area, I thank the lord for the warp pads because, without them, I’d go as far as to say the game would be unplayable.
Another factor of Banjo-Tooie’s bloatedness is due to the developers attempting to intertwine each area and craft an interconnected world. Considering the game is modeled the same as the sectioned-off playgrounds in the first game, it’s no surprise its execution didn’t work. The adjacent paths between areas require a heavy suspension of disbelief and only seem to be applicable in select situations to make collecting a jiggy more drudgery than anything like delivering food from Witchyland to the struggling cavemen in Terrydactyland. Chuffy, the train that should ideally facilitate the rationale for an interconnected world, only rolls through six of the nine areas. If that doesn’t indicate that the idea was unfeasible, I don’t know what does. What irritates me the most about their decision is that it is the biggest contributor to the fleeting jiggy hunt quandary in Banjo-Tooie as most of the jiggies can’t be obtained until Banjo or Kazooie requires a move at a later level. Approximately half of a level’s jiggies will be kept out of reach initially and in a game with levels that are supposed to foster exploration, being limited to only a few jiggies needed to progress the game is a big kick in the balls from developers. One might raise an eyebrow at my criticism of this direction considering it mirrors the design philosophy of the Metroidvania genre, one of my niche video game favorites that I constantly tout. For one, Metroidvania worlds never have slapdashed interconnectivity when its world doesn’t warrant it. Secondly, finding an upgrade in a Metroidvania game will always put the player on a direct path and make the once-inhibited passage a cakewalk to traverse, something Banjo-Tooie still goes out of its way to reject even when the move and or upgrade is learned.
It seems like most of the jiggies not obstructed by the developer's ill-planned directives come in the form of minigames. As pleased as I was to stumble upon these to finally earn a jiggy in a somewhat fair and natural way, it’s a shame that many of them boiled down to the same task of shooting or collecting objects of three different colors with different point totals. I’ll be seeing objects of red, green, and blue hopping around in my sleep at this point. I greatly missed the variety from Banjo-Kazooie, even if those minigames were easier than grade school arithmetic. While it does seem like I’m complaining, I’ll easily engage with these minigames as opposed to the other option. In a select few areas, entering certain sections will make Banjo cock Kazooie like a gun and the perspective will shift to the first-person view. As amused as I initially was to witness “Banjo-KaDOOMie,” these minigames were more hellish than anything from the pioneering FPS franchise. Kazooie’s targeting is as responsive as a lazy eye and trying to skewer enemies with her beak like a bayonet made me feel like a drunk civil war reenactor.
The jiggy tasks I did enjoy and sought out over the rest were the boss battles. They were few and far between in Banjo-Kazooie, and I’d be lying if I said that the wooden box or Nipper the hermit crab were herculean foes that were hard to conquer. Each level in Banjo-Tooie features a mighty foe worthy of the boss battle title, and they are a varied and challenging bunch. The fights between the twin dragons of the opposite representative of Hailfire Peaks were in some pretty taut arenas, and Weldar featured enough simultaneous offensive tactics to overwhelm me. Popping the monstrous boils off of the angler fish Fak Fak and the stitched patches of the giant inflatable beast in the circus tent by soaring and swimming over them made the bosses seem formidable, and the Targitzan duel managed to make that particular FPS section palatable. Klungo even cements his role as a recurring supporting character through frequent encounters. To my surprise, I ended up enjoying the final boss fight against Gruntilda and her drill tank more than her final fight from the first game because of how involved it is. Those final increments of her health bar had me sweating bullets. Or, perhaps I enjoy it because the developers made the bizarrely-implemented quiz show portion of the finale tolerable this time around, and it's hilariously morbid to boot.
Banjo-Tooie isn’t quite an example of a sophomore slump. However, the game seems to have tacked on a sophomore seventeen pounds due to the developers having ambitions bigger than their stomachs, and it’s enough weight to make the game feel comparatively fatigued and sluggish throughout. Either this was a faulty wish, or Rare took the piss out of the natural evolution of the franchise and this is their idea of a joke, judging from the game’s more negative tone. Behind all that excess fat, Banjo-Tooie feels like the same game as its trend-setting predecessor, and it even makes the Banjo experience more inviting because of the effort of the minor improvements. Banjo-Tooie made me exhausted at simply performing the bare minimum to complete the game, which is certainly not a feeling I got after finishing Banjo-Kazooie.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Even though Banjo-Tooie is screaming its sequel status from the stormy peak of Gruntilda’s Lair, it’ll be damned to be content with being eclipsed in the shadow of Banjo-Kazooie’s glory. Since Gruntilda fell from her tower upon her defeat and was entombed under the crushing weight of a massive boulder, the moral characters from the first game can now relax and play a rousing game of poker at Banjo’s house. During their relatively carefree evening of playing cards, Gruntilda’s two equally unsightly sisters of contrasting body proportions align with her old scientific servant Klungo to tunnel to Gruntilda’s resting place with a military-grade drill. Somehow, Gruntilda defies the laws of biology and still remains alive and well despite her stationary status beneath the earth for who knows how long. The glaring effect being buried has had on Gruntilda is the total removal of her sickly-green skin, reducing her to a skeleton with the same witch garb and squawking voice (personally, I think the new look is an improvement). Before Gruntilda begins her major quest to procure a new epidermis, she can’t help but act on a petty impulse to blast Banjo’s house with a comically-enhanced laser cannon. Bottles the mole is the sole victim of Gruntilda’s vengeance, leaving his wispy soul to roam around Banjo’s front yard until the end of times. That’s right: the game begins with Bottles fucking dying. As the unceremonious onslaught signals a new adventure, the events of the previous night leave the old stomping grounds of Spiral Mountain in ruin, with the overhead entrance of Gruntilda’s lair blocked off by the wreckage. The first cutscene and its aftermath convey a message that the comfort of nostalgia that comes with a sequel has been blown to smithereens, even if the game is still strictly confined to familiarity as a direct sequel developed on the same console.
That cynical attitude seems to persist throughout Banjo-Tooie. Banjo-Tooie behaves the same way as a displeased, ill-natured child does being dragged along on a chore by a parent, committing minor acts of obnoxious debauchery to both alleviate their boredom and spite their parental figure. Banjo-Tooie does its damndest to dump on its predecessor at every waking moment possible. Namely, corrupting Banjo-Kazooie’s guileless presentation and tone as fervently as it can while admittedly being tethered down by the same aesthetic. More cases of murder pop up after Bottles is dispatched among the various NPCs, and the fact that Tooty is missing once again (with a credible search ad on a milk carton to boot) but no one seems to care disturbs me a smidge. Really, the trick that Banjo-Tooie pulls out of its hat in an attempt to ruin its predecessor’s legacy is constantly breaking the fourth wall. Seemingly every line of dialogue references Banjo-Kazooie in some capacity, noting some familiar characters, events, and other nostalgic nuggets to further hammer in its sequel status. The emotional impact of Bottles being fried to a crisp is tainted by Kazooie’s offhand comment that “he wasn’t the most popular character in the last game.” In fact, the snarky bird spits so much verbal venom at the NPCs in Banjo-Tooie that I’m almost offended on their behalf. On top of referencing the previous title, the game features posters with characters from Jet Force Gemini and a jiggie quest involving unfreezing a Rare relic named Sabreman. The second title is too soon to start being meta, guys! The game gives off the impression that a sequel to Banjo-Kazooie was greenlit, but Rare shared the same weary sentiment about sequels that I tend to express. I’m not sure if this flippant direction is an attempt to sabotage the player’s immersion or if Rare genuinely thought it made the game more discernible from Banjo-Kazooie. Still, it indicates that something was stirring at the Rare offices during this game’s development.
However, just because Banjo-Tooie makes a fuss out of having to exist, it doesn’t mean that the game didn’t ultimately make an effort. As I stated before, the quality of life enhancements that usually come with a sequel is certainly apparent. For example, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Banjo’s combat moves. Here, Banjo’s roll maneuver to mow down enemies is far less stilted, as he can now shift the direction slightly. When in an idle position, Banjo has thankfully stopped trying to attack with his pitiful arm slaps and the game leaves the short-range offense entirely to Kazooie. One glaring issue found in Banjo-Kazooie that encompassed most players' gripes and grievances was the traversal of the hub world. Having to make the trek all the way up Gruntilda’s Lair in the later portions of the game from its entrance at the bottom was a tedious excursion unfitting for the accessible feeling of a hub world, and the teleportation cauldrons were too sparsely placed to amend this issue. Banjo-Tooie’s hub and its levels are divided into distinct districts that all come with a teleportation mechanism. Simply place Banjo into the dome fit for a mole and a menu will appear to select where to arrive at, provided Banjo has already visited that area already. The levels also feature something similar in the vein of a warp pad which transports Banjo across the map, but I’ll touch on that in further detail later on. The developers have corrected every last one of Banjo-Kazooie's minor sniggles and while the amount of these is marginal, at least the developers paid attention and acted accordingly for the little effort required.
Isle O’ Hags is the name of the new nucleus between all of Banjo-Tooie’s levels. Technically, it encompasses the entire eclectic island nation that Banjo, his friends, and the Gruntilda sisters who are apparently a native species. Every area from Banjo-Kazooie also shares the same dominion but for now, let’s focus on the district revealed behind the dirt wall of Spiral Mountain. Isle O’ Hags essentially copies the same design philosophy as Gruntilda’s Lair; a steep ascent where the peak of the climb is the climactic point of the game, with frequent inhibitors in the shape of arbitrarily-assigned jiggy quantities to implore the player to visit the levels and to stretch out the pacing to elevate the scope of the journey. While both hubs share the same overall design and collectathon direction, they differ in the atmosphere. Ironically, for a place named after the pejorative term for Gruntilda, the looming presence of Gruntilda and her sisters is practically absent, never throwing her voice from her chamber to cackle discouraging limericks in Banjo’s ears. That, and the oppressiveness that Gruntilda’s Lair exuded was contributed by the enclosed cavern setting, something that winding seaside cliffs of the isle certainly don’t. Still, I actually prefer Isle O’ Hags as a hub world, and not only because the fast travel domes make climbing it much breezier. The developers have also streamlined the level-unlocking process. Once Banjo collects a certain amount of jiggies, he’ll revisit a jiggy spiritual temple near the base of the hub where solving a jigsaw puzzle will reward him with the monk-like Master Jiggywiggy beaming a ray of light that rivals Gruntilda’s laser beam to the unlocked area. I thought exploring to look for the painting with the missing jigsaw pieces made for an unnecessary additional venture, so I’m content with returning to the same sacred jiggy domain once in a while to further the game.
Banjo-Tooie’s branching areas were an especially exciting prospect because the previous game exhausted all of the typical level tropes seen across 3D platformers of the same ilk. This doesn’t inherently mean that the developers have hit a wall with nowhere to run; rather, scratching off all the boxes on the 3D platformer cheat sheet forces the developers to amplify their creative juices. Overall, the level tropes on display in Banjo-Tooie are a little less conventional. Mayahem Temple’s core inspiration stems from the ancient civilizations from Central America, while the humid, terraform dinosaur biome Terrydactyland takes Banjo further back in time far before the dawn of human civilization. Jolly Roger’s Lagoon separates the sea creatures from the land lubbers when Banjo dives into the basin of the port town and discovers an immaculate underwater world beneath the surface. Hailfire Peaks presents the most classic of contrasts with a fire and ice world coexisting on opposite sides of one another. Glitter Gulch Mine reminds me of one of those hokey prospector attractions where families get their pictures taken at, complete with a train station and shiny piles of counterfeit gold. Speaking of attractions, my favorite area in Banjo-Tooie from a conceptual standpoint is the amusement park of Witchyworld run by Gruntilda, a despondent carnival that makes every Six Flags location look safe and professional by comparison. In fact, the churlish atmosphere found in Witchyworld sort of extends to every other level to some extent as well. None of these levels capture that cheery, captivating vibe that oozed from levels like Freezeezy Peak or Click Clock Wood and instead borrow the same filthy dirge found in an area like Clanker's Cavern. Grunty Industries certainly exemplifies a glum, morale-free factory and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think Hailfire was a censored misprint of the damned afterlife of a certain religious denomination because of all of its scorching fire and brimstone. Still, the variety on display rivals the level selection of the previous game marvelously.
In lieu of Bottles pushing up daisies, who will teach Banjo and the bird new techniques to survive these harsher worlds? Bottles' brother, the army drill sergeant Jamjars, will pop out of his various underground hatches to whip Banjo and Kazooie into shape, promising them that they’ll learn some military-grade shit after Bottles simply taught them the basics. He doesn’t teach Banjo how to sneak up behind a man and snap his neck like Solid Snake, but I’m sure some of these moves are still illegal in at least seven different countries. The developers found a better use of the golden musical notes in Banjo-Tooie as they can be used as an accumulated currency to unlock a new move from Jamjars. Some of these new feats of dexterity come in the form of quality-of-life enhancements, with ledge grabbing and the Breegull Blast seeming like necessary afterthoughts after the first game was released. Kazooie gains a smattering of other egg types alongside the standard ones, including fire, ice, grenades, and birthing a walking cuckoo bomb with a timed or manual detonator. The Beak Bomb is now enhanced with the Bill Drill to crack open large boulders and unscrew bolts. Temporary power-ups that involve the Talon Trot add some moon shoes to bounce high and shoes that can climb up inclines with footprints on them. The most interesting of these new moves are the ones the pair learn for their individual merit. “Split pads” with both characters' faces on them separate both of them until they regroup on the same spot, proving that Kazooie isn’t fused to Banjo like an abominable conjoined twin. Banjo’s individual moves involve his backpack in some capacity, whether it be hopping inside it to mitigate damage or carrying someone else in it for a change like a taxi service. Kazooie mostly performs enhanced versions of her innate abilities without Banjo’s weight to contend with, on top of hatching other creatures' eggs for them. Banjo-Tooie doubles the number of learnable techniques while keeping the old ones intact, and playing as the dynamic duo separately doesn’t feel too much like a handicap.
Beloved character Mumbo Jumbo was present at the card game and did not perish at the scaly hand of Grundtilda, so he doesn’t have an excuse to sit this adventure out like Bottles. Fortunately, Banjo-Tooie had big plans for the pygmy shaman. Visiting Mumbo in his now two-story skull house with the new and easily obtained Glowbo collectible will grant the player the ability to play as Mumbo on the field. His range of movement is fairly limited, and the taser staff he brings to defend himself is more humorous to use than practical. Bringing Mumbo to pads with his face on them triggers him to use supernatural magic to levitate colossally-sized objects, perform a rain dance to create a rainbow bridge, resurrect the dead, etc. A new magical companion Banjo-Tooie introduces is the beautiful native girl Wumba, whose character is probably a more overtly racist depiction than Mumbo. She fulfills the transformation mechanic introduced in Banjo Kazooie, changing Banjo’s shape into an animal or object when he enters her wigwam and takes a dip in the pink, Glowbo-powered pool in its center. Some of the new transformations include a dynamite plunger, a submarine, and even a full-sized fucking T-Rex that bulldozes all in its path. Even the washing machine easter egg from the last game actually becomes a useful mechanic in Grunty Industries. As much as playing as Mumbo and the returning transformations serve as nice additional layers to the gameplay, what interests me more is the strained relationship between Mumbo and Wumba. Considering their feuding attitudes toward each other, these two obviously have some intimate history together, right?
Judging by all of Banjo-Tooie’s exciting new features that are all fun and fluid, it would seem like it’s a sequel that renders Banjo-Kazooie obsolete. However, the way in which Banjo-Tooie utilizes all of these new features in the quasi-open world environment is the source of its downfall. If Banjo-Kazooie's single-world summation of its design is conspicuous, then Banjo-Tooie’s is circuitous. In Banjo-Tooie, exploration is still required to progress the game, but it is rarely rewarded. Oftentimes, excavating the area and finding a jiggy comes with several unnecessary extra steps. As much as I enjoy the lark of being able to play as Mumbo, retrieving him from his perch just to trigger a cutscene in a specific place and then trailing back to his skull house grated on my nerves one too many times. Grunty Industries, the area that exemplifies the worst of Banjo-Tooie’s bloated design, is a languid climb up the five floors of the industrial cesspit with finding the stairs for each following floor as the central progression gimmick. At the apex point of the factory lies a jiggy on a wooden crate, which should’ve been the reward for making it this far. However, this point is still littered with unnecessary obstacles to pad out the levels. Banjo-Kazooie was consistently more engaging because the quicker satisfaction of simply finding a jiggy tickled the player’s sense of accomplishment more frequently. It can take longer to find half of the jiggies in Banjo-Tooie than all of them in any of the Banjo-Kazooie areas. It seems like the new features like the split pads and the alternate characters only enable this circuity even more, as they are often implemented as the extra and not-so-obvious steps to obtaining a jiggy. This level of augmented length also extends to the other collectibles, as the jingos in plain sight will most likely be their evil, bizarro counterparts the minjos who will dupe Banjo and harm him. Most of the jiggies in the game feel as if they’re annoyingly out of reach as if the game is dangling them over the player as a cruel tease. Coupling this with the swollen breadth of each area, I thank the lord for the warp pads because, without them, I’d go as far as to say the game would be unplayable.
Another factor of Banjo-Tooie’s bloatedness is due to the developers attempting to intertwine each area and craft an interconnected world. Considering the game is modeled the same as the sectioned-off playgrounds in the first game, it’s no surprise its execution didn’t work. The adjacent paths between areas require a heavy suspension of disbelief and only seem to be applicable in select situations to make collecting a jiggy more drudgery than anything like delivering food from Witchyland to the struggling cavemen in Terrydactyland. Chuffy, the train that should ideally facilitate the rationale for an interconnected world, only rolls through six of the nine areas. If that doesn’t indicate that the idea was unfeasible, I don’t know what does. What irritates me the most about their decision is that it is the biggest contributor to the fleeting jiggy hunt quandary in Banjo-Tooie as most of the jiggies can’t be obtained until Banjo or Kazooie requires a move at a later level. Approximately half of a level’s jiggies will be kept out of reach initially and in a game with levels that are supposed to foster exploration, being limited to only a few jiggies needed to progress the game is a big kick in the balls from developers. One might raise an eyebrow at my criticism of this direction considering it mirrors the design philosophy of the Metroidvania genre, one of my niche video game favorites that I constantly tout. For one, Metroidvania worlds never have slapdashed interconnectivity when its world doesn’t warrant it. Secondly, finding an upgrade in a Metroidvania game will always put the player on a direct path and make the once-inhibited passage a cakewalk to traverse, something Banjo-Tooie still goes out of its way to reject even when the move and or upgrade is learned.
It seems like most of the jiggies not obstructed by the developer's ill-planned directives come in the form of minigames. As pleased as I was to stumble upon these to finally earn a jiggy in a somewhat fair and natural way, it’s a shame that many of them boiled down to the same task of shooting or collecting objects of three different colors with different point totals. I’ll be seeing objects of red, green, and blue hopping around in my sleep at this point. I greatly missed the variety from Banjo-Kazooie, even if those minigames were easier than grade school arithmetic. While it does seem like I’m complaining, I’ll easily engage with these minigames as opposed to the other option. In a select few areas, entering certain sections will make Banjo cock Kazooie like a gun and the perspective will shift to the first-person view. As amused as I initially was to witness “Banjo-KaDOOMie,” these minigames were more hellish than anything from the pioneering FPS franchise. Kazooie’s targeting is as responsive as a lazy eye and trying to skewer enemies with her beak like a bayonet made me feel like a drunk civil war reenactor.
The jiggy tasks I did enjoy and sought out over the rest were the boss battles. They were few and far between in Banjo-Kazooie, and I’d be lying if I said that the wooden box or Nipper the hermit crab were herculean foes that were hard to conquer. Each level in Banjo-Tooie features a mighty foe worthy of the boss battle title, and they are a varied and challenging bunch. The fights between the twin dragons of the opposite representative of Hailfire Peaks were in some pretty taut arenas, and Weldar featured enough simultaneous offensive tactics to overwhelm me. Popping the monstrous boils off of the angler fish Fak Fak and the stitched patches of the giant inflatable beast in the circus tent by soaring and swimming over them made the bosses seem formidable, and the Targitzan duel managed to make that particular FPS section palatable. Klungo even cements his role as a recurring supporting character through frequent encounters. To my surprise, I ended up enjoying the final boss fight against Gruntilda and her drill tank more than her final fight from the first game because of how involved it is. Those final increments of her health bar had me sweating bullets. Or, perhaps I enjoy it because the developers made the bizarrely-implemented quiz show portion of the finale tolerable this time around, and it's hilariously morbid to boot.
Banjo-Tooie isn’t quite an example of a sophomore slump. However, the game seems to have tacked on a sophomore seventeen pounds due to the developers having ambitions bigger than their stomachs, and it’s enough weight to make the game feel comparatively fatigued and sluggish throughout. Either this was a faulty wish, or Rare took the piss out of the natural evolution of the franchise and this is their idea of a joke, judging from the game’s more negative tone. Behind all that excess fat, Banjo-Tooie feels like the same game as its trend-setting predecessor, and it even makes the Banjo experience more inviting because of the effort of the minor improvements. Banjo-Tooie made me exhausted at simply performing the bare minimum to complete the game, which is certainly not a feeling I got after finishing Banjo-Kazooie.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
This game is infamous for the right reasons. The backtracking and minigames cause this game to be tedious to play.
too ambitious for its own good but still packed full of greatness
Pros: Massive 3D Metroidvania game, with huge interconnected worlds that you travel back and forth between. This game was the closest we'd felt to one seamless living game world, before "open world" gaming became a thing. Banjo-Tooie is a fantastic sequel to Banjo-Kazooie, especially as a sequel, it follows up the events of the first game wonderfully, carrying over so much from the first. Every move you learned in B-K, you still have, and you learn tons of new moves on top of them. Characters you've met, you now see what they're up to, and they're up to quite a lot! If you're familiar with B-K and enjoyed yourself, you'll get a lot out of Tooie!
The big new gimmick is that Banjo and Kazooie can now separate and split-up, and you can switch between the two for character specific moves, that grant you access to new areas or enemy/character interactions. Or possibly using both separately and together for puzzle solving and triggering key events. It really helps magnify the "Metroidvania"ness of these games worlds, which, yeah, you will be backtracking in and out of frequently. It's a different flavor of game than B-K was, where it was very satisfying to complete each world in one go. Can't do that here, and while I don't enjoy Tooie's method as much, there's still a lot to value in what it brings to the sense of adventure.
Mumbo is of course back too, but this time fully playable! Though he just acts as another key type of character for puzzles and gates. Meanwhile newcomer Humba Wumba does the transformations this time around. And each stage now has their own transformation, and each of them are more elaborate than the ones in B-K were. Favorites among them, a snowball that grows or shrinks depending on if you're rolling over snow, or on volcanic ground. A van, yeah, you can straight up be a van that drives around running over enemies (which is pretty fun, admittedly). But my favorite of all is the giant T. Rex, which is just an invulnerable powerhouse, roaring and crashing through anything you desire (also you can be a baby T. Rex! Good to have the cute alongside the badass). All's this to say, this game is packed with content, and in most cases everything feels contextual and fun, and worth doing (unlike... ahem... DK64), and on top of it all, you still get the charm and wit from Rare with these beloved characters! And along with that is the once again excellent soundtrack by Grant Kirkhope, with brand new stages comes brand new music, and it's all fantastic here! And of course, the visuals are top-notch, expect nothing less from Rare.
Cons: The backtracking is a big ask, and can wear you down... It's especially tiresome on replays, where unlike B-K, you don't really have a good sense of when to take a break or a breather. The game could really use a map. And generally, the tone is a bit less cheery, which ain't specifically a bad thing, but it's another element that can make the playtime grow wearisome.
What it means to me: Upon first completion of this game, I was blown away, to the point where I considered this game, to be the best game ever made. Yeah, I was that into it. In time, my views have softened on the game, especially upon trying to replay it. Banjo-Kazooie (the first game) does hold up much better design-wise, in terms of playability, pacing, and so much more, it's just the perfect game. But I will say, Tooie is still a magnificent sequel, and did everything, and does everything, I wanted a sequel to Banjo-Kazooie to do. And I can't fault it there, it's the game it needed to be for its time, a time before Open World games were a thing. And what a hell of a time it was!
The big new gimmick is that Banjo and Kazooie can now separate and split-up, and you can switch between the two for character specific moves, that grant you access to new areas or enemy/character interactions. Or possibly using both separately and together for puzzle solving and triggering key events. It really helps magnify the "Metroidvania"ness of these games worlds, which, yeah, you will be backtracking in and out of frequently. It's a different flavor of game than B-K was, where it was very satisfying to complete each world in one go. Can't do that here, and while I don't enjoy Tooie's method as much, there's still a lot to value in what it brings to the sense of adventure.
Mumbo is of course back too, but this time fully playable! Though he just acts as another key type of character for puzzles and gates. Meanwhile newcomer Humba Wumba does the transformations this time around. And each stage now has their own transformation, and each of them are more elaborate than the ones in B-K were. Favorites among them, a snowball that grows or shrinks depending on if you're rolling over snow, or on volcanic ground. A van, yeah, you can straight up be a van that drives around running over enemies (which is pretty fun, admittedly). But my favorite of all is the giant T. Rex, which is just an invulnerable powerhouse, roaring and crashing through anything you desire (also you can be a baby T. Rex! Good to have the cute alongside the badass). All's this to say, this game is packed with content, and in most cases everything feels contextual and fun, and worth doing (unlike... ahem... DK64), and on top of it all, you still get the charm and wit from Rare with these beloved characters! And along with that is the once again excellent soundtrack by Grant Kirkhope, with brand new stages comes brand new music, and it's all fantastic here! And of course, the visuals are top-notch, expect nothing less from Rare.
Cons: The backtracking is a big ask, and can wear you down... It's especially tiresome on replays, where unlike B-K, you don't really have a good sense of when to take a break or a breather. The game could really use a map. And generally, the tone is a bit less cheery, which ain't specifically a bad thing, but it's another element that can make the playtime grow wearisome.
What it means to me: Upon first completion of this game, I was blown away, to the point where I considered this game, to be the best game ever made. Yeah, I was that into it. In time, my views have softened on the game, especially upon trying to replay it. Banjo-Kazooie (the first game) does hold up much better design-wise, in terms of playability, pacing, and so much more, it's just the perfect game. But I will say, Tooie is still a magnificent sequel, and did everything, and does everything, I wanted a sequel to Banjo-Kazooie to do. And I can't fault it there, it's the game it needed to be for its time, a time before Open World games were a thing. And what a hell of a time it was!