Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

By Sam Leitch

Nuts and Bolts is a very important game for Rare. Back in the Nintendo 64 days, RareWare were arguably in their prime, and Banjo Kazooie was one of the biggest feathers in their cap. Since then Rare have indeed made some quality games, but nothing that really made the world stand still. This has lead to many fans asking if the company still has the ‘X’ factor – I’m sure Rare are more than eager to prove they do, and that Banjo is the one to do it.

Judging from early press releases, this Banjo game incorporates some interesting ideas into the 3D adventure genre. The ‘story’ of this game is that Banjo and Gruntilda have to settle their feud once and for all, Banjo has to complete challenges and ‘Grunty’ has to do everything in her power to stop him.

Pretty straight forward so far huh? The twist is that Banjo can create vehicles from a huge list of parts to help him overcome said challenges. The player will have a huge amount of freedom to experiment and create vehicles up to the task. I’m hoping though that this Banjo still has a lot of the classic platforming action to compliment the new ideas.

As well as winning gameplay, one thing that really set the Nintendo 64 games apart were jaw-dropping graphics and a good dose of rather perverted humour. These are two things Rare has always been good at, and hopefully these elements are out in strong force on the Xbox 360. Early screenshots and videos are looking good so far.

NZGamer really is hoping this game fulfils its potential. This is a chance for Rare to go mad with their wonderful imagination and craft us a fantastic game world. Hopefully the vehicles compliment traditional gameplay and the control scheme is up to the task.

Rare as usual look to be quite ambitious; Banjo could be the game to put them back in the spotlight.

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