We're back in this bright green platform playground are we? Smashing. I said Banjo-Kazooie was better than Super Mario 64 when I had the chance to play it, so how does the imaginatively titled sequel, Banjo-Tooie stack up to both?
Does it follow the fine tune and perfect it approach? Does it cram in yet more collectables to hunt down? Will it make use of even more of the N64 hardware? Is that even possible in the distant past that is the year 2000?
Fun Times
Banjo-Tooie opens with a lengthy movie to set the scene. Briefly recapping the events of the game we haven't gone back to play, it looks and feels identical to the Banjo-Kazooie we already know of. It's not radically different, it's still got the same style, and everything spoken by a witch is still said in bloody rhyme.
That might have been better as a video...
Anyway, the Witch Gruntilda returns from the dead and kills that mole fella whose name escapes me right now, but it's ok because he's a talking ghost now and can still be saved. Probably.
As before, your first taste of the game is a nice and safe area with little challenges to overcome as you familiarise yourself with the controls and the collectables. Eggs are ammo and can be fired as a ranged attack, rolling into enemies is accompanied by a shoulder charge move of some sort, Kazooie will assist in your jumping and flying... it still feels like Banjo-Kazooie, so all is good there.
Frustrations
Only it's not... It's not good at all. I want tooltips. I want hints. I want to have to actively skip through dialogue telling me how to jump. Where's that? Where's the instructor for these tutorials? Have I gone blind? Are you really expecting me to just pick up the controller and figure this stuff out?
It's a safe enough environment for trial and error, but not all of us learn through trial and error. What the hell is Kazooie's face doing underwater? Why is swimming underwater still awful? What the bloody hell do the welly boots do?
A tunnel leads us to Klungo, a green monkey, I think, who drinks invisibility potions to deal with a problem like us. As you do, I guess.
Roll into him a few times and that's job done, down into the next tunnel we go.
Oh, so that's just what it says when you quit? Strange choice of words. It was making me think something had gone wrong with the game back in Banjo-Kazooie.
Anyway, yeah, I quit. I'm not having fun at all.
Final Word
In a situation like this, I'd say that I simply haven't played enough of a game to be in a position to give it a definitive verdict one way or the other. In this case, it is most definitely true.
I sat watching a cutscene that didn't interest me for five minutes, played around with controls that felt alright, I'll give it that, for five more minutes, then moved through a 'boss' that made no sense into a village named the Isle o' Hags. I'm done. This is doing nothing for me.
The first Banjo game played more like Ratchet & Clank than Super Mario 64, and that I liked. Banjo-Tooie seems more of the same, which I should, in theory, like as well, but I just don't. It's doing nothing wrong, objectively speaking (apart from dumping players into a space with no instructions, I guess), and probably is worth a mention on the 1001 list for building upon the first game, but I just don't like it.
It's like I've grown up and this is now a childish game. The goofy speech and cartoony characters don't help, I suppose. Nor does the bloody rhyming. And I'm struggling to get the music out of my bloody head too.
The write up for Banko-Tooie is a little wishy-washy when it comes to saying whether this game is absolute gold or not as well. It mentions how the game is bigger but emptier, and how it's funny to have Banjo transform into a washing machine but... yeah... it's just a washing machine. A laugh and on we move, no big deal.
Banjo-Tooie is - and I say this without having a clue what happens after fifteen minutes, remember - a game of more of what you know, made a little better.
It looks great. It sounds memorable. The plot is there for those who want it. I'm well aware this is as vague as all hell and isn't exactly working as a conclusion... What I'm trying to say is that I had a bad experience of Banjo-Tooie and it has impacted the way I feel about the game, but a great many more people didn't have a bad experience and hold Banjo-Tooie in high regards. And that's fine.
As this is a Rare title, it means I get to say that it's now available all HD-ified with proper controls on the Xbox One in the Rare Replay collection and that I'd probably have a better time if I played that. But I didn't play it and haven't got it.
For a blog like this, it's looking like quite the purchase that I should have made though...
Fun Facts
Remember that player vs player mode in Perfect Dark, where one player would attempt to thwart the single player campaign of the other? That was first developed and tested for Banjo-Tooie, where one player would be the ghost of Bottles (ah, that's his name), getting revenge on Banjo for not helping him to stay out of the grave. Spooky, but not included because it wasn't debugged enough prior to launch.
Banjo-Tooie, developed by Rare, first released in 2000.
Version played: Nintendo 64, 2000, via emulation.