Banjo-Kazooie Comments by Kristan Reed

""Rare are old and shit! Rare are old and shit! Haven't made a decent game since Goldeneye, Rare are old and shit!" etc. "

Viva Pinata and VP 2 are great. so that's not true at all.

It's difficult to know where to stand on this one. When I started replaying the game it was hugely nostalgic, and I quickly got through the Mumbo's Mountain level. However as the game progressed I began to have more and more frustrations - particularly in areas that required precision control or a half decent camera. By the time I got to the final boss things got even worse as I remembered that the whole affair is broken into four sections ranging from the simple first two parts to a frustrating third and bloody difficult final section. Of course die at the end and you have to do the whole lot again.

Of course this was gaming in 1998 and as a school child with limited funds available and lots more free time than I have now I was happy with such things. Nowadays I have less free time and more games and I don't want to keep dying at the same boss fight. In defense of this port though they did fix some of the worst excesses of the original - namely the fact that if you died on a level with 99/100 notes, or 4/5 Jinjos you'd have to collect the whole lot again. At least this time you only have to pick up what you missed the first time around.

Guess Mario 64 would be getting a 4 out of 10 on virtual console then?

I love Rare. Ive loved them since NES days. Snake Rattle N Roll comes to mind. I will try the demo when it comes out. I never usually try the XBLA demos. Either i buy the full game or just skip it alltogether. I will make an exception for Banjo even though ive decided not to buy it just to see if i change my mind.

Viva Pinata and VP 2 are great. so that's not true at all.

No, Viva Pinata is a fairly solid 7/10. It is fine until micromanagment kills the whole relaxation of the thing. Which is after about 4 hours.

There's no harshness towards Rare from me either for being on a non-Nintendo console. In fact I used to like their Speccy games. The simple fact is, they can't make fantastic games anymore.

I hate Eurogamer.

"The game isn't being reviewed as a retrospective, it's being reviewed as a new title that has just been released, like all other Live Arcade games"

That's an absoloutly bullshit approach to reviewing retro games then. Are you telling me Sonic 2 should be reviewed in line with games like Call of Duty 4 and Bioshock? "No 3D, awful graphics, unforgiving level design 2/10"

If you're picking up a retro game like this and expecting the graphics and production quality to be on par with a modern game, me thinks you might be looking in the wrong place.

So is Banjo Tooie definitely coming to Live?

Please respond!

Like a lot of people, I was once firmly of the opinion that Banjo-Kazooie was better than Mario 64; I played both in fairly close succession not long after I purchased my N64, and B-K just seemed so much more varied, vibrant, and full of character. Within a year, though, my opinion did a complete 180-degree switch; maybe it's because I then played Donkey Kong 64, which exposed the flaws of the template established by B-K by stretching them to breaking point (collect all 80,000 bananas to unlock a new hat!), but even on its own merits Banjo's game mechanics, level design and overall aesthetic just seemed to age incredibly badly once the sheen of its presentation and scope had diminished, particularly in comparison to Mario. Given the way that both the genre and the technology have developed even further since then, I can't see any reason to hope that the game would appear anything other than even worse now...this is one I'm definitely leaving to nostalgic memories, I think. Great music, though. :)

Banjo Tooie is definitely coming out on Live.

Incidentally, this does sound like a very harsh way to review a retro game. I know time is rarely kind to these games, but I'd have thought (considering how good this was at the time) a 6 or 7 at least unless they made a technical hash of it, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Still, I've not played it and can't be arsed buying it either, so I'd best shut up. N&B is still great, though. Also, Mudtallica does make a pretty convincing argument: I too once thought this loads better than Mario 64, a position I've since reversed.

Its true that its harsh to review this whilst comparing with how modern games are, but that being said, I played Mario 64 recently and I can honestly say that holds up to the test of time. I had this on the N64 and it was always second to Mario 64....

I'll probably still get it though

lol Fanboys facts are amusing... if only they knew how silly that looks to make claims of facts because of their personal tastes.

"pizza is better tasting than ravioli and thats a fact people" :p

RareLOL

I'm loving this again, the camera is annoying and there has been sporadic slowdown in 1080P (not enough to make me bother switching to 720 yet though) but it's the first retro game I've enjoyed as much as i thought i would.

Are people really saying that Banjo is/was better than Mario 64? Come on get a grip. Mario 64 is a classic, Banjo was a good clone but its just missing the spark that sets a good game from a great one. Just my opinion obviously.

It's true that it's not as good as Mario 64. At least in my opinion, I can't argue for other people. If they enjoy it more than SM64 then let them have their fun. But even if a lot of people think that SM64 is the better game that still makes a lousy argument as to why BK is supposedly not a good game.

lol rare

@muscleblade - Just because I don't always complete the games, doesn't mean I don't enjoy them or get many hours of play out of them. I've played GTA IV for over 90 hours across the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions and have completed neither. Some of those games *will* be finished over a period of time as was the case with Kameo for example which I finished after a year but not every game interests me enough for me to complete it but that's not something I'm going to know before I buy it, is it? ;)

If I complete a game then it means it was good enough to keep me playing it until the end. If I want to play through it again, like with Banjo-Kazooie, then it means it's exceptional.

P.S. I *have* completed Call of Duty 4, finished it within weeks of getting it last year, so I don't know why you think I haven't. I wouldn't judge my gaming habits purely on Achievements (if that is what you're doing) because I'm not in the slightest bit interested in online gaming so I don't earn many points there, if any.

Banjo was a good clone but its just missing the spark that sets a good game from a great one.

By that you mean plumbers I take it?

@GrumpyLlama - Well everyone is different and for me Mario 64 is the more dated game of it and Banjo-Kazooie, something I realised when I purchased it for my Wii last year as I've barely played it. I loved it at the time but I can't be bothered to play it now, totally unlike Banjo-Kaooie, which I'm loving every second of despite this being my THIRD run through. I'm not saying that Mario 64 isn't a great game but it is very much of its time for me and personally I'd rather play Super Mario Galaxy now than that.

Call my crazy, but I enjoyed this more than Mario64 "back in the day". The world is just fantastic, colorful and cozy. And, i really fukken love collecting Notes.

EDIT: Oh! Im far from the only one who enjoyed BK, I notice. *Highfives everyone* (even the haters, they need some love aswell)

EDIT: They got the amount of collectibles just right in BK.
The overflow of bananas/characters in DK64 killed that for me, and Starfox Adventures is a rather nice game with laugable collection-mania. Also, the way you collect coins to reach 100 in Mario-games is not as fun as vacuum-cleaning a BK-level for that last Note.

I personally felt that Banjo missed the supple controls of Mario 64 and the feeling of freedom that game engendered.Having said that,both games were highly entertaining and provided me with hours of entertainment apiece.

Banjo Kazooie was better looking, more varied in gameplay and funnier than Mario 64. I enjoyed is considerably more, and for longer than mario in the day. Click-clock wood's four-dimensional puzzles are one of the best pieces of games design I can think of, exploring the sorts of ideas revistited in Braid all these years later.

It also irritated me that there was an anti-banjo brigade, that seemed to be led by the editorial team of Edge who were constantly doing it down, describing it as a pale imitation etc. Which struck me as odd, since at the time, even if I conceeded that my preference was a matter or personal taste, the original Banjo Kazooie was certainly the second-best game of its type be a considerable margin. Kristan's attitude is very reminiscent of all that to me.

I particularly don't like the 'If you defend this, you're just spouting blinkered nostalgia' argument in the review.

Well Banjo-Kazooie's level design was more interesting and inventive for me than Mario 64 and the different worlds were less obviously designed for a game so consequently they were far more fun to explore. It was also bigger and felt more varied with all the different moves. Also the music, graphics, cheesy British humour and the charming personality of the two leads made Banjo-Kazooie more memorable for me but, let's face it, Mario himself has no real personality, it's only that people recognise who he is because he's been in 10,000 other Mario games where he was also a nobody! Granted B-K "borrowed" a lot of elements from Mario 64 but IMO Rare made a better game overall and one that has stuck with me for the past ten years. I think of the game and it makes me smile.

If a game does that to you then it's hard for anyone to convince you otherwise that something else was better and, besides, there's no right or wrong when it comes down to which game is better anyway, it's just down to personal taste.

I played it all day and night to 100% completion, which is something I never managed to achieve ten years ago. Entirely forgot that I have a real life separate to that of the game while I was playing. Never got uncomfortable or bored. It's my favourite Xbox 360 game, along with Ninja Gaiden II. Cannot wait for Banjo-Tooie to come to XBLA. I remember it being bigger and better than the original. Still haven't played Nuts & Bolts; I only managed to get the original game because they accidentally put it on the XBL Marketplace, briefly. Thanks to the person who made the forum post linking to the kotaku article about it.

I can see why someone might not like B-K though. At first I wasn't impressed with the graphics and camera, and the levels didn't seem as big as I remembered them, but after the easy tutorial stuff was over I just sort of got over it and became addicted. I still much prefer platformers like this and Super Mario Galaxy over something like Call of Duty any day.

Yeah, replaying Banjo-Kazooie now: the first thing I thought when I'd completed three of the worlds was that they didn't seem anywhere near as big as I remembered them. Mind you, I had just been playing B-K: Nuts & Bolts so that be partly the reason why! LOL

I still think Mario64 is the better overall title, but there are certainly parts to BK that are better than it. I absolutely loved it when it first came out, and I actually fired it up on a proper N64 not so long ago just to refresh my memory given I knew it was coming out on XBLA. My thoughts haven't changed about it, although like Goldeneye, you can see it has aged a bit in the ten years since. Still a damn fine game though, and worth far more than 5/10 given here.

Very harsh EG...

The game has aged, but it is still a superior (possibly the best) example of the genre

Banjo Kazooie 5
Dead Space 7
Nuts and Bolts 7

3 of the best games this year. In a year of good games. But EG would rather rate SR2 above them. Strange sense of quality.

@warzin:

That's cos Saints Row 2 is actually better. It's a marked improvement over the first game, and knows how to make fun at itself and others.

This and Diddy Kart Racing were both poor imitations. Sorry, but they were poo back then and still poo now, albeit very nicely decorated poo. Of course, this is just my opinion.

I still have a soft spot for Goldeneye though. Which is why I hope they never re-release it.

...but Ms. Pacman gets an 8?

Sorry, but having played the game: Bollocks to the review.

EDIT: And I barely played the original so there are no retro glasses here.

wait, whats going on? Banjo is shit? diddy kong racing is shit? donkey kong country was shit?

Nintendo have clouded your minds! in the words of Niteninja: WAKE UP!

Having never played either of the N64 Banjo games (I'd either sold my N64, or just wasn't clued up enough back then), this review has actually made me even more interested in the game, and am looking forward to grabbing the trial on the 3rd December even more so to see once and for all just what all the fuss is about!

I loved X-Box Conker and Grabbed By The Ghoulies, and hope this will have the same charm and humour.

I couldn't disagree more. Admittedly there are some really bad bits of slow-down, but they're not so frequent that I wouldn't buy the game and, in my opinion, the camera isn't as much of an issue as this review makes it out to be.
It's certainly worth the 1200 points, especially if you consider the sheer amount of content compared to othe LIVE Arcade games that go for the same amount.

@ login_name: Couldn't disagree more, I've never had a bad thing to say about Mario 64, preffered Banjo at the time but there was so little between them that for me it's pretty irrelevant. Diddy Kong on the other hand was so much more enjoyable than Mario Kart (single player at least, can't actually remember what multi was like), I've never even looked at another Mario Kart game since the N64 version. The thing I'd like most from Rare now is an avatar version of Diddy Kong, give me that game play with avatars and I'd be there in a shot.

I disagree so wholeheartedly with this review that I created an account just now to post this comment.

I have beaten the game (13 hours) and unlocked all 12 achievements and it is definitely one of the top 5 XBLA games out there. The game looks great on an HDTV and I experienced no slowdown. The camera is slightly finicky and swimming controls are difficult, but overall the game is an absolute gem. Addictive and very fun exploring the worlds and figuring out where all the jigsaw pieces are. Yes the nostalgia shaped my view of the game, but I found it to be just as fun as it was ten years ago. 9/10.

Do not agree with this review at all. I'll leave it at that. Retro game reviews are sort of pointless anyway.

I dis-agree so much with this review.

1'st off the gameplay was a slight evolution on Mario 64.

Next the camera was way better then Mario 64.

The music is amazing, where did you mention anything about the compositions in the game in that review?

Next the graphical textures arn't that great, it is a Nintendo 64 game. What Nintendo 64 game has better textures then this. Some but very few.

Trial and error gameplay? Come on! I could say that any game has trial and error gameplay to an extent.

Im not knocking the review for this. After all a review is an OPINION and OPINIONS can't be wrong just mis understood. But I think that the review doesn't show enough of the merits to this game and shows too much bad points. Almost as if the review was nit-piking bad points just to justify that score.

5/10? What madness is this? And apparently Kirstin never learned the move that sends you slamming directly down into the ground, seeing great use as "that thing which stops you from flying right now". And poor level design my arse.

5/10 is a piss take. It was deserving of a
Better score. After being sucked into this all weekend I disagree with arwardcamera and controls.

it was never that good the first time around.

+1 to the return of Blast Corps though

WTF is it with you N64 fanboys? I haven't had a good laugh like this in ages. Getting worked up like this is hilarious. Tools.
Oh and all N64 platformers sucked. As much as the system did.

Dont agree with that review at all. in fact, its one of the worst i have read in a while. kristan was probably still in nappies when Rare released this excellent game.

I didn't buy an N64 until after I'd bought a Gamecube (and I got what must have been one of the last brand new N64s in shops at the time too for only £50, including Mario 64 as standard).

Unfortunately for Banjo Kazooie, I actually played Conker's Bad Fur Day (and, I think, Donkey Kong 64) first and so BK's first world, Mumbo Mountain, did initially feel like one of the lesser platformers on the PS1 by comparison. I found it a much harder game to start with- I had no idea what the things I was collecting did.

To cut a long story a bit shorter, it has since become apparent that Banjo Kazooie avoids the excesses, in different ways, of Donkey Kong 64 and Conker's Bad Fur Day and is a beautiful, well designed game. The more self consciously 'funky' DK64, whilst sporting some great mini games and the memorable mine cart section, had you repeating your same tracks with 5 different characters and its desert level that gave a deja vu sense of Banjo Kazooie. Conker's Bad Fur Day may have refreshingly dispensed with most collectables altogether but its darker tone and gross-out humour makes it an acquired taste.

Banjo Kazooie, on the other hand is entirely like a great fairytale, like a collection of great surreal bedtime stories- wicked witches, treasure islands, journeys under the same with giant whales/sharks, haunted houses, getting lost in the woods etc.... But it also has a sense of some kind of groundedness eg Rusty Bucket Bay. It takes the Mario 64 idea of jumping into paintings and gives them a better twist- you create a picture using jigsaw pieces but, brilliantly, you don't do anything as obvious as jumping into the picture- it simply opens up a door elsewhere, sometimes close by and sometimes quite a trek away.

The worlds are all found around the witch's lair whch is a complex level in its own right. To access certain areas that contain the entrances to those worlds, you must reach more than a certain amount of musical notes the amount being your best number collected in total from all worlds you have accessed. But you don't only need to collect musical notes in each world. you need to collect the aforementioned jigsaw pieces, 'Jiggies' as well. You don't have to collect every single one but, as level progress, it becomes evident that to reach the later stages, you may need to replay earlier ones.

I didn't play Banjo Kazooie with any sense of nostaligia clouding my mind as I played it about 5 or more years after it had been released. In some ways the experience sometimes feels like it could have been expanded, e.g. Mad Monster Mansion itself could have been bigger inside. (in some ways the castle in Conker's Bad Fur Day fulfills this desire). It can be annoying missing a musical note when you are swimming down a tube in Clanker's Cavern (that actually seems like design rather than accident as in Freezeezy Peak Banjo is forced to jump over a section of a slope, making it necessary to go back up on foot).

There's something about the way that Rare were getting to grips with the N64 that makes this game their most charming N64 game- the way that the sharks (that are thankfully not overused) in the game appear out of nowhere makes them more mysterious. Mysterious is a good word to use about Banjo Kazooie and is summed up in the great idea of Click Clock Woods, that you must play the same level in different seasons. Maybe it seems dated to some but I see a lot more timeless game here than Super Mario Sunshine turned out to be, although Super Mario Galaxy looks very, very good. It's a Dream of a Project indeed, worthy of at least 8/10 even now- I'll still give it 9- perhaps it's playing it on the Xbox360 that diminishes the experience- much better to play it on the N64 surely despite (or perhaps because of) some graphical differences. How can a fly accidentally crashing into a more see through Rare badge look as good as the old one? How can 'Microsoft Game Studios' surplant Nintendo in the opening section when the game was derived from the Rare/Nintendo spirit of invention?

Oh and all N64 platformers sucked. As much as the system did.

The N64 still sold more during its lifetime than the original Xbox. And more than the 360 has so far.

Still first day purchase. banjo is teh sexxez, you're fucking WRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG eg!

The N64 still sold more during its lifetime than the original Xbox. And more than the 360 has so far.

I was being aggressive due to the tone of this topic. I didn't mean that literally. You people need to get over yourselves.
As for me the only two games I treasure on the N64 are Waverace 64 and Sin and Punishment. There's little else to worry about.

oh - I missed BK first time round. And after going nuts over mario 64 first - and second time round I will give it a try. Though it would be hard to top SM64 - which still ranks as one of my favourite games ever.n

Oh - and another vote for blast corps. And diddy kong racing was better than mk64.

Not for the first time a comments thread has over-ridden the review. Equally retro games have the best (albeit nostalgic) comments :-)

(apropos nothing - iPhone wanted to turn my mistyped diddy kong into 'soddy kong' !)