Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Hands On

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Meanwhile, Eurogamer TV's Johnny Minkley is doing something in a boat, so we take the plane for a swim (it still works underwater, albeit in slow-motion), admiring the water, which varies in opacity depending on the viewing angle.

Fortunately for you, eventually this is curtailed and we get to play in a series of racing and sporting events. Nuts & Bolts has 14 different race types and 13 sports to choose between, and a number of variants within each section (football, for example, has one ball when it's team-based and Budweiser-style multiball when it's individuals; and there are air football and water polo variations depending on the terrain). The sumo level is an instant hit: players are equipped with wedge-shaped cars with a scooping gadget, and the idea is to expel the others from the ring, gaining points when you do and for time spent in the ring rather than scrambling around outside trying to find a ramp to rejoin the fray.

Elsewhere "pool prix", a boat race, separates the men from the people with no sense of inertia, but it's the egg-and-spoon race we end up liking the most: using Banjo's right-trigger gravity gun-style lasso ability to deposit an egg in the belly of a wagon and then lurching precariously around the Jiggoseum trying to avoid sharp jolts. As with every single- and multi-player task in Nuts & Bolts, you can modify the vehicle or try something else. You can even use a flying vehicle in a boat race if you like.

There are other modes we don't have time to see too, like Banjo Brawl (your standard deathmatch, judging by the description), and Queen of the Knoll - a distortion of popular first-person shooter game-type King of the Hill, where players score points by staying in a particular area despite violent protests from the opposition, except in this case with a scoring zone that roams around the level on a predefined path, changing speed and halting to try and upset your efforts. All very promising.

Hurdles! We didn't get the play this, but it clearly takes advantage of gadgets for jumping. Like weapons, they can be mapped to face buttons - check out the top-right for the key.

But not, as you will have observed, very platform - and despite protests from the team that there's a lot in there, we don't see much of it, apart from a bit of running and jumping around Showdown Town.

What we do see is a lot of interesting vehicle-based tasks that clearly grew from - and benefit from - the game's new vehicle creation and modification hook. We see beautiful graphics, bop our heads to the catchy music, and smile at the jokes, many of which are interactive: last time we mentioned the crates full of unsold Ghoulies, and this time we get to play Klungo's 2D platform game (Klungo Saves Teh World), a throwaway 2D platform game with constant scrolling where you have to try and time your jumps, complete with its own leaderboard.