I don’t envy Banjo and Kazooie. After only defeating witchy villainess Gruntilda a handful of times in
Banjo-Kazooie games over the past decade, the duo have fallen into lethargy, fattening up with a perpetual routine of video games and pizza—at least according to the conceit that begins their newest adventure,
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
Nuts & Bolts establishes the now retired duo living lazily at their home in Spiral Mountain, which makes sense since they haven’t had a proper console adventure since the heyday of the N64. And when I say lazy, I mean it—bear and bird have become so out of shape that Banjo now sports a hefty, blubbery gut, and Kazooie can’t even fly.
This may seem a slightly bizarre approach to begin a new long-overdue installment of a successful platforming series, but
Nuts & Bolts isn’t your typical platformer. Rather than simply giving Banjo and Kazooie an HD facelift and a new world to play in, developer Rare opted to go for something else entirely with
Nuts & Bolts: a self-aware platformer with vehicular gameplay.
So, whereas you’ll still be collecting tokens, notes (the game’s currency) and Jiggies—Banjo’s equivalent to Mario’s stars—in
Nuts & Bolts, you’ll mostly be doing so in land, water and air-based crafts you build yourself. That being said, this isn’t strictly a racing game. There are plenty of races, sure, and most every challenge in the game is timed, but there’s the game’s vehicle building and platforming mechanics make it more of a hybrid.
Nuts & Bolts' whimsy even spills over into its aesthetic style.
Game self-awareness on the level of
Nuts & Bolts' is something of a rarity in the industry. Although it may just look and feel like a kid’s game at first, the game’s sharp writing makes use of every opportunity to take jabs both at itself and the game industry in general, with plenty of sarcasm and self-reflexive humor.
This is clear from the very start, when the Lord of Games, or L.O.G., shows up and actually pauses the game, stopping a fight that’s about to break out between Banjo, Kazooie and old Grunty’s head, which has reappeared to hound the duo.
“Greetings, second-rate game characters!” L.O.G. greets the trio.
If Nuts & Bolts’ intro, which makes fun of platforming conventions and plot devices is anything to go by (and it is) the game is rife with parody. After L.O.G., the creator of all games, forces Banjo and Grunty to race collecting as many pointless game objects as possible, (a genre convention most gamers will recognize instantly) it magically makes Banjo and Kazooie fit again and gives Grunty back her body.
When Kazooie protests that she no longer has any of her old moves from previous games, L.O.G. dismisses them as ‘outdated’. Finally, bear, bird and witch are forced to follow L.O.G. on vehicles, of which will transport our heroes throughout the game’s world, Showdown Town.
Like previous Banjo adventures. (or most platformers since Super Mario 64) Showdown Town serves as a hub from which the game’s levels can be accessed, challenges taken on and jiggies obtained. To do so, you’re given a bucket of bolts that vaguely reminiscent of a shopping cart to get around in.
For a platformer, Showdown Town is massive, with various districts and distractions and townsfolk (including familiar faces like Mumbo Jumbo, the series shaman who now owns a garage) to talk to, and thanks to Nuts & Bolts’ uber-slick, cartoony aesthetic you feel like you’re driving through a living, breathing place, like something out of a Shrek-type CG film.
Although you’ll want to stick to your vehicle most of the time, bear and bird can still perform a few basic functions.
This time around, Kazooie is restricted to simply using a helpful magical wrench, which can pick up objects, turn over vehicles, and perform automotive adjustments on the fly, thanks to Nuts & Bolts’ use of the item manipulation friendly Havok engine, and Banjo can still…uh, run around, jump and swim.
Once you leave the town and enter a level, however, you aren’t restricted to your metal-box-on-wheels when selecting a vehicle to traverse the game’s gorgeous environs.
Gameplay herein involves finding and accepting challenges, activated by talking to new and returning characters in the levels. Winning challenges in turn nets you more jiggies, which are used to unlock new levels.
Challenges come from in a variety of forms, ranging from something simple, like racing someone around a route made into the level, hard, like protecting a helpless character or location from hordes of Grunty’s new malevolent grunt-bot henchmen, or ridiculous, like hard-boiling a giant egg by transporting it into an active volcano.
Occasionally Nuts & Bolts forces you to use a vehicle designed for a particular task, but most of the time, you have free reign over what mode of transportation you pick. Collected notes can be used to buy new vehicle parts and blueprints, which brings us to the game’s most fun feature: its robust vehicle editor.
Nuts & Bolts’ open-ended design lets you change, modify, or completely scrap vehicles to build something new. And although creating a running vehicle could sound daunting to non-gearheads such as myself, the process has been streamlined for gamers of any age.
Whether you’re building from a blueprint or starting from scratch, the process is simple—lay down the basic components in your rotatable workspace and the editor will display each part in green, red or yellow if the vehicle’s components will or won't work together, or if something’s missing.
The game’s varying challenges make modifying and creating new vehicles necessary, but the trial and error process is also a lot of fun. Until you get a basic grasp of weight, physics and part stats, you’ll probably be laughing at yourself over some of your results.
Finally, when you think you’re all set for a level, you can test out your contraption using the game’s in-garage test course. The ability to access Mumbo’s garage in Showdown Town before starting any challenge is also a welcome feature, which makes performing vehicular tweaks a breeze, and saves you from the tedium of driving back to the garage or entering a level to test out your new creation.
As you progress in the game, you can work your way up from basic cars to anything from a series of connected cars that look like a centipede to jumping, four-wheels cube covered in weapons—simply put, the only limit to how ridiculous you can make something is your imagination, so long as you have the necessary parts.
And much like the game’s whimsical aesthetic, the aforementioned humor is everywhere. Much like the mission structure in open world games like No More Heroes and Grand Theft Auto, Nuts & Bolts eschews a deep narrative for a script that mostly involves conversations with characters presenting challenges, but its still often pretty funny.
Although in previous games Kazooie has been the cynical one, in Nuts & Bolts, both she and Banjo have become pretty jaded, and are well aware when they’re being asked to participate in a useless fetch quests or menial tasks to the point where the two often chastise or make fun of characters who seem less aware of their own game-based existence.
Constant in-jokes and references also pop up frequently, in levels like Banjo-Land, an amusement park-like area themed after locations from previous Banjo adventures, (now presented as a museum), and LOGBOX 70, which is basically the inside of a giant Xbox 360, complete with spinning game discs of old Rare titles.
Familiar themes and the series’ trademark unintelligible-animal-noise “voice acting” are present as well, and Nuts & Bolts even breaks the fourth wall by having elements the game admits were cut from the final release appear in cameos (read: inflatable sheep), making this one a much smarter game than you might assume from the constant presence of a dopey-looking bear.
Aside from the game’s great sense of humor and creativity, though, Nuts & Bolts does have a few loose screws. For one, the game’s challenges range greatly in difficulty, and, much like any game with racing elements in it, computer controlled characters cheat from time to time.
On top of that, some vehicles’ controls are way too sensitive—to the point where one turn taken slightly the wrong way will result in a series of unwieldy turns or circular spins, which, in a timed-based event against perfect CPU opponents is often the kiss of death.
But the most disappointing thing about Nuts & Bolts is that its creative mechanical design and clever sensibilities don’t always follow-through in the game’s challenges, which are usually little more than races, escort services, attack or defend scenarios, or item fetch quests. Given the sheer amount imagination in the rest of the game, it seems an almost criminal misstep that more inventive tasks weren’t used, and can make the game feel more frustrating than it should.
While this isn't a make or break deal, it is worth noting—the game certainly wouldn’t be any worse with more platforming elements and more varied tasks for vehicle use. Surprisingly, it doesn’t ruin the experience, and for what it does, the game does pretty well.
Nuts & Bolts may not be for everyone—the vehicular mechanic is far more than a gimmick, but it’s the kind of thing you’ll either love or hate. Regardless, Rare took a big chance with the game’s mechanics, and its innovation and reflexive nature is exactly the kind of forward thinking the industry needs, even if Nuts & Bolts’ level design could have used a little more time under the hood. Whether you’re a gearhead or are just looking for something different, this one puts the screws to the competition (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Check it out.
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