Banjo Nuts and Bolts

This is a very odd game!

Its a combination of several classic gaming ideas and having played it now for quite a while, my opinion on it is changing.

Initially you start off with a few long and very boring cut scenes, which supposedly set up the premise for the title. What they actually do is make you hate the game before it even starts. This is a shame because once you get started the hard work put in by the developers has to overcome this angst before you begin to enjoy the game.

But if you persevere then after a few days Banjo begins to grow on you.

What's it all about? Well TBH its a sort of collection game. You goal ultimately is to find/win Jiggy pieces. These will enable you to beat the Witch. If you have played earlier games in the series then the characters will be familiar. There are lots of in jokes which rather sadly fall flat in the main, but they are harmless and don't really interfere too much.

The game world has several different areas all joined by the main town centre hub. You are initially granted access to one of the sub worlds which you enter to try and start winning your Jiggys. On collecting these pieces you return to the main hub and process them into the giant Jiggy ball thing in the town square. The more you collect the more sub worlds open and so on. The ultimate aim is to win 131 Jiggys.

In the sub worlds you find the tasks that enable the Jiggy acquisitions. These mini games can involve races or following and protecting creatures or rescuing items etc. They are quite varied, but in truth some are a real PITA.

The currency in the game is musical notes which you earn or collect by running over the notes or completing certain tasks.

With the accumulated notes you can buy parts for your vehicles or blueprints to help you construct them. To its credit the game has a good vehicle creator feature which allows you to build whatever sort of transport you like for Banjo to travel about the sub worlds in. Sadly its not as intuitive to use as I would have liked and the extra parts you gain through the different events are so varied that it can become a little confusing about what to make to beat a certain challenge. The pre prepared blueprints do help, but its a part of the game that IMHO could have been streamlined much further.

The graphics are quite perky and bright and the controls are not too bad but I still find the camera angle problem that plagues a lot of 3D worlds to be an issue at certain points.

There is an awful lot to do and gamerwhores are not going to find any quick fix ach scoring here. But it will yield its full amount with a long term playthrough.

So its a platform racing collecting building hub based shooting adventure game. A little bit of everything for folks to enjoying. Personally I would have said in this case that less would be more, but if you had plonked your £30 on the counter and wanted a title that you would get a decent length of game from then you could do far far worse.

If you play this then you are going to have to put in the hours to fully appreciate all it has to offer. Originally I was criticising Rare for this, but ultimately it will reward you with lots of fun if you give it the time it deserves.

It scores a very respectable 7/10, but if you are someone who just has a few games and wants value for money then you could even give it 8/10.

To sum up, I hated it, then I stopped hating it, then I found it growing on me and now I quite like it. If you only give it a day or so you wont get past that first phase and that would be a real shame.

Cheers

Spack

I saw this a few days ago in Currys for about £6. Might give it a try now . Good review.

This week I have be mostly dying <<fast show>>

I was given the worst bout of chest and head flu that I have ever suffered as a present by a friends child at a wedding

Because of that I have had my first week off work sick in 26 years!

To fill the time I have put in some substantial hours on this game now and I feel my review was far to generous.

It just drags on and on and if it was not for the the fact that I like to finish every game, I would have binned it a long time ago.

As you play further you realise how poor the controls are especially when you are not in a vehicle. (They are still poor in a vehicle but not as flaky as walking)

The repetitive nature of the quests is more than annoying and although I am close to getting to the 90 jiggys I need to get that last component to enable me to defeat the end boss, I think I might just leave it and play something fun.

The annoying sounds all the creatures make is enough to make you punch your own ears till they bleed.

There is a police presence in the main town after a while who just turn on you for no reason, but offer zero challenge in defeating them. WTF is the point of that?

You open the portal to the Witch at 75 jiggys.
You have to get to 90 jiggys to get the final part of the cart upgrade to beat her.
So WTF is that all about. Why not have them the other way around.

The camera angles start to piss you off so much that your controller is in serious danger of being hurled at a wall.

And the perrenial fave of lazy developers, make all the good components available when you have battled past things using the shite stuff.

So to add a long term play ending to my review......

To sum up, I hated it, then I stopped hating it, then I found it growing on me and now having played it to death I realise my intial thoughts were right. Its a hateful waste of time.

All the gamerwhore I could have accumulated during my malaise and I end up being stuck on this.

Oh and ranking events where you need a min of 4 people to play....pathetic nasty ach setting, and something M$ should have banned long ago. Mind you they are doing you a favour here as who in their right mind would want to MP this bag of cockroach phlegm.

I would now score this 3 or 4 /10 and apologies to everyone for bigging it up when I knew I should have stuck by my impulses.


It is better than Pixar UP though, mind you so is my flu.

This additional review cracked me up!

Although I must say I often hate a game when close to getting to the 1000 points.

Then in the future I look back fondly on it.

I'm glad I read both parts of your review, because I wasn't enjoying this during the first few hours play, but wondered if things might get better. Clearly they don't. For me it's way too convoluted.

- Spend 5 mins preparing a vehicle.
- Race for 2 mins and win jiggy.
- Drive back to the hub world.
- Use jiggy dispenser to receive the jiggy you've won.
- Pick up jiggy and take it to jiggy collector.
- Rinse and repeat.

Granted, the jiggy dispenser and collector are close to each other, but I cannot fathom why you have to jump through so many hoops to actually bank the thing you won. It's the same with unlocking new worlds. You have to drive to the top of the hill via a corkscrew road that just happens to have a bit near the top where you can fall to the bottom. Then you have to collect the game world globe, put it in your truck, drive back down the hill and take it to the part of the hub world to which it relates and place it on a platform. Where's the fun in any of this contrived shite?

i download the demo and the letter r way to hard to read so i'll pass on this one

This is pretty cool