Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Review

Nuts & Bolts does an excellent job of blending minigames with a fun-to-explore world. Now, most of these challenges do have ridiculous premises (like collecting giant coconuts or saving a city from a gargantuan floating dinosaur), but their goofy nature feels right at home in the titular character's colorful world. Winning challenges awards jiggies -- the series' standard "shiny collectible object" currency -- and accruing specific numbers of jiggies unlocks more and more areas (and challenges). And while you can just access the minigames through a boring list, Rare's crafted a delightful and charming world you can't help but want to explore. Lots of little bonuses throughout -- like arcades where you can play old-school-style games reminiscent of the original Super Mario Bros. -- go a long way toward making exploration a treat rather than a tedious chore between minigames.

Click the image above to check out all the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts screens.

While I enjoyed exploring the lush world, the challenges became pretty tedious over time. Don't get me wrong -- they're good fun, but for every unique challenge, I encountered 10 boilerplate racing minigames. Combine this with the fact that everything's timed, and particularly tricky challenges get repetitious and annoying. Thankfully, you never have to collect every jiggy from a particular area; the challenges exist in excess, so you're mostly free to ignore the ones you don't like. Nuts & Bolts is incredibly streamlined compared to the previous games' collect-a-thon method, too. This time around, you needn't worry about acquiring every shiny object floating around in a level (a long-outgrown platformer practice that I used to begrudgingly accept in my younger years).

Challenge-centric as the progression is, imagination is Nuts & Bolts' centerpiece. The ability to craft the perfect vehicle for the challenge set before you -- a plane, a boat, a submarine, or simply an effective car -- provides a constant source of gratification. I often found myself spending time in the garage (even when I wasn't wrestling with an immediate challenge), simply taking time to create and experiment with vehicles that could overcome any hairy situations I dreamt up. The system works splendidly, with a toolset that allows anyone to create vehicles ranging from simple engines on wheels to complex contraptions that truly challenge the imagination. And the on-demand test track provides some hilarious trial-and-error periods while you try to sort out exactly why your crazy creation isn't functioning quite like you imagined.

Click the image above to check out all the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts screens.

Custom vehicles really come into their own on the myriad multiplayer maps, though. While the host can force everyone to use the same preset vehicle, it's absurdly more fun when you get a few moments to craft a custom vehicle before battling it out with your opponents. One minigame -- which finds players knocking each other out of a ring -- employs a truly spectacular range of vehicles; from hulking tanks to tiny flying helicopters loaded with guns, it's really cool to see the variety of ways in which different players tackle the same problem.

The combination of a surprisingly lengthy single-player game and a robust multiplayer mode make this one game that just about anyone can enjoy. While the challenges get a little repetitive, the ability to create and operate custom vehicles -- both online and off -- make Nuts & Bolts a unique, entertaining spin on the everyday platformer.

Write Your Own Review

See all Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts Reviews >