XBLA Review: Banjo Tooie

Ahh the N64… The good old days of blowing on the cartridge when the game wouldn’t start… blowing in the console… blowing… yeah we won’t go there. The Nintendo 64 had some amazing games on it, and now we’ve got the opportunity to play one of those amazing games again without buying another old console off eBay by nabbing Banjo Tooie off the Xbox Live Arcade.

The first thing that I noticed about Banjo Tooie is that on a 40 inch HDTV is that it seems as if they didn’t update the graphics at all. While this can be good in preserving the original game, it’s not so good for us graphics junkies. The cartoony style of this game means that these outdated graphics don’t make it unplayable though, but at times, especially during cinematics when the camera goes really close to an object, the low res textures are really pretty annoying.

One thing I would like to comment on is the Grammy winning voice acting in this game! I would have never guessed that puzzle pieces talked in a series of variable pitch belches, and that bears and birds just mutter and get captioned. The sounds in the game are pretty fun, and will definitely give you a chuckle several times throughout the game. I really do love the sounds throughout the game!

The control scheme is pretty good, nothing too complex. It’s mostly responsive, the only time when it seemed to have trouble was that sometimes when I would try to get Kazooie out of the backpack to be able to run faster the buttons wouldn’t respond and I’d just go into block mode. Not too much of a problem, but it was somewhat annoying.

Banjo Tooie is a sequel to previously released Banjo Kazooie, also for the N64… also available on XBLA. This being said it’s recommended that you play the first game before this one, but it’s not needed. The storyline is pretty easy to follow, and what you missed from the first game is introduced within an extensive cinematic opening.

The game in it’s entirety is presented in a family friendly manner with everything trying to be funny. If you’re into cheesy comedy then this game will have you in stitches! It’s definitely got a few parts that will make anyone chuckle though! The baddies are pretty funny and are catered to look the part of the area they’re in.

One of the things that Banjo Tooie does a lot is reference A. the fact that it IS a game; the characters tend to know they’re in a game and know it’s a sequel, which brings me to B. they reference the first game a lot, so if you haven’t played it, I recommend grabbing that from XBLA as well.

The mini-games are actually pretty fun. The first one you’ll encounter is the Kickball championships and is actually a bit of a challenge but pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The second one is called ‘dodgems’ and is sort of like bumper cars. You have to collect ‘twinklies’ while computer baddies try and bump you around, but it’s extremely easy.

Another mini-game is the Saucer of Peril challenge where you ride around in a flying saucer and control a crosshair to aim and shoot at floating bubbles of different colours worth different points. The aiming controls are horrible until you get used to them. It’s the same controls as aiming eggs, you move the left thumbstick, and how far you move it is where the crosshair is on screen, if you let go of the thumbstick the crosshairs return to the middle of the screen. This takes some getting used to, and is very touchy. The saucer mini-game took me three tries to get the Jiggy.

The storyline is very long, and that’s pretty awesome for such a small download off the XBLA. There are a total of 13 boss fights in the game, after about 6 hours of play time I’d defeated 5 of them. One thing that really hurts this game is that there’s no online multiplayer. I tried to play multiplayer and it just waited for other controllers to sign in to the console.

Overall Banjo Tooie brings back a great N64 title to the modern console for another generation to enjoy, and to bring back memories of Jinjos and Jiggys for those of us who played the original cartridge version.

Doin’ It RIGHT: - Bringin’ back the classics! - Long playtime - Comedic dialogue	Doin’ It RONG: - No online multiplayer - Took out parts of original game - N64 graphics
FINAL SCORE: 7 / 10